A recent report has revealed a shocking revelation the Navy women on board a ballistic missile submarine were secretly filmed in the shower and changing rooms.
The filming wasn’t a one-off or a prank, according to the Navy Times. It was strictly an invasion of privacy where male Wyoming sailors acted as lookouts while one friend filmed every female shipmate each time she showered. This went on for three months, several times a day. Allegedly, peer pressure allowed the ring to continue for 10 months, recording and sharing the videos of all of the women. The details of the case were obtained by the Navy Times by the Freedom of Information Act.
The men allegedly filmed the women on two cellphones and an iPod Touch, which is prohibited, through a hole between spaces and then shared them without detection, after investigators with the Naval Crime Investigative Service and the Kings Bay, Georgia-based Submarine Squadron 20 interviewed more than 300 people. They found the sailors were eager to spy on the young women, while some sailors were afraid of breaching ties to their shipmates.
Out of the 12 original suspects who knew of the videos, eight of them were court-martialed (one of them was acquitted), three went to the captain’s mast and one of them was released with no charges. “The investigation ruled that the 12th original suspect, an MT1, couldn’t be charged because the only evidence against him was the statement of one other sailor.
“The abhorrent behavior of this small number of personnel is not indicative of the superior sailors that comprise these crews and the submarine force,” wrote Capt. William Houston, head of SUBRON 20, in his endorsement letter to the report.
Houston then recommended seven sailors for Article 32, one for nonjudicial punishment, a command transfer for the exonerated MT1 and that two other sailors’ cases be forwarded to their new skippers at the Trident Training Facility King Bay and the ballistic missile sub Michigan in Bangor Washington.
The Navy Times wrote that, “Carroll, among the first women to join the sub force, said that she felt like a sister to her male shipmates on the Maine, and couldn’t picture any of them betraying her trust.
‘Most of the men in the submarine force reacted very, very strongly to that,’ she said. ‘I actually think that we got a stronger reaction in the submarine force than we would have in the other communities.’”
Wyoming women weren’t the only ones who were filmed according to MT3 Brandon McGarity, he found out about the videos from MT2 Ryan Secrest, he said he heard Secrest talking about a “secret hole in the back of [missile control center].”
While submarine sailors are still grappling with the sense of betrayal as more details continue to emerge during courts-martial and some women are reluctant to continue serving, others are hopeful that, with the surveys and prosecutions, the sub force has turned a page. The submarine family’s next test will come in 2016, when the enlisted women report to the guided-missile submarine Michigan, wrote the Navy Times.
