Gay sailor subjected to sexual hazing by his unit.

"I was hog-tied to a chair, rolled around the base, left in a dog kennel that had feces spread in it..."

This sounds like something CIA agents might do to a suspected terrorist, right?  But no, these are the words of Petty Officer Third Class Joseph Rocha, who was brutally "hazed" at a Naval base in Bahrain for more than two years.  Rocha was physically assaulted and degraded by his fellow service members after they began to question his sexual orientation. 

From the Palm Center:  Official Navy documents confirm that after Rocha’s unit mates first suspected that he is gay, they engaged in a two-year pattern of abuse including hog-tying him to a chair and pushing him, still bound, into a dog kennel full of feces.  Rocha says that they forced him to simulate oral sex with a man more than thirty times, on video tape, as part of a training exercise to teach sailors how to respond to a hypothetical complaint about homosexual sex.  And they hit him as hard as they could repeatedly while forcing him to bend over a desk...  Rocha was a military police officer with anti-terrorism training who graduated at the top of his military class, and who received favorable performance evaluations throughout his career.  His unit mates first suspected that he is gay in 2004 when he refused to sleep with female prostitutes, a practice that was widespread at his base.  Rocha did not report the abuse, which continued until 2006, because he feared retaliation as well as discharge under "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell."

Pam Spaulding on The Blend:  This is an outrage.  As reported in an investigation by Youth Radio, members of the U.S. Navy's Bahrain Military Working Dogs Division have been subject to unbelievable abuse by colleagues that involve sexual humiliation, harassment and gay-baiting.  And there are FOIA documents to prove it...  How does this cultivate "military readiness?"  It makes you wonder what they would do to women who served in this unit?  Never mind (anti-LGBT activist) Elaine Donnelly's protestations and fantasies of gay and lesbian service members running rampant - she probably has nothing to say of the persecution of those serving by heterosexual beasts like (Navy Chief Michael) Toussaint, and those higher up who believe this is appropriate for "unit cohesion."

Petty Officer Rocha and another junior sailor were instructed to go into a classroom by Chief Michael Toussaint, who orchestrated these dehumanizing "training sessions."  Toussaint ordered them to simulate homosexual sex on a couch.  "One person would sit up, kind of wipe off their mouth, the other would get up, and they would be fixing their fly,"  Rocha says.  Then his superior officer ridiculed him, "telling me I needed to be more believable, act more queer, have a higher pitched voice, make the sounds and gestures more realistic.  I didn't think I had a choice.  It made me feel that I wasn't a human being, that I was an animal, rather."

Rocha says that during this 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."  (And all because he wouldn't visit a prostitute.)  

Rocha was over 8,000 miles from home, and he was being treated like human excrement by his comrades-in-arms.  Despite this, he was reluctant to report the abuse to senior officers because he knew that if he did, he'd be fired from his job.  And here's the most astonishing part of the story:  After Chief Toussaint's role in this was discovered by Naval investigators, he was promoted.    (Pictured:  POTC Joseph Rocha) 

Comments

[Carol]

This makes me very ashamed that our soldiers would do something like this.

[madfloridian]

That is a terribly sad story. What in the world is happening to our country? I see the anger and hatred everywhere. This is just tragic.
With Democrats controlling congress and the White House you would think something could be done about protection for all our military.

[Aeroldoth]

What are we supposed to do with this info? Just what exactly are we supposed to do, huh?

Complain that xians run this country? Complain that xians run the military? Complain to the pres, the same guy who hasn't done shit for gays? Nobody cares about gays, nobody gives a fuck, because we're just a bunch of selfish, hedonistic, promiscuous AIDS-riddled whiners who deserve all the shit we get. Nobody gives a damn about us, and the xians like it that way. It's their religious "right" to persecute and oppress us. My medical bills can't take any more of their "love".

This is so sad, because you know it goes on all the time, and it's depressing, because you know there's not a god damn thing you can do about it. Nobody to complain to, nothing will get done, nothing will change. It's like seeing a person in the ocean drown. There's absolutely nothing you can do, except watch them suffer, helpless to help.

This story just ruined my day.

Aeroldoth@yahoo.com

[Robert Bevins]

I know Joseph. It didn't exactly go down like this. He did in fact have gay friends. I am gay myself...this is how I know. Some of this stuff did happen, but it was greatly imbellished. Lets talk about MA1 Valdivia, she was stationed in Bahrain during this time, she was a lesbian and she was subject to all of this and more, they forced her into making a lesbian sex video. Out of fear of there being no way of escape, she committed suicide while in Bahrain. That's who we should be writing about.

[Anonymous]

Dear Mr. Bevins, Thank you for the insight, and I hope you read my response. Please understand that I am writing as someone who does not condone homosexual behavior in the armed services, but there is essentially nothing that would bother me about yourself and Mr. Rocha serving in what is in so many words a war zone. In my perspective, his treatment is nonetheless disturbing to the core. I can see that the problem of the policy is in how it is enforced. From someone who did not last four months in the Army partly because I was suspected of not being a heterosexual, there is obviously an issue with calling the kettle black and condemning someone as guilty as charged.

In fact I might be inclined to say yes if I were asked to solicit a female prostitute, but I would probably say no. However, I have a hard time understanding some things. That Rocha would have lasted as long as he did--perhaps out of a need to commit to the program in order to attend a college. That Toussaint's behavior does not constitute homosexual behavior in itself. That other enlisted personnel had objections to engaging in sex with prostitutes, from religious or marital convictions or a right to not contract disease.

With the situation in Iraq, as well as the one in Afghanistan, winding down, I can see from an historical perspective how unnecessary both of them are. Why do this when this is what you are going to get? Why would I want to further my own committment to the armed services when this is the degree to which they care for my own welfare? I didn't need to enlist, I did so solely out of enthusiasm. Besides, I have the $$ not to worry about college, and have not had to work in the past 6 years. I enlisted 19 MR 2003, the day it started, and I remember being driven to the Processing Station. I sat in the back seat, and in the front was the Army recruiter and a former Navy seaman now joining the Army. All they talked about for 2 hours was sex and all the things that go on in East Asia with prostitutes, and "The Banana Show." And I will never forget the first thing the recruiter asked me when I got in the car, as it was clearly an insinuation if not an indictment: "How come you didn't tell me you live near Hooter's?"