June 06, 2005Zero tolerance for hazing
XO, 7 sailors punished for abuse in war zone
By William H. McMichael
Times staff writer
NORFOLK NAVAL STATION, Va. — Eight crew members of the frigate Kauffman, including the ship’s executive officer, were punished at a shipboard admiral’s mast May 6 in the Persian Gulf on charges related to a two-year run of hazing on the ship, Atlantic Fleet Naval Surface Force has confirmed.
Four of the sailors are getting booted out of the Navy and the executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Larry Wilson, was temporarily reassigned while officials decide whether he should be detached for cause after failing to take action when he learned of the hazing and didn’t report it to his commanding officer.
The hazing included physical and verbal abuse, SurfLant spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens said. The Kauffman, deployed with the Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group and operating in the Persian Gulf, is assigned to SurfLant.
The extent of the hazing, which occurred over a two-year period within a division aboard the ship, prompted SurfLant commander Rear Adm. Michael Nowakowski to fly from his Norfolk, Va., headquarters to the gulf to personally administer “admiral’s mast” hearings for each of the eight crew members, Owens said.
Wilson’s permanent detachment and the administrative outprocessing of the four sailors were still pending May 27, Owens said. The four sailors, who were returned to Norfolk, have appealed their punishment to Adm. John B. Nathman, commander of Fleet Forces Command.
Wilson, a veteran of six sea tours, was relieved for “failing to take appropriate action once he learned of the allegations,” Owens said.
Wilson learned of the hazings in early March, Owens said. Just before the ship’s March 25 deployment, he told the frigate’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Ken Krogman, that they would need to deal with several disciplinary issues. But he didn’t say they involved hazing, and he told Krogman that they could wait until after they left Norfolk to deal with them. Krogman ultimately became aware of the hazing after Surf-Lant received a complaint from what Owens described as “outside command channels.” Owens said he couldn’t be more specific.
Nowakowski declined comment other than to issue a statement through Owens. The admiral “wanted to send a clear, unequivocal message that this will not be tolerated in the fleet ... and he wanted to hold those sailors who were found to be involved in hazing accountable,” Owens said.
Krogman was not implicated and remains in command, Owens said. Krogman replied to an e-mailed request for comment but referred Navy Times to SurfLant. Wilson could not be reached.
The other three sailors who were punished remain on board. Two of the six victims — five E-4s, one E-3 — have been transferred off Kauffman and reassigned, Owens said. The victims were assigned to various divisions, including the division of the seven sailors who did the hazing, he said.
Owens declined to identify the seven sailors or their division, saying their privacy is protected because the violations were handled at a nonjudicial or administrative level and they are not public figures, unlike members of the command group. He did say those punished for the hazing incidents included two first class petty officers, two second classes and three third classes.
Two chief petty officers, assigned to the same division as the hazers, also appeared before Nowakowski but their charges were dismissed after he found there was “insufficient evidence ... they knew about or participated in the hazing,” Owens said. “Apparently, they were not aware of it.”
The abuse on the all-male ship, which sails with a crew of 225, included “a lot of juvenile and sophomoric-type action” that included “taping people to chairs, things like that,” Owens said. He originally said no one was struck or physically harmed but later corrected that and said, without being more specific, “There was some hitting.”
Owens said none of the abuse involved “blood pinning,” the banned practice of slamming metal rank-insignia pins into a newly promoted individual’s chest. The verbal abuse did not include anything of a racial, sexual or homophobic nature, he said.
There also was no apparent pattern to the abuse; the victims included both newly arrived sailors and veteran shipmates hazed for no apparent reason, Owens said. Some of the hazing may have been an attempt at deckplate discipline, he said, and some sailors were victimized more than once.
Changing culture
Hazing was once fairly commonplace in the Navy.
“At one time, it was acceptable to tape up, shave, grease or paint a shipmate as a rather crude joke or initiation,” said Command Master Chief (SW) Clint Steed, who retired in 2002 and helps run the popular chief-community Web site www.goatlocker.org. Blood pinning was the most common type of hazing, he said. Other hazing took place during various rites of passage, such as when a ship crossed the equator or during chief petty officer initiations.
Some, particularly in the retired but also current chief petty officer communities, think certain types of hazing, especially during initiations, helped build camaraderie and character.
The director of the Senior Enlisted Academy disagrees.
“It’s about training and development of chief petty officers,” said Command Master Chief (SW/SCW/AW) Ralph Rao. “There’s no value added to anything we did before. You don’t need to do that to become a professional or be part of any team.”
Steed agreed with Rao.
“The obvious problem with these jokes or initiations,” he said, was the number of sailors who “ended up in sick bay ... and the lost time at work.” Just as bad, he said, was the negative effect on individual sailors and ... “on the esprit de corps, loyalty and trust of shipmates.”
That changed in October 1997, when Navy policy was unambiguously spelled out in Secretary of the Navy Instruction 1610.2: “Hazing is prohibited and will not be tolerated.” Violators can be charged under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for failure to obey a lawful order.
Steed said that although he couldn’t know how the Kauffman hazings continued unreported for two years, it’s up to deckplate leaders to shut down such activity.
Rao pointed out that the amount of work chiefs are asked to do is often “overwhelming” and that “sometimes you don’t know everything that’s going on on the deck.”
Rao served as command master chief on two large-crewed, forward-deployed tender ships and said he handled some major incidents.
“And I held myself accountable for those,” he said. “ ‘Why didn’t I know this?’” But on Kauffman, he said, “If it’s been going on for two years, that’s a frightening thought to me. That’s a long time.”
“It’s sad,” Rao said. “It’s a black eye to the Navy.”
Owens said that replacements for the executive officer and other sailors taken off the ship have been sent to Kauffman.
“The ship’s capable and it’s still out on its mission and it’s not degraded in any way,” he said.
William H. McMichael is the Hampton Roads bureau chief for Navy Times. Reach him at (757) 223-0096 or by e-mail at bmcmichael@navytimes.com.