An assistant secretary of the Navy upheld the forced retirement of a senior chief accused of hazing junior sailors in a canine unit based in Bahrain.

The decision comes four years after a Navy investigation in which sailors claimed Michael Toussaint, a chief petty officer at the time, had acted as ringleader for a culture of abuse within the kennel between 2005 and 2006. Last February, Toussaint denied much of his alleged misconduct before a retirement review board that was convened months after he was censured by the Secretary of the Navy.  

The Pentagon recently released a study showing new support for getting rid of the policy, "Don't Ask Don't Tell," that currently requires gay and lesbian military service members to keep quiet about their sexuality.  The study interviewed 115,000 service members. 

The Pentagon summed up their findings in the answers to three questions:

- When asked whether knowing that a fellow unit member was gay or lesbian would affect their unit's ability to get their job done, 70 percent of service members said that it would have no effect or a positive effect.

- When asked if during their career, they had ever worked with someone they believed to be homosexual, 69 percent of service members said yes.

- While serving in a unit with someone they believed to be homosexual, 92 percent of service members said their ability to work together was "very good," "good," or had no positive or negative effect.

The Pentagon also stated that most of the concern about "open" service is driven by misperceptions and stereotypes about what it would mean if gay and lesbian service members were allowed to be open. In addition, they spoke to many gay service members who said they are not trying to push a social agenda or get special treatment, but would like to stop serving in silence.

Youth Radio has been following this issue for over a year.  In August 2009, Youth Radio profiled Joseph Rocha, a member of the military who survived extreme harassment from his peers and superiors because of his sexuality.  Watch his video below, and visit Youth Radio's hub page for its investigative series Sailors' Abuse Kept Silent in Navy Canine Unit that has won some of journalism's top honors, including an Edward R. Murrow Award.

A senior chief who was censured by the Secretary of the Navy for hazing sailors under his command may retire with a full pension, Navy officials say.

Since it was announced last October, the terms of Michael Toussaint’s retirement have come under scrutiny that is unprecedented for an enlisted sailor. The senior chief petty officer, who from 2005 to 2006 led a Bahrain-based canine unit that was plagued by widespread documented abuse, denied much of his alleged misconduct in February during a retirement board hearing, a proceeding normally reserved for commissioned officers.

The case will soon go to the desk of an assistant secretary of the Navy, who faces a choice: to approve the unanimous recommendation of the three board members who said Toussaint deserves to retire with a senior chief's pension; or to take a harder line and reduce him to a lower pay grade, as government lawyers had sought to do during the hearing.

Deciding against the retirement board's recommendation would be rare.

"I've never yet seen one (a board recommendation) that was overturned by a higher authority," said Eugene Fidell, a professor at Yale University and President of the National Institute of Military Justice.

But advocates for the sailors who were abused under Toussaint’s leadership said Navy officials had led them to expect a harsher judgement from the board hearing, which according to Navy guidelines determines the highest rank at which a sailor or officer has served honorably.

"I was surprised," said Aaron Tax, legal director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, “because we thought that the Navy believed this was someone who engaged in outrageous behavior." Tax said despite the board's recommendation, the Navy should lower Toussaint's pension to that of a first class petty officer, the rank he held before becoming chief of the Bahrain unit.

Last September, Youth Radio uncovered a 2007 Navy investigation into claims of the unit’s culture of abuse and connected it to two subsequent investigations into the suicide of a sailor implicated in the hazing scandal. While names in the copies of the Navy report were redacted, Youth Radio interviewed six sailors from the unit, all of whom named Toussaint as the ringleader of the abuse.

During the February hearing, Toussaint denied the most serious accusations against him -- that he ordered sailors to simulate sex acts during training exercises, that he threw parties with hired prostitutes, and that he condoned the humiliation of a gay soldier who was hog-tied to a chair and left in a dog kennel.

Toussant's lawyers claimed that four sailors who testified against him at the hearing were exaggerating the extent of the hazing. They accused one sailor, Joseph Christopher Rocha, of lying about Toussaint in the media to increase his own public profile as an advocate for the repeal of the U.S. Military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Rocha was discharged from the Navy under the policy after returning from Bahrain.

Youth Radio has obtained statements from each of the retirement board members -- an enlisted sailor and two Navy officers -- explaining why they sided with Toussaint.

"Senior Chief Toussaint has served honorably and was made the 'scape goat' in this case, for the benefit of one disgruntled sailor," wrote one of the board members, Lt. Cmdr. Angel Bellido.

Another board member wrote that he took into consideration the testimony of a Navy SEAL who said Toussaint saved his life last summer when he was shot during a combat mission in Afghanistan.

Toussaint included these statements in a March letter to Juan Garcia, the assistant secretary of the Navy who oversees personnel and will make the final decision on the retirement pay.

"The board's unanimous decision… is a clear repudiation of the allegations," Toussaint wrote in the letter, which Youth Radio obtained through his lawyer.

Military law experts familiar with Toussaint's case said he may be the first enlisted sailor to go before a retirement grade determination board, a proceeding that exists outside the military justice system.

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.

Youth Radio reporter Rachel Krantz speaks to KCBS about yesterday's stunning turn of events in the Bahrain Navy Hazing scandal. 

You can find the interview on KCBS' Interviews and Analysis page.

By Rachel Krantz and the Youth Radio Investigative Unit
This story is part of Youth Radio's investigation: Sailors' Abuse Kept Silent In Navy Canine Unit.

After Youth Radio broke the story last month on widespread hazing in a Bahrain canine unit, the Chief of Naval Operations has completed reviewing 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 has censured the unit’s former chief petty officer, Michael Toussaint, forcing him to retire from the Navy.

Previously, an investigation into the hazing at the base in Bahrain between 2004 and 2006 revealed widespread abuse of sailors and other misconduct, including gambling and soliciting prostitutes. On September 22, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead ordered Navy Installations Command (CNIC) to review what actions were taken as a result of the hazing investigation.

"After reviewing the investigation and the CNIC report, Admiral Roughead found the incidents were not in keeping with Navy values and standards and violated Navy’s long standing prohibition against hazing," said Navy spokesperson Commander Elissa Smith.

Smith said the Secretary of the Navy's letter of censure will become part of Toussaint’s permanent military record. Toussaint, now a senior chief petty officer, will be reassigned to Naval Special Warfare Group 2, where he will perform administrative duties until his retirement in January.

Roughead has also ordered the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to interview commissioned officers who served in Bahrain at the time of the hazing. Previously, a navy spokesman said the investigation report had indicated that two commissioned officers might have had knowledge of the hazing events. The spokesman told Youth Radio neither officer was recommended for disciplinary action.

Joseph Christopher Rocha served in the unit and experienced some of the worst abuse at while under Toussaint’s leadership. The 23-year-old said many of his fellow sailors have mixed feelings about the results of Roughead's review.

"A lot of us are disappointed in that Toussaint won’t see his day at a military court martial," Rocha said. "But overall, I commend the CNO and the Secretary of the Navy for a wanting to look further into this, to see how widespread the corruption was."

 

Reporter Rachel Krantz spoke to KPFK Pacifica Radio today about her experience reporting Youth Radio's Sailor Abuse Investigation. She was interviewed by Barbara Osborn and Howard Blume for their weekly show about the media, Deadline LA.

Check below to listen to the interview and hear the inside scoop about how the Youth Radio investigation was brought to the public.

(download mp3)

UPDATE (2:55 PDT): Joseph Rocha's story aired again on Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room. The re-airing of this morning's video (see below) was accompanied by an interview with Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) a formal 3-Star Navy Admiral who has made this case one of his priorities.

Navy Veteran Joseph Christopher Rocha has gotten attention from the national news media this week.

Youth Radio first broke Rocha's story back in June when he told us about the abuse he experienced during his time serving in Bahrain.

Since then, Youth Radio has broken major investigative pieces as seen on the Huffington Post and NPR telling Rocha and other unit members' stories in detail.

This weekend, we were happy to see Joseph Christopher Rocha's editorial in the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt from the powerful piece of writing:

I don't think I will ever feel as powerless as I did when I was on my knees, wearing a U.S. military uniform in the Middle East, forced by my superior to shove my head between another man's legs. But I have discovered that telling this story holds its own kind of power.

We were also excited to see a profile of Joseph and his story on CNN this morning.

That video, and more, after the jump...

By Rachel Krantz and the Youth Radio Investigative Unit

This story is part of Youth Radio's ongoing investigation: Sailors' Abuse Kept Silent In Navy Canine Unit.

A Youth Radio investigation finds that the U.S. Navy’s report on hazing in its Bahrain Canine Unit omitted the suicide of the unit’s leading Petty Officer, who feared she had become the scapegoat for widespread abuse.

On January 16, 2007, Petty Officer Jennifer Valdivia was found dead in a small room at her home in Bahrain. The U.S. Navy, which maintains a major base on the island in the Persian Gulf, classified her death as a non-combat related incident. A Navy autopsy later confirmed that 27-year-old Valdivia committed suicide.

On the same day Valdivia’s body was found, the Navy released a report on widespread hazing and abuse in the canine unit where she served as Kennel Master. Though the report’s release was previously delayed multiple times, this time it was published without including the investigation into the suicide of the unit’s leading Petty Officer. And, Valdivia’s death was not mentioned in the subsequent Findings of Fact endorsed by the base command, either.

“I would have expected this to be mentioned in the endorsements… the command in Bahrain had ample time to take her death into account,” said Eugene Fidell, Yale law professor and president of National Institute of Military Justice. “Had I been the staff judge advocate I would have recommended that the command delay its endorsement on the hazing investigation until the suicide investigation was complete, and then see if further investigation into the hazing was warranted.”

Instead, the Navy’s hazing and suicide investigations proceeded on parallel, never-intersecting tracks.

The hazing investigation reveals that the abuse in the Bahrain Canine Unit was extensive. And while the Navy has said multiple personnel were implicated in the misconduct, the sailors interviewed by Youth Radio say unanimously that there was one ringleader, the unit’s Chief Michael Toussaint.

Youth Radio has also obtained redacted copies of the Navy’s two investigations into Valdivia’s death -- one by the Base Commander in Bahrain and the other by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Together with interviews with her family and six sailors from Valdivia’s unit, the suicide investigations tell the story of a young woman stuck between an abusive and corrupt unit leadership and the young sailors whose lives were scarred to varying degrees by hazing. It’s the story of a scapegoat, who decided the only way out of her Navy unit was death.

“Her final act revealed her to be under stress she was not able to bear, probably a culmination of well-concealed concerns about the ongoing command investigation,” wrote the investigator at the end of his report on Valdivia’s death. “I believe it is unlikely she would have committed suicide if she had not been under such stress.”

[Page Two: "Small Town Girl"]

Comment on this story in our Facebook Discussion Forum.

The following is a transcript. To listen, use the audio player in this post. For access to all documents, posts, and images associated with this story see our Sailors' Abuse Investigation Hub.

Joseph Christopher Rocha enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 18th 
birthday, in 2004. He remembers being excited about his first overseas 
assignment: to serve in Bahrain. He became a dog handler with one of 
the Navy’s biggest kennels. But Rocha says once he got there, he 
entered a culture of hazing and abuse at the hands of his fellow 
service members that made him feel like the animal.



ROCHA: I was hog-tied to a chair, rolled around the base, left in a 
dog kennel that had feces spread in it.



Rocha says six weeks into his deployment, when he made it clear he 
wasn’t interested in the unit’s parties with prostitutes, the Chief, 
Master-at-Arms Michael Toussaint, and others on the base, made him a 
target.



ROCHA: I was in a very small high testosterone-driven unit of men…I 
think that's what began the questioning-you know-‘Why don't you want 
to have sex with her? Are you a faggot?’



Read the rest of the story after the jump...