Censure call for lewd Navy videos

A US Navy admiral has recommended that the Navy censure senior officers of the USS Enterprise over a series of lewd videos produced on the ship.

Adm John Harvey urged the punishment for Capt Owen Honors and three others, and called for 34 other officers to be cautioned.

Videos featuring Capt Honors included anti-gay slurs, women in the shower together and simulated masturbation.

Capt Honors was relieved of command of the aircraft carrier over the matter.

‘Crew morale’

In a news conference on Thursday, Adm Harvey, the commander of the US fleet forces command, said the videos apparently produced in 2006 and 2007 showed poor judgement and undermined the credibility of the USS Enterprise leadership.

Supporters of Capt Honors, who was the carrier’s executive officer when the videos were made, say he produced them to boost crew morale.

“Over the years I’ve gotten several complaints about inappropriate material during these videos, never to me personally but, gutlessly, through other channels,” Capt Honors says in the introduction to one video.

In one of the films, the officer introduces a scene where two female sailors pretend to bathe together, saying “chicks in the shower” is his “favourite topic”.

In another scene, male sailors dressed in drag mimic masturbation. Other clips in the video show a man in drag and a mock rectal examination.

Adm Harvey said the videos continued to be made because senior officers aboard the USS Enterprise, a nuclear-powered ship with a crew of about 5,800 officers and sailors, were “themselves the source of the problem”.

He said he recognised the “vulgar language, insensitive and sexually tinged attempts at humour” of the type seen in the videos was an everyday part of American popular culture.

“Navy leaders are not popular entertainers but professionals vested with extraordinary military authority,” he told reporters.

Capt Honors’s civilian attorney has said he would have stopped producing the videos if he had been asked.