Loveboat 2005

According to the Navy Times (subscription required to read article). 13 Sailors on the Pearl Harbor based USS Chung-Hoon (DDG-93) were charged with Fraternization and/or Adultery. On top of everything else, can you guess what charges are also being leveled by some of the accused.

Accusations of racism also underlie the problem. Eight of the 13 charged are black; the others are white. Two of the black sailors charged say they and others are being treated more harshly than their white counterparts. For his part, (CMDR) Williams (former CO)said in his message that he meted out justice in a fair and consistent manner.

But as the article goes on, the 2 people in the middle of all this is a LT and a SK2 who got married secretly.

The two black sailors leveling the racism charge, a lieutenant and then-second-class petty officer, admit they had an affair before getting married in December. But both say that whites similarly culpable were punished far less severely for essentially the same transgressions and that racism may have played a part.
The black officer, Lt. Tobias Chappell, is a former supply officer on the Chung-Hoon, now temporarily reassigned to the Defense Distribution Depot Pearl Harbor, where he “picks up trash and moves furniture” for a chief petty officer.

“It seems like a very selective prosecution,” he said.

He secretly married his former supply department’s leading petty officer, Storekeeper 2nd Class (AW) Tonya Yarbrough, last December; she has since been demoted to seaman recruit.

It gets better...

Chappell, with two counts of fraternization within the past year alone, also was charged with two counts of cruelty and maltreatment, obstruction of justice, larceny, making a false official statement the Navy said.

Chappell said the additional charges he faces are bogus. The larceny relates to keeping two Navy laptop computers at home during the commissioning transition, which Chappell said was allowed. The obstruction of justice, he said, relates to a search of his stateroom, which turned up videotaped evidence of one of the earlier relationships, according to Sink. The cruelty and maltreatment charge, he said, stems from giving a first-class petty officer a poor evaluation and assigning him to barracks duty while showing favoritism to a second petty officer.

According to the official Navy charge sheet, however, Yarbrough was that second petty officer. The Navy says Chappell sent his leading petty officer, Storekeeper 1st Class John T. Crawford, to barracks duty after Crawford gave Yarbrough a presumably unfavorable counseling statement. The Navy also charges that another sailor, Storekeeper 2nd Class David M. Zepeda, was unfairly dropped in ranking board status, adding that Chappell ordered a chief petty officer to switch the promotion recommendations of Yarbrough and Zepeda.

Crawford is black.

Chappell’s second fraternization charge relates to an alleged affair with an enlisted sailor not assigned to the Chung-Hoon, he said. And the third, he said, stems from a late 1990s affair with another enlisted female sailor.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Chappell said. “I can see the ‘frat’ charge with Tonya, and even the one a year ago. But five years ago? That’s too long.”

Chappell said he was an ensign when he had his first fraternization affair.

To me it seems like there is a pattern of misbehavior with the LT and not because he is black. Lets just hope he keeps the race baiters like Je$$e Jack$on and Rev. Al out of this one. Like we need more unsubstantiated allegations pointed towards the military and the Navy.