Navy officer to lose ship command over raunchy videos

A HIGH-RANKING Navy officer who produced and showed raunchy videos to the crew of an aircraft carrier three or four years ago was expected to be relieved of his command of the ship last night, defence officials said.

A senior defence official said the announcement on Captain Owen Honors of the USS Enterprise was expected. The officials said the Navy has chosen a commander to replace Honors on the nuclear-powered ship that is stationed in Norfolk and scheduled to deploy to the Middle East this month.

The offending video shown in 2007 became public over the weekend, proving an embarrassment to the Pentagon.

The videos released by a newspaper in the Navy port city feature Honors using gay slurs, mimicked masturbation and staged suggestive shower scenes.

They were played on the shipwide television system during weekly movie night when Honors was executive officer, or second in command. Honors had since become commander of the ship.

Over the weekend, the Navy at first downplayed the videos as “humorous skits”, then called them “not acceptable” and said they were under investigation.

In a statement to the Virginian-Pilot, the Navy said its leadership had put a stop to videos with “inappropriate content” on the Enterprise about four years ago.

The military has undergone a cultural shift in recent decades away from the loutish behaviour that was exposed by the Tailhook scandal in 1991 when dozens of women complained they were groped and assaulted by drunken pilots at the 1991 convention in Las Vegas of the Tailhook Association, a group of naval aviators. Nearly 120 officers were implicated in various offences.

Speaking before the news that Honors would be relieved of his command, Michael Corgan, a career Navy officer who now teaches at Boston University, said Honors was guilty not only of an error in judgment but of failing to recognise a changing Navy culture.

“Standards shift, of course, and trimming your sails is something you have to do if you’re going to command people in the Navy,” Corgan said. “This guy showed poor judgement.”

The navy is also working to accommodate gays in its ranks with Congress’s repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Also, the Navy is opening its all-male submarine force to women this year.

Corgan said the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” probably had nothing to do with the furore now. “What he did would have been dumb 30, 40 years ago,” he said.

Some sailors who served on the Enterprise have taken to Facebook to defend Honors and his video skits for providing a morale boost .