Navy Investigates Sexual Assault Charges at Base

Navy criminal investigators are looking into allegations that three women were sexually assaulted or harassed by fellow members of a squadron that tests weapons at the Navy base, officials said Monday.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has interviewed more than two dozen people during the three-week probe into allegations of inappropriate grabbing, fondling and comments over a period of months at Point Mugu’s detachment of the Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 9.

“The Navy takes this very seriously,” said Point Mugu spokesman Alan Alpers. A team of investigators continues to look into the allegations focused on four enlisted men who work at the squadron known as VX-9. No commissioned officers are targeted by the investigation.

A 25-year-old who reported being improperly grabbed said she and others are dissatisfied with the progress of the investigation.

“We are being made out to be the problem,” said the woman who requested anonymity. “This is not the Navy I thought I was joining. I’ve been discriminated against and sexually harassed. It’s like Tailhook has never ended.”

The Navy has become extremely sensitive to sexual harassment complaints since the scandal following the infamous 1991 Tailhook Assn. convention of Naval aviators in Las Vegas.

Navy officers initially stonewalled investigators probing allegations that dozens of women were groped at the convention. Eventually, the inappropriate behavior came to light, ending the career of some top Navy leaders and prompting new Navy rules and training on sexual harassment.

“At the present time, the Navy couldn’t take the matter more seriously,” said Marilyn G. Hourican, agent-in-charge of the local office of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

“We have three women who have come forward with allegations involving indecent assault,” Hourican said. “We’ve done between 25 and 30 interviews and no additional victims have come forward. We are continuing to pursue leads.”

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Hourican said she hopes her team will wrap up its investigation within two weeks. Meanwhile, she acknowledged that the investigation has become what she calls “complicated.”

One of the women making allegations flew out of control during a meeting with investigators and during the tussle fractured a bone in one agent’s foot, sources said. The Navy is considering filing charges against the woman involved in the incident.

The sexual harassment investigation began April 1 when several women complained to a career counselor on base. The counselor referred the matter to Navy lawyers, who called in the Naval Criminal Investigation Service.

The service looks into allegations that could warrant prosecution as felonies. The Navy handles complaints of improper comments and other sexual harassment through its regular chain of command.

Capt. Craig Weideman, commanding officer of VX-9, said an administrative investigation within the squadron has been put on hold to await the conclusions of the criminal probe.

“We will take a look at any follow-on investigations, depending on what NCIS does,” he said.

In the meantime, Weideman said, the three women accusers and four men under investigation have been reassigned to other duties so that they no longer work in the same units.

VX-9 is based at the China Lake Navy base in the upper Mojave Desert. It has about 260 personnel at China Lake who operate a dozen F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter jets and other aircraft used to test the latest design and upgrades in Navy missiles and other weapons.

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It has another 180 service members at its Point Mugu detachment, which operates eight F-14 Tomcat fighter jets for a variety of weapons testing.

VX-9 was formed in 1994 as a consolidation of two smaller squadrons, VX-5 at China Lake and VX-4 at Point Mugu.

The VX-4 squadron used to display one of its F-14s every year at the Point Mugu Air Show. The jet was painted black with a white Playboy bunny on its tail. The bunny symbol was removed after the Tailhook scandal.