Unless this clown was Admiral of the Fleet I seriously doubt him being in the rattle would make much difference to the effectiveness of the fleet, morally or operationally.
Back in the early 70's there was a young sailor who went ashore and murdered 2 women who ran a convenience store on Esquimalt road. That incident didn't render the Navy non operational so I don't see how these allegations would have done that? BTW he was stone cold sober, just a psycho.
But thanks for posting the article because, it's quite apparent that this became more about saving the Navy and Admiral Normans reputations and less to do with giving some sailor a fair trial before passing judgment.
$1:
In an email on July 9, five days before the story broke in the media, Norman wrote that messaging was critical: "This is our problem and we will lead our way out of it."
Norman was already working on what's called a NAVGEN, a general memo that is released to the entire navy, about the incident. The email shows Norman was already concerned public affairs at the Defence Department would not be able to respond to the looming story quickly enough.
FFS the story hadn't even broken and they were doing damage control about how to respond to it. This is a crisis of their own making because had they dealt with it by using the system rather than fixing a political response and then leaking it in order to mitigate their role in the problem, most of this would have gone quietly away. The Sailor if found guilty could have been properly punished, and it would have shown that there was some real leadership left in the Navy and not a bunch of politico's trying to protect their legacy.
The simplest way to put this is. The Naval Brass fucked up and now everyone has to pay the price for their piss poor attempts at altering public opinion in order to make it look like they're doing something positive about a public relations issue.
It's to bad that sailors aren't as saintly or politically correct as you think they should be because, if they were there'd never be the need to lay another charge. Once again, human foibles ruin it for everyone.
Just looked at Chief Military Judge's web page and there's no Court Martial results that relate to the charges against this sailor and I can't find any reference to it in the upcoming court martials. So have they tried him or not because, given the severity of his charges I seriously doubt the XO, CO or Sqdrn Commander would have the power to properly deal with the charges?