Navy: Investigation Drove Sailor to Suicide

A Navy investigation of a sailor's suicide in Bahrain in 2007 concluded that she was driven to kill herself by an earlier investigation into allegations of hazing in the dog-handling unit she headed for several months.

Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Valdivia had been told she might be disciplined for not reporting the wrongdoing, which included sailors being force-fed dog treats, hog-tied to chairs, locked into a feces-filled kennel and ordered to simulate homosexual oral sex in training videos.

One of her superiors cautioned the officer in charge that more senior personnel needed to be held accountable as well.

Valdivia "felt she was being made a scapegoat," the investigator wrote, adding that "her final act revealed her to be under stress she was not able to bear. ... I believe it is unlikely she would have committed suicide if she had not been under such stress."

The investigator's conclusions are among documents released by the Navy in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Virginian-Pilot.

Also released were statements the investigator took from four people in Valdivia's chain of command, two of whom disagreed strongly with her commanding officer's decision to remove her from her leadership position in the kennel as the hazing investigation went forward.

One of them, Valdivia's senior enlisted adviser, "argued that she hoped more senior personnel also implicated were going to be held accountable," the investigator wrote.

The investigation, which turned up more than 90 instances of abuse, resulted in no prosecutions.

Valdivia's predecessor as kennel master, Chief Petty Officer Michael Toussaint, whom several former members of the unit now blame for masterminding the abuses, received a non-punitive letter, which is not entered into any official record, and was promoted to senior chief.

Three months ago, after details of the abuses became public, the Navy took a new look at the case. As a result, Toussaint received a letter of censure from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and will be forced into early retirement next month.

Now assigned to a desk job with Naval Special Warfare Group 2 in Virginia Beach, he has declined interview requests.

Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, has asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to look into the command climate in Bahrain at the time of the hazing allegations.

Among the newly released documents is a handwritten suicide journal kept by Valdivia, 27, of Cambridge, Ill., as she inhaled carbon monoxide from a charcoal grill in her living quarters.

Together, the documents paint a picture of a conscientious, high-performing sailor -- she was the Bahrain unit's Sailor of the Year in 2005 -- who kept her emotions so buttoned up that not even those close to her knew the toll that the hazing investigation took on her.

"No matter what you have, someone is always waiting to take it from you," she wrote in her journal.

"It only takes one smile to hide a thousand tears. I'm tired of pretending."

She left instructions on which family members she wanted to have her dog, cat and other possessions.

"I love the military," she wrote in her final entry. "I just wish the Navy was still part of it."

The Bahrain kennel is one of the largest dog-handling units in the Navy. The dogs are used to detect narcotics and explosives.

Valdivia had been Toussaint's second in command until he transferred out of the unit in March 2006. Former members of the unit have said she appeared handcuffed to a bed, covered only in a sheet, in one of the training videos that Toussaint organized.

Upon Toussaint's transfer, Valdivia was made kennel master -- a job normally held by a higher-ranking sailor. One of her superiors suggested later that she lacked the necessary experience and may have been elevated "too high and too soon."

The hazing investigation originated with a complaint from Petty Officer 3rd Class Joseph Rocha, who said he was subjected to repeated slurs about his sexuality after he refused to have sex with female prostitutes.

Ultimately, Rocha acknowledged he is gay, gave up an appointment to the Naval Academy and left the Navy under the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from two years of abuse in the Bahrain unit.

Rocha has said he considered Valdivia a friend and mentor.

Valdivia declined to be interviewed by the investigator, providing four written statements instead. In one, she wrote that she had questioned some of the activities that went on in the unit but that whenever she did, "I was belittled and made to feel as though I was not good enough, not smart enough, and not a good leader."

She acknowledged doing nothing to stop some of the abuses, such as one incident in which a sailor was duct-taped to a chair and locked in a kennel, noting that the sailor appeared to be enjoying it.

In December 2006, as the investigation was nearing its conclusion, Valdivia notified her chain of command that she intended to leave the Navy.

On Jan. 8 and 9, 2007, the Bahrain command conducted a mandatory suicide awareness training session. Valdivia did not attend.

On Jan. 11, her commanding officer told her she was being relieved of her duties and placed on administrative legal hold, meaning she was not allowed to transfer, go on leave or separate from the Navy without command approval.

The next evening, she killed herself.

Sailors in the unit were "totally shocked ... very upset and crying over her death," the investigator wrote, adding: "She apparently hid her inner turmoil very well from those who knew her best."

The investigator's report ends with a single recommendation: "The command should be counseled to track personnel who fail to attend mandatory training evolutions for makeup sessions."