Report: Sailors subjected to sexual harassment, gay-baiting -- and it was encouraged

It was inside that Bahrain kennel in July 2005 that Petty Officer Joseph Christopher Rocha, then 19 years old, says he was being terrorized by other members of his own division. "I was hog-tied to a chair, rolled around the base, left in a dog kennel that had feces spread in it."
Rocha says that beginning six weeks into his deployment, he was singled out for abuse by his chief master-at-arms, Michael Toussaint, and others on the base, once Rocha made it clear he was not interested in prostitutes. "I was in a very small testosterone-driven unit of men," Rocha says. "I think that's what began the questioning-you know-'Why don't you want to have sex with her? Are you a faggot?'"

"Petty Officer Rocha and another junior sailor...were instructed to go into a classroom by Chief Michael Toussaint, who orchestrated the entire training. And Chief Toussaint asked them to simulate homosexual sex on a couch," Hogan says.

...Rocha says at the time, he had no gay friends, no male lovers, and wasn't even fully out to himself about his sexuality. "The fact that I was starting to figure out that I was a homosexual, it was the most degrading thing I've ever experienced in my life." Still, eight thousand miles away from home, he was afraid to report the constant hazing. And Rocha was not the only one.

Allegations of abuse across the unit escalated to a point that Navy officials enlisted Marine Corps Captain Brooks Braden to carry out an independent investigation. When Youth Radio reached Braden by phone, he said he didn't have authorization to discuss "any investigations that may or may not have occurred." There are a variety of opinions as to what specifically triggered the investigation of the Working Dogs Division. What's not in question are the Findings of Fact highlighted in the Navy's report.

...Some sailors participated in the culture of hazing as victims, others as perpetrators, or in some cases both. They say the hazing continued because of a series of threats that were also integral to the culture of the unit, which not only tolerated abuse, but also invited it. To prevent them from speaking out, sailors Youth Radio interviewed say Toussaint would threaten to revoke their handlers' licenses--taking away their dogs and their specialty in the Navy.