Convicted Officer Slams Navy Zeal

A decorated Navy commander found guilty by a court-martial last week of sexual harassment, complained Wednesday that he was a “sacrificial lamb” and a victim of the Navy’s new zeal to eradicate such behavior from its ranks.

Moreover, Cmdr. Steven C. Tolan said the verdict has scared many Navy men. Tolan was found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer because of sexual comments he made to a young enlisted woman under his command and a paddling on her birthday.

In sometimes salty language, the 46-year-old officer said during an interview that he had no chance of acquittal following the scandal over the Tailhook Assn. convention of Navy aviators in Las Vegas last year.

That incident, in which 26 women--half of them officers--allegedly were sexually assaulted by colleagues, prompted the resignation of Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III and caused the Navy leadership to declare that sexual harassment will no longer be tolerated.

“I don’t think anybody who gets caught up in this goat roast stands a cold chance in hell of coming away unscathed,” said Tolan, a 23-year career officer who headed a special survival training unit at El Toro Marine Air Station when the charges were made against him.

“I think there is a certain amount of pressure (within the Navy) that is inherent to find the individual guilty,” he said.

In sentencing Tolan, the five-officer court-martial fined him $2,000, called for an official letter of reprimand to be placed in his personnel file and pushed him to the bottom of the promotion list.

The jury rejected the prosecutor’s call that Tolan to be dismissed from the service, but Tolan said he has learned that, “I’m not going to be allowed to stay around.”

Tolan said the executive officer of the base hospital at Camp Pendleton, where he is now assigned to the radiology department, received a call from officials in Washington saying that, if Tolan does not retire, an inquiry will be initiated to determine his “retainability.”

Tolan said he learned that the chief of naval operations is taking this action because he was “highly incensed” that the jury had not ousted him.

But such an inquiry won’t be necessary, Tolan said, because the guilty verdict leaves him no option but to retire.

Tolan, a highly decorated officer who has three Purple Hearts for wounds received while serving as a medical corpsman in Vietnam, had previously said he intended to stay in the service at least until next February, when he would have been eligible for promotion to captain.

The court-martial dismissed 12 of the original 14 offenses for which Tolan was tried, including charges of indecent assault. All of the charges brought by a civilian secretary, whose complaints originally prompted the investigation of Tolan, were dropped. Nevertheless, Tolan said, “I don’t feel vindicated. I feel like I was raped.”

Contending that dirty jokes and sexual remarks are prevalent throughout the Navy and much of society, Tolan said he believes he was unfairly singled out.

“In the military, crude language and crude comments are so commonplace it is unbelievable,” he said.

“Men are pigs,” Tolan said. “I think it has been accepted by society for so many years that to retrain them to where they don’t think sexual thoughts . . . that’s never going to happen.”

Tolan acknowledged that he had taken to calling Petty Officer Kathryn Sparre “bubble butt,” but believed she had accepted it as good-natured kidding.

“I really didn’t think there was anything wrong with it when I said it. She laughed,” he said.

Tolan also said he believes women as well as Navy men are responsible for the sexual misconduct at the annual Tailhook Convention, which he said has been “a sanctioned orgy for many, many years.

“Ever since its inception, women fly from all over the country to go to Tailhook to work out their sexual fantasies, to maybe grab a husband. Prostitutes from all over the country go there because they think they are going to make a mint.”

Tolan said that, although he does not defend sexual harassment, he believes the Navy should more clearly teach its members how to avoid it. “They need to establish guidelines and change how people are doing business through education and not through threats,” he said.

In the aftermath of his verdict, Tolan said there is an atmosphere of “mistrust” between the sexes at Camp Pendleton. “The guys are paranoid,” he said. “They are afraid to be in the same room with a member of the opposite sex without a witness, and they are afraid to joke.”

In court, Tolan’s attorney, Marine Maj. Paul McBride, said that, to his knowledge, Tolan is the first high-ranking Navy officer to be court-martialed on charges of sexual harassment since it became a distinct military crime in 1989.

Tolan predicted his case will be “a snowflake on the tip of an iceberg” if other officers are similarly investigated and prosecuted for the same kind of conduct.