Navy investigating raunchy videos made aboard nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
BY NINA MANDELL
Kinter/AP
The USS Enterprise is set to deploy later this month.
AP
Capt. Owen HonorsA series of raunchy videos featuring gay slurs, female sailors taking showers and references to bestiality has a Navy officer in hot water.
The videos, which were made between 2006 and 2007 and shown on the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise, were released to The Virginian-Pilot shortly before the carrier was set to take off with the alleged producer of the videos – Captain Owen Honors – in charge.
The videos include two female sailors standing in a shipboard shower stall pretending to watch each other – before Honors joins them. Another reportedly shows sailors pretending to masturbate and refers to one group one board the ship as a gay slur.
Most disturbing to many of the sailors, who reportedly complained to senior Navy officials and later the newspaper, was that when Honors produced the videos, he was the commanding officer's deputy.
"They were [his] project," one former Enterprise sailor told The Virginian-Pilot. "He was the one coming up with scripts and the jokes. He was the one planning it."
MSNBC.com reported that while the Navy was aware of the videos, it did little more than tell the officers in charge to "knock it off."
Honors, meanwhile, recognized early on that some of his underlings weren't as comfortable with the content.
"Over the years I've gotten several complaints about inappropriate materials in these videos, never to me personally but, gutlessly, through other channels," he reportedly said on the videos. "This evening, all of you bleeding hearts... why don't just go ahead and hug yourself for the next 20 minutes or so, because there's a really good chance you're gonna be offended."
The videos, according to a statement released to the newspaper Friday, were just meant to focus "the crew's attention to specific issues such as port visits, traffic safety, water conservation, ship cleanliness, etc."
But after the videos became public, the Navy launched an investigation into videos, MSNBC reported Sunday.
"The videos created onboard USS Enterprise in 2006-2007 and written about in The Virginian-Pilot article on Saturday, January 1, 2011, are clearly inappropriate," the Navy told MSNBC in a written statement.
It's unclear whether or not the ship, which is set to deploy this month, will still be under Honors' command. That has many of the sailors who complained about the videos, feeling extremely uneasy.
"When the ship pulls away from that pier, he's it," one officer told the Pilot. "To me, that's scary."
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