Navy: Investigation Drove Sailor to Suicide

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Navy: Investigation Drove Sailor to Suicide
December 23, 2009
Virginian-Pilot

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.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/navy-investigation-drove-sailor-to-kill-self.html