Skipper fired for ‘cruelty’ assigned to Dahlgren - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Skipper fired for ‘cruelty’ assigned to Dahlgren

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 this week to a new job at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, Va., Navy Times has learned.

Capt. Holly Graf, fired from the cruiser Cowpens on Jan. 13 in Yokosuka, Japan, has been assigned to Navy Air and Missile Defense Command, said Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a spokesman for 7th Fleet in Japan.

She is “in the process of executing those orders,” he said.

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.

Davis said he did not have more information on Graf’s specific job at Navy Air and Missile Defense Command, which was created last year, or 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 this week at her new job in Dahlgren, she faces another administrative step in continuing her career. Officers who are found guilty in a nonjudicial proceeding are required to “show cause” for why they should stay in the Navy to a board appointed by Navy Personnel Command.

The status of that board and its review weren’t clear Monday evening.

Check back at NavyTimes.com for more on this story.