A version of this story aired on NPR's All Things Considered.

By Rachel Krantz and the Youth Radio Investigative Team

SMALL TOWN GIRL
Chris Young sits at the kitchen table in his rural Illinois farmhouse. Outside are the vast, flat fields of corn and soybean. Inside, Young is surrounded by mountains of paper, the documents detailing the investigation into his daughter’s death. On the wall above him is a photo of Jennifer Valdivia-uniformed, mid-twenties, smiling into the camera with a fringe of bangs framing her face.

Even as he looks back at the investigation into his daughter’s death two years later, it’s still hard for Young to make sense of its conclusions.

“There’s too much redacted from the investigation to make any sense of it,” Young said. “The parent of the soldier should have an un-redacted version of the investigation to make complete sense of it all.”

What Valdivia’s father can say for sure is how this story began. [A slideshow with audio of our interview with Chris Young is available here.]

In July 2004, Valdivia was assigned to the unit of Military Working Dog (MWD) handlers in Bahrain. The MWD unit inspects mail coming through the Persian Gulf, on the lookout for explosives and narcotics. The dog handlers were a small, mostly male group. But she made an impression on her chief, Michael Toussaint. “He kind of took her under his wing,” Young remembered, “enough that she got Sailor of the Year in 2005 out of it. That was a good thing.”

On paper, Valdivia was an outstanding sailor. In addition to winning the Sailor of the Year award, she got high marks on her performance evaluations and was ranked the number one first-class petty officer in Bahrain. She also seemed to enjoy her work in the kennels, and extended what is usually a one-year tour in Bahrain.

INVESTIGATION DOCUMENTATION

Youth Radio has obtained a collection of documents pertaining to Jennifer Valdivia's story. We have posted them online so that our audience can examine them on their own.

Command Investigation into the Death of Master-At-Arms First Class Jennifer Valdivia.

U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Investigation. 

After the break, more on the culture of abuse.

CAUGHT IN A CULTURE OF ABUSE
In 2005, Valdivia was promoted to Leading Petty Officer, making her second in command of the unit. By that time, the culture of hazing and abuse in the unit had taken hold. Youth Radio interviewed six members of the unit who served at that time, and all said Chief Michael Toussaint set the tone, tolerating and sometimes ordering the abuse.

“This man intimidated and scared a lot of people,” said Shaun Hogan, who was a Petty Officer on the Bahrain base. “There were roughly 60 personnel aware of the situation who kept silent, whether instigators, victims, or people sitting on the sidelines.”

By several accounts, Valdivia was victimized—berated, humiliated, spit at—by Toussaint.

“He definitely bullied her quite a bit,” said Jacob Wilburn, a former unit member. “She would try to do something and he had no hesitation about yelling at her, getting in her face. He would put his finger right up on her and chew her out and cuss her out in front of everybody—which is totally inappropriate to do in front of junior enlisted people.”

But Valdivia’s role in the abuse was also complex. Once, for a so-called “training video,” another female member of the unit was ordered to act out an argument with Valdivia, who appeared naked under a sheet and handcuffed to a bunk, so the two could role-play as lovers. In an interview that was part of the unit investigation, a sailor reported confronting Valdivia after seeing the video. She said Valdivia tried laughing it off, but then said in all seriousness, “Chief was in charge...It’s his kennel. There is nothing wrong with what I did.”

When Chief Toussaint left Bahrain for a new assignment, Valdivia was put in charge of the unit, though never made Chief. Petty Officer Shaun Hogan said some of his peers resented her quick rise to kennel head, and her leadership style. "She wasn't abusive," according to Hogan, but "she carried on in the vein of 'I'm Kennel Master, you do what I say.'"  According to Youth Radio’s interviews, Valdivia was given little respect in the kennel as a new leader, and a female at that.

Former unit member Jacob Wilburn remembers Valdivia’s new position of leadership being mostly ignored.

“Nobody had any respect for Valdivia,” Wilburn said. “Once Chief left, she tried to rule with an iron fist, and everybody just walked all over her, and she didn’t know what to do.”

Another member of the unit, who asked not to be named, said the position took its toll on Valdivia.

“My heart went out to her,” this woman said, “because sometimes she would be in the locker room and she’d look like she was about to be in tears or she was in tears…. You can only take so much before you say pick your battles, you gotta survive. Sadly she did not survive.”

“THEY’RE ACCUSING ME”
According to a member of the unit, in the summer of 2006, several months after Valdivia took over as Kennel Master, a female dog handler who had been assaulted by a fellow handler in the unit requested a “captain’s mast” – a meeting with Bahrain’s commanding officer. The assault had taken place while Toussaint was still chief of the unit, and he had failed to hold the accused attacker accountable.

Through the captain’s mast, the commander, whose name is redacted in the Navy’s investigations, learned about other allegations of abuse and illegal activity in the canine unit. And in September, he directed an investigation into the unit. Navy documents say that the commander assigned a Marine Corps investigator “due to his concerns about the potentially large number of command personnel involved” in the allegations.

On October 20, 2006, the investigating officer called Valdivia and her entire unit in for questioning. When Valdivia met one-on-one with the investigator, she was read her rights and treated as a suspect, according to an interview quoted in the investigation into her death. Someone present at the gathering would later testify that Valdivia “appeared to be very upset” as she walked out of the meeting.

“They’re accusing me,” Valdivia said.

The next day, however, Valdivia’s chain of command reported that she had “settled down” and no longer appeared upset. And after that, she would have “good and bad days” during the course of the investigation, but continued to perform her duties at a high level.

The hazing investigation, originally scheduled to conclude in October, received multiple extensions and was still underway in December, 2006. Valdivia’s chain of command reported that she expressed frustration over how long the investigation was taking to finish.

Valdivia’s father, Chris Young, was also concerned. He said Valdivia hesitated to talk openly about the investigation, and he sensed an anxiety during their phone calls and instant message conversations.

“They were looking for a scapegoat,” said Young, “and they were trying to pin it on Jennifer.”

"I LOVE THE MILITARY"

As the investigation dragged on, Valdivia decided she wanted out. In December of 2006, she told her chain of command she planned to resign from the Navy.

"She even had a ticket booked, I had a ticket confirmation on the computer, " said Young. "She was going to be a physical trainer in Dallas. She was set up. I liked that she would be closer to home."

But Navy Spokesman Bill Fenick told Youth Radio that in January, just weeks before her planned departure, her superiors told Valdivia she couldn't leave the base because "it was important to look further into her involvement."

Valdivia's superiors also told her they were removing her from her position as Kennel Master. One superior told Valdivia not to worry because she was not the most senior person involved in the allegations.

The next day, security cameras filmed Valdivia at the Navy commissary, buying a bag of charcoal, a fire starter kit, and a grill.

In the late afternoon, Valdivia locked herself into a room that adjoined her housing unit. As the charcoal burned and filled the room with smoke, she kept a suicide journal. Her final entry reads, "I love the military, I just wish the Navy was still part of it."

It took investigators four days to find her body. In the meantime, Chris Young got a call from the base telling him his daughter was missing. Young called back again and again to find out what had happened. When he finally got through, he was referred to a casualty assistance calls officer who was on the way to Young's home.

"And he was lost," said Young. "He called me looking for directions how to get here...and then they told me that they had found her deceased."

A Navy autopsy found Valdivia died of carbon monoxide poisoning. At the end of the report on Valdivia's death, the investigator writes that her suicide was quote, "Probably a culmination of well-concealed concerns about the ongoing command investigation." The statement goes on to say, "I believe it is unlikely she would have committed suicide if she had not been under such stress."

Valdivia's father, Chris Young, says he still has questions about what led his daughter to commit suicide. He wants the Navy to reopen the investigation into her death.

After Valdivia’s death, the unit’s chief, Michael Toussaint, received a Non-Punitive Letter of Caution and was later promoted to the rank of Senior Chief. 

However, in September 2009, after Youth Radio broke the story on widespread hazing in a Bahrain canine unit, the Chief of Naval Operations completed a review of how officials handled an investigation into the abuse. He found that the chief petty officer responsible for the abuse had not been adequately punished.

As a result of the top-level Navy review of misconduct in a canine unit in Bahrain, the Secretary of the Navy censured the unit’s former chief petty officer, Michael Toussaint, forcing him to retire from the Navy.

For more in the series, see Sailor's Abuse Kept Silent in Navy Canine Unit.]