CO fired for ‘cruelty’ gets new job - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

CO fired for ‘cruelty’ gets new job

The former cruiser commanding officer who was fired in January after a years-long pattern of “cruelty and maltreatment” toward her crew is to report to a new job at Navy Air and Missile Defense Command in Dahlgren, Va., Navy Times has learned.

Capt. Holly Graf, relieved of command of the cruiser Cowpens on Jan. 13 in Yokosuka, Japan, is “in the process of executing those orders,” said Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a spokesman for 7th Fleet in Japan.

When Graf was relieved in January, officials at the time said she would continue on to a previously arranged job in the Navy Staff in the Pentagon. However, she was given a different assignment after a standard administrative review that followed her admiral’s mast with Rear Adm. Kevin Donegan, commander of Carrier Strike Group 5, who found her guilty of “cruelty” and “conduct unbecoming an officer.”

Admiral’s mast is a nonjudicial proceeding.

A report by the Naval Surface Forces Inspector General substantiated allegations that Graf had belittled, harangued and even assaulted her subordinates on Cowpens and in her previous command, the destroyer Winston S. Churchill. The full details of that report are in this week’s Navy Times.

Navy spokesman Lt. Justin Cole said Tuesday that Graf has not yet been assigned a specific billet at the air and missile defense command, which was created last year under 3rd Fleet. Officials did not have information about why she is no longer being reassigned to the Navy Staff in the Pentagon.

Commanders’ initial willingness to permit Graf to transition to her planned reassignment in the Navy office of information, plans and strategy — known as “N3/N5” around the Pentagon — was unusual for a skipper who has been relieved. One explanation could be that Graf was already close to a scheduled change of command on Cowpens; her successor, Capt. Robert Marin, was already aboard the ship when Graf was relieved.

Even as Graf reports for duty at her new job in Dahlgren, she faces another administrative step in continuing her career. When officers are found guilty in a nonjudicial proceeding, their commanders must submit information about the incident to Navy Personnel Command. NPC then decides whether to empanel a board that requires officers to “show cause” why they should continue in the Navy. Having considered the case, the board makes a recommendation to the secretary of the Navy about whether an officer should be kept or separated.

Graf is in the middle of that process, Cole said; NPC officials now are deciding whether to appoint a “show cause” board. Whatever her ultimate fate, the Navy is confident about its process for screening and selecting officers, Cole said.

“Captain Graf had one of 1,500 officer billets coded for commanding officer positions in the Navy. In the last five years, 56 of them have been relieved of command, so we would point to the 99 percent of commanding officers who are successfully completing their tours,” Cole said. “When they don’t succeed, we evaluate those circumstances and we hold our commanding officers to a very high standard.”