Navy to oust chief involved in Bahrain hazing scandal

The Navy senior chief petty officer at the heart of a scandal over sexually provocative hazing and abuse of junior sailors in Bahrain will be forced to retire in January, two years earlier than planned, a Navy official said Wednesday.

Senior Chief Michael Toussaint, a dog handler assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Development Group in Virginia Beach, also received a letter of censure from the Secretary of the Navy, the harshest administrative action that can be taken against a sailor. The letter will become part of his permanent military record and is likely to affect his retirement pay, said Cmdr. Elissa Smith, a Navy spokeswoman at the Pentagon.

The announcement Wednesday came in response to news reports about an investigation into abusive behavior in the military working dog unit in Bahrain in 2005 and 2006. Sailors told an investigator

of being force-fed dog treats, hog-tied to chairs, instructed to act like dogs, and ordered to simulate homosexual oral sex in training videos.

Toussaint has returned to the United States from deployment and is on leave, according to a spokesman for the Navy's special warfare command. Toussaint does not wish to comment, the spokesman said.

Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, opted to cancel Toussaint's final years of service. Roughead "found that the incidents were not in keeping with Navy values and standards and violated the Navy's longstanding prohibition against hazing," according to Smith. "Our sailors are to be treated with dignity and respect in a healthy and positive working environment."

One victim, former Petty Officer 3rd Class Joseph Rocha, said he was subjected to repeated slurs about his sexuality after he refused to have sex with female prostitutes.

Petty Officer 1st Class Shaun Hogan submitted detailed notes about Toussaint's abuse during more than two years under his command. Hogan told the Navy lawyer who originally handled the case that Toussaint routinely made inappropriate comments about and inquiries into sailors' sex lives, and threatened to revoke sailors' dog-handling credentials if they crossed him.

Hogan also described Toussaint's directing the filming of training videos that required some sailors to act out lesbian love scenes, others to simulate gay male sex and one to have rubber balls thrown at his crotch, all in a guise of running the dogs - trained to sniff out explosives - through various "real life" scenarios.

The abuses were detailed in a command investigation completed in 2007 that documented more than 90 instances of abuse. By then, Toussaint had transferred to another job and been promoted to senior chief.

An unnamed commanding officer decided to handle the matter through nonjudicial punishment, and issued Toussaint a nonpunitive letter of reprimand.

The other sailor implicated in the inquiry - Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Valdivia, who took over for Toussaint - killed herself in Bahrain shortly after learning she would be implicated in the hazing.

There, the story seemed to end.

Two things kept it alive.

Hogan returned to New England, entered the Naval Reserve and couldn't stop thinking about what had happened in Bahrain. He requested a copy of the investigation through the Freedom of Information Act and came to believe that he should have done more to stop the abuse as it was happening.

Separately, Rocha was on track to become an officer. He finished officer candidate school and enrolled in a Navy prep school to prepare him to enter the Naval Academy. But the abuse he suffered in Bahrain resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder, and Rocha, who is gay, realized that he wasn't ready to be commissioned in a Navy that wouldn't allow him to openly serve.

He acknowledged being gay, left the Navy, and enrolled at the University of San Diego.

At a gay rights march this year, Rocha told a journalist with Youth Radio, a non-profit journalism organization in California, about what he had endured in Bahrain. He told the student journalists to call Hogan, who had the documents to back up the story.

In early September, Youth Radio posted a story - and redacted copies of the documents - on its Web site.

A few weeks later, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired two-star admiral from Pennsylvania, got wind of the case and asked the Navy to investigate.

On Wednesday, Sestak said he's glad Roughead has also asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to look into the "command climate" in Bahrain at the time. It's possible those findings could implicate higher-ranking sailors.

Sestak, a Democrat, said the Navy's new actions against Toussaint were appropriate but that he still wants to know why the chief petty officer was not prosecuted.

"There was criminal behavior that occurred," Sestak said. "Hitting sailors, dragging them through feces, locking them up in kennels, breaking regulations and asking if they were gay. It's outrageous."

Sestak said the facts surrounding Valdivia's suicide also deserve more scrutiny.

"Someone died as a result of this," he said. "How can you not send a message? How can you not stand tall and say, 'This was wrong,',"

Rocha also credited Navy officials for re opening the investigation.

"I think it makes sailors safer," he said. "This is a milestone - seeing the two most powerful men in the U.S. Navy take up and speak out for an openly gay veteran."

Still, he would like to have seen Toussaint charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

That option was technically available, Smith said, because the alleged abuses fall under a five-year statute of limitations for certain kinds of courts-martial. The window for handling the case nonjudicially, through a captain's or admiral's mast, closed two years after the abuse occurred.

Because almost four years have passed, and because the commanding officer at the time decided not to pursue a court-martial, Smith said, Roughead "took actions he thought were appropriate."

Toussaint, a master-at-arms, will finish his career on administrative duty, not in a position of leadership, she said. He will work at Special Warfare Group 2 at the Little Creek campus of the Joint Expeditionary Base.

He is a few months shy of the mandatory 20 years of service required for a military pension.

Because of the censure, Toussaint's record will be evaluated by an administrative board that recommends a retirement pay grade for sailors leaving the service under questionable conditions.

He could argue to the board that he deserves to retire as a senior chief, Smith said, or waive his right to challenge the board's recommendation. In any case, she said, the Navy will expedite his retirement.

Kate Wiltrout, (757) 446-2629, kate.wiltrout@pilotonline.com