USS Booty Call

OK, the title isn’t fair, but it got your attention. Anyway, Chung Hoon sound too much like a bad 80s band.

From the Navy Enquirer...errr..Times (registration required).

“The way the chiefs, junior officers and enlisteds were all going out together, drinking together … it was just a big party,” he said. “A couple of chiefs and an E-3, an E-2 going out for a beer together — I’d never seen that before. And it wasn’t like it happened every once in a while. It was a daily occurrence.”

He added, “There’s not a lot to do in Pascagoula, anyway.”

Don’t blame Mississippi – your problem was with your Wardroom and Chief’s Mess in the shipyard.

According to the Navy, at least 13 sailors on the Chung-Hoon, commissioned barely a year ago, have been charged with fraternization, adultery or both over the past 1½ years — activities that began largely while the ship was still being put together in Pascagoula, Miss. … The 13 sailors ranged in rank from E-2 to O-3, Navy officials said. … the two officers, Chappell and Lt. Bernie Ridgeway, were sent to general court-martial, according to William Sink, Chappell’s civilian attorney, and other sources. Yarbrough was punished at a special court-martial and is awaiting a bad-conduct discharge. Five other .. sailors were sent to captain’s mast; the case against one … sailor was dismissed. (of the other’s charged) … one was sent to a summary court-martial, and the remainder to mast.
…
Lt. Tobias Chappell, is a former supply officer on the Chung-Hoon, now temporarily reassigned to the Defense Distribution Depot Pearl Harbor, where he “picks up trash and moves furniture” for a chief petty officer.

Oooooo, LT. You have a little inflated opinion of yourself – now don’t you. You are getting off easy in my world, here is why.

He secretly married his former supply department’s leading petty officer, Storekeeper 2nd Class (AW) Tonya Yarbrough, last December; she has since been demoted to seaman recruit.

Chappell’s court-martial on three counts of fraternization with three sailors — one of them an affair from five years ago — was scheduled to begin Nov. 14.

Wait, there is more information to follow. The marriage part isn’t what I have a problem with. Keep going.

Chappell, a former enlisted sailor with 22 years of service, …

So much for the youthful ignorance angle. Chappell has more problems than recidivistic glandular self control.

Chappell, with two counts of fraternization within the past year alone, also was charged with two counts of cruelty and maltreatment, obstruction of justice, larceny, making a false official statement and misleading authorities about … (a) petty officer’s affair, the Navy said. … Chappell’s second fraternization charge relates to an alleged affair with an enlisted sailor not assigned to the Chung-Hoon, he said. And the third, he said, stems from a late 1990s affair with another enlisted female sailor.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Chappell said. “I can see the ‘frat’ charge with Tonya, and even the one a year ago. But five years ago? That’s too long.”

Chappell said he was an ensign when he had his first fraternization affair. …

Chappell said the additional charges he faces are bogus. The larceny relates to keeping two Navy laptop computers at home during the commissioning transition, which Chappell said was allowed. The obstruction of justice, he said, relates to a search of his stateroom, which turned up videotaped evidence of one of the earlier relationships, according to Sink. The cruelty and maltreatment charge, he said, stems from giving a first-class petty officer a poor evaluation and assigning him to barracks duty while showing favoritism to a second petty officer.

According to the official Navy charge sheet, however, Yarbrough was that second petty officer. The Navy says Chappell sent his leading petty officer, Storekeeper 1st Class John T. Crawford, to barracks duty after Crawford gave Yarbrough a presumably unfavorable counseling statement. The Navy also charges that another sailor, Storekeeper 2nd Class David M. Zepeda, was unfairly dropped in ranking board status, adding that Chappell ordered a chief petty officer to switch the promotion recommendations of Yarbrough and Zepeda.

That is the cancer that the Navy tries to prevent. You want to throw a ship into disarray, have imbedded favoritism. Add the exchange of body fluids to the equation, and you have a ship that cannot fight and you have a few hundred lives in danger. It is that simple.

Yarbrough is a piece of work too.

Yarbrough, in addition to pleading guilty Aug. 2 to two counts of fraternization and one count of insubordination, was found guilty of failure to appear for duty. The insubordination charge was for tearing up a counseling statement, according to Chappell. Yarbrough said she was on temporary duty for training when charged with failing to appear. She received six months of confinement (reduced to three in exchange for agreeing to testify against Chappell), reduction to E-1, forfeiture of $750 a month for six months and a bad-conduct discharge. .. Yarbrough, who gave birth to the couple’s daughter Nov. 7, recently spent nearly three months in the Pearl Harbor brig and is awaiting a bad-conduct discharge.

The problems on the USS Chung Hoon are not unique to that warship or its crew. From my read, it is not the fault of their former Commanding Officer either. Just the opposite, I think Skipper Kenneth Williams should be lauded as a leader that stood up to a much too often intentionally overlooked problem. He decided not to put up with it. As a result, it looks like he turned over a ship to his relief that is cutting out a cancer put in it years ago by a culture of PC induced fear.

What fear would that be? Well there are the little PC fears of looking like you on a sexual witch-hunt and a desire not to get into people’s personal lives on line with the old "What goes on deployment, stays on deployment.." that really doesn't apply to "Blue-on-Blue" – yes, there are a lot of touchy-feely going on in the US Navy; and then there is the big, and very real PC fear that I will bring up at the bottom of the post.

I have worked in commands where the Senior Officer intentionally overlooked fraternization in his organization – and blatant adultery between members of his wardroom and/or Chief’s Mess. The Navy has, I think, an acceptable compromise in place when it comes to personal relationships (unavoidable) between shipmates, but the lines of demarcation are direct and clear. The Navy takes this seriously, officially, but unofficially some in leadership look the other way.

The maximum penalty for fraternization, broadly defined as a relationship between senior and junior personnel deemed prejudicial to good order and discipline, is two years confinement, total forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and dismissal from the service, according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Adultery can bring either a dishonorable or bad-conduct discharge, a year of confinement and total forfeiture of all pay and allowances.

Too often they are ignored by both the perpetrators and their command. Once it is know that an Officer or Chief has gotten away with either fraternization or adultery inside the lifelines of the command, a cancer sets in fast. You cannot take a BM1 to mast from fraternization with a BMSN when everyone in the ship knows you let the OSCS you play golf with get away with nibbling the AW3. You cannot take the married CMDCM to account for sleeping with the single ADC at AIMD when you have let your married LT carry on with the single “two drink minimum” LTJG every port call.

Here are some excerpts from former Commanding Officer Cmdr. Kenneth Williams letter.

The trials and tribulations recent to Chung-Hoon have shaken, but not shattered, my faith in the khaki leadership or the crew in general. Even though we go to great lengths to re-enforce policies and provide clear guidance to the crew … there always seems to be someone that rationalizes the rules do not apply to him/her or that they will never get caught. I will try to re-enforce Navy core values, and especially the ideals of honor and integrity, during every captain’s call and meeting with the wardroom and mess. One’s honor and integrity can only be lost by the member through action, and once it is lost it may never be fully regained.

As background, fraternization and unduly familiar relationships have been a constant and steady topic since establishment of the [pre-commissioning unit], sail around and arrival in Pearl Harbor.
…
Even with the continued re-enforcement, I still have shipmates who choose to act dishonorably and ignore the rules — occasionally with life- or career-ending results. Thus far in this command tour I have:

• Lost a shipmate due to alcohol and not using his [personal protective equipment] while operating a motorcycle.

• Now have a fraternization case being investigated between and officer and his LPO.

• And also have an unduly familiar relationship/adultery case between a chief petty officer and an E-4.

Both the officer and chief looked me in the eyes and proclaimed their innocence when initially confronted — much like the drug user who refuses to admit his guilt. Honor and integrity are not virtues these individuals possess and I also must wonder about the moral courage of others to point out failures of their peers in the wardroom and chiefs’ mess.

I need to buy this man a round of golf at Sewell’s Point GC.

Personally, my trustful nature and naïveté are slowly being replaced by cynicism and distrust. Although I know this attitude will soon rebound, there is a growing desire to read a future shipmate his/her rights and confiscate computer e-mails to determine if there is any fire with the smoke created when a junior shipmate complains of someone in the chain of command’s behavior. However, I still feel that an officer’s (and chief petty officer’s) word is his/her bond and that the wardroom and chiefs’ mess not only have the duty but also the moral courage to report inappropriate behavior when identified. Therefore I will continue to carefully balance the re-enforcement and restating of policies on fraternization and other good-order and discipline issues while not pushing too far that the command climate is decimated due to a perceived growing mistrust and spurious witch hunts.

Just a side-note, when you read his letter, notice there isn’t anything about warfighting? Notice there is nothing about closing with the enemy and bringing your ship in harm’s way as its nation demands? That is because the CO, XO, and CMDCM are distracted by personnel behavior problems. I am afraid the die is cast on women at sea, so we better find a way to work this or we will find ships blowing up because the balance of its leadership was sitting in on another – “Stop penetrating the naughty-bits of your Shipmate” seminar. Not the Command tour the CDR Williams thought he was going to have. Admiral Burke would be very worried about his Destroyers if he were still with us.

CDR Williams is an exemplary solid officer. I hope he survives the smear campaign against him. You know the “Big PC” I talked about earlier? Well here it is. Like a drowning man that will pull down anything he can grab, Chappell is using a very successful smear tactic; few survive the years it takes to clear your name (though things are much better now than they were in the 90s - mostly due to the heavy amount of "calling wolf").

Have no doubt, especially if you have a certain two-star who will remain nameless in your Chain-of-Command, you are guilty until proven innocent in most cases as the top cover transitions to CYA mode. The good news here is that in this case, from what I have read (with no inside info BTW - so I could be totally wrong), it looks like CDR Williams has the right top-cover and a Chain of Command that will let the facts stand.

Now, for the nasty smear. I’ll let the words speak for themselves.

Accusations of racism also underlie the problem. Eight of the 13 charged are black; the others are white. Two of the black sailors charged say they and others are being treated more harshly than their white counterparts. … The two black sailors leveling the racism charge, a lieutenant and then-second-class petty officer, admit they had an affair before getting married in December. But both say that whites similarly culpable were punished far less severely for essentially the same transgressions and that racism may have played a part. … The black officer, Lt. Tobias Chappell, is a former supply officer on the Chung-Hoon, … Of the eight black sailors charged, the two officers, Chappell and Lt. Bernie Ridgeway, were sent to general court-martial, according …Yarbrough was punished at a special court-martial and is awaiting a bad-conduct discharge. Five other black sailors were sent to captain’s mast; the case against one black sailor was dismissed. … Of the five whites, one was sent to a summary court-martial, and the remainder to mast. According to Sink, all of the whites were retained on active duty. … “I look at this ratio of blacks to whites [being charged] … and naturally, I asked if this was racial, and they said no,” Sink said. “And I don’t believe it.”

UPDATE: Check out Bubblehead's post, he has more links.