Ensnared in hazing scandal, sailor relieved to tell his story

The key players in a hazing scandal among Navy dog handlers in Bahrain finally had their day in court, three years after the original investigation ended and one implicated sailor killed herself.

The venue wasn't a court-martial; it was a retirement pay hearing for the unit's enlisted leader, Senior Chief Petty Officer Michael Toussaint.

The case drew public scrutiny last year after media reports revealed that Toussaint had been promoted despite an investigator's finding that numerous incidents of hazing, some of them sexually charged, had occurred under his leadership. Top naval officials decided not to court-martial

Toussaint because he was too close to retirement and too much time had passed since the alleged offenses of hazing and abuse occurred. Instead, they issued a letter of censure, forced him to retire and argued that he shouldn't receive his full pension.

Toussaint fought back Thursday and Friday at an administrative hearing at Norfolk Naval Station, denying the most serious allegations, explaining that other actions had been misconstrued and insisting he never intended to humiliate anyone.

Toussaint's lawyers attempted to poke holes in the claims of four former sailors who testified, including one whose commentary has been featured in The Washington Post and is campaigning to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law.

Defense lawyers accused a female sailor who claimed to have been assaulted by a higher ranking sailor in the kennel of "crying wolf." They insinuated that Joseph Rocha, who is gay, made up a story about being forced to repeatedly simulate oral sex during a training exercise because it would make him a more sympathetic figure in the media. Rocha acknowledged under cross- examination that he exaggerated the number of times the exercise took place in his account for The Washington Post.

There were also discrepancies between his account and those of two other sailors assigned to the kennel at the time.

But what might have mattered most to those deciding Toussaint's future didn't happen in Bahrain - it occurred much later and thousands of miles away while he was serving in Afghanistan with an elite special warfare unit.

Last summer, Toussaint and his attack dog, Remco, came under fire while on a combat mission with a SEAL team. Remco took the first two shots, which proved fatal; another bullet wounded SEAL James Hatch.

Toussaint wasn't deterred, Hatch testified through tears to the three men conducting the hearing. Only after Toussaint killed the two enemy fighters did he return to his two fallen comrades.

Cmdr. Aaron Rugh, one of Toussaint's lawyers, replayed the scene during closing arguments.

"In those moments, after his friend has been shot and his dog has been killed, he takes his weapon and he tries to provide security. Few of us can claim to have had such an impact on another person," Rugh said. "Even if every scurrilous, nasty allegation were true, his dedication, his selflessness at that moment, outweighs everything else."

After hearing more than 12 hours of testimony and reading through hundreds of pages of documents, the panel returned a unanimous verdict late Friday night, recommending that Toussaint retire as a senior chief petty officer. The government had sought a recommendation to retire Toussaint as a petty officer first class.

The final decision rests with an assistant secretary of the Navy.

Regardless, Toussaint and nine of the supporters who sat through the hearing Friday saw the verdict as vindication for a comrade who never had a chance to defend himself. They noted that the panel deliberated for only 30 minutes.

Toussaint was serving in Afghanistan when the original investigation - conducted in 2006, after he'd left Bahrain - was made public. He didn't see a copy of it until Rugh obtained one in November, after Toussaint's censure by Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy.

Rugh said that investigation was flawed. The Marine captain who handled it never interviewed Toussaint. Nor was there corroboration of some of the alleged offenses, Rugh said.

But officials overseeing the base and their superiors - all the way up to the admiral in charge of Navy installations worldwide - signed off on its findings of fact, which included statements about prostitutes being invited to kennel functions; gambling and fraternization among personnel, and an environment in which senior leaders played favorites, made junior sailors sing and dance and warned them not to report abuse.

When the previous investigation came to light through media coverage last August, Rugh said, the Navy should have ordered a fresh, thorough inquiry. Instead, Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, ordered the matter reviewed. He later ordered that the Navy captain in charge of the base and a now-retired admiral receive letters of counseling for letting the investigation fall through the cracks.

Testimony during the hearing may have cast doubts on some of the allegations. For others, Toussaint insisted he was either not present or not aware of any misconduct.

Some of the most pointed evidence involved statements by Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Valdivia, who took over the kennel when Toussaint left. Valdivia killed herself in January 2007 after learning she would likely be implicated in the hazing investigation.

The investigation noted that Valdivia took part in one training scenario handcuffed to a bed, naked under a sheet. Toussaint testified that he believed she was clothed and that the exercise was her idea.

Toussaint said he was not in the kennel at the time Rocha said he was duct-taped to a chair, rolled into a dog kennel and left there until someone released him. Nor was he aware of a sailor who reported being hog-tied and forced to bark like a dog while his mouth was stuffed with liver dog treats.

Toussaint said he did have one sailor carry around an "excuse bucket" and periodically read aloud excuses from it.

"It wasn't meant to humiliate him," Toussaint said.

And he would ask sailors who'd gotten in trouble to apologize to the kennel as a whole, then had the group vote on whether to accept the apologies.

"We achieved so much as a family," he said. "I wanted junior personnel to have a voice. It never was meant to ridicule or embarrass anybody."

Toussaint didn't deny having his sailors sing and dance at various times but said it had a legitimate purpose - to calm them down before tests with their dogs. Military working dogs can sense a handler is nervous and sometimes will misidentify the presence of explosives, he explained. Toussaint said he never forced anyone to do it.

He also denied the presence of prostitutes at parties he hosted, and said some foreign women who came to one party were airline flight attendants brought by single sailors.

Rugh said he's glad Toussaint had a chance to tell his story and face his accusers, even if it was after months of negative stories about him.

"I feel confident that if they'd done a real investigation, he would have been exonerated," Rugh said. "I think that it's clear from this board here that the testimony of the victims just didn't hold up to scrutiny."

Rocha saw it differently. The board's decision condones mistreatment, he said. "Anyone who's doing this stuff out in the fleet, it's like, earn a medal and have someone testify about your honor and your valor and we'll forget it."

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