Retired U.S. Navy Veteran Exposes the Dark Side of Shellback Initiation: A Harrowing Tale of Hazing, PTSD, and Lifelong Fallout

Retired U.S. Navy veteran Robert Graham shared his harrowing experience of hazing during the Shellback Initiation and its catastrophic aftermath.

In a harrowing and deeply personal account, Robert Graham, a retired U.S. Navy veteran, has come forward to reveal the lifelong repercussions of Navy-sanctioned hazing rituals, particularly the notorious “Shellback Initiations.”

The Shellback Initiation, also known as the Crossing the Line Ceremony, is an ancient naval tradition that celebrates when a ship crosses the equator. The ceremony involves a series of rites that test the seaworthiness of the sailors, and is performed by most navies around the world.

Graham served in Fighter Squadron One (VF-1) during Desert Storm, where he witnessed and documented severe hazing rituals.

During the ceremony, he was subjected to brutal and degrading treatment sanctioned by superior officers. Despite official Navy regulations forbidding pre-initiation activities, he captured footage of sailors being physically and psychologically tortured in the early hours of the morning—well before the official start of the ceremony.

This footage became a focal point in his 1997 interview with ABC PrimeTime, but ironically, the network shelved the story. However, European media, including RTL and Inside Edition, aired the shocking video, exposing the barbarity to international audiences.

Graham’s story, shared with The Gateway Pundit, shines a light on the devastating emotional, professional, and financial consequences that can stem from military traditions that cross ethical boundaries.

Graham told The Gateway Pundit:

“I served in Fighter Squadron One (VF-1) in Desert Storm. Afterward, as in 1989, there was serious hazing involved in the equator crossing ceremony known as Shellback Initiations.

In 1997, I was interviewed by ABC PrimeTime with a hazing video I recorded. Ironically, the main assailant sported a t-shirt reading “Good Morning America ABC,” and so ABC captured and killed the story.

It aired, however, in Europe on RTL at prime time and later on Inside Edition, and my book about it is now at the US Naval Academy and Naval War College, as well as Harvard and Yale.

As you may recall, William Cohen, Clinton’s Republican SECDEF, was confronted by media about parachute qualifiers suffering hazing at his first presser — and he replied, “The Pentagon has no knowledge of this type activity being widespread.”

My video proved otherwise. Ironically, after I left the USA and became a high school teacher in Germany, this video was discovered by some pupils and resulted in my participation labeling my character as “unbecoming of a teacher,” and I lost over 600,000 euros in potential income as a direct result of the Navy sanctioned hazing.

I am now dealing with PTSD in retirement, and yesterday, I faxed the attached file to the House Armed Services Committee, asking them to deal with the LIFELONG repercussions of the ritual.

I’m asking TGP to consider running a story on how Navy-sanctioned hazing leads to lifelong destruction and lifelong PTSD.

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The link below shows how my uniform was cut to shreds by men of superior rank when I was an E-4 or “PN3” (aka Personnelman Third Class petty officer). I was victimized in 1989. They made sure I had no bubble wrap to “pad my ass” from hazing.

In that video, the VF-1 Safety Petty Officer says, “You should wish you went through with me 15 years ago. Because your ass would be sore for six fuckin’ days straight.”

Although the above link contains this scene, here is a direct link to that moment in the recording:

In my Inside Edition interview, 8x Emmy award-winning investigative news journalist Matthew Meagher points out that in 1989 I recorded the captain of the aircraft carrier USS RANGER (CV-61) stating, “pre-initiation … is expressly forbidden” and that in 1991 I witnessed and recorded exactly that.

In the Inside Edition broadcast, you will see the person holding the camera (that’s me) arguing with a “Shellback” and trying to shield a “wog” (new initiate who was scared to death), and you will see I was unable to protect him. He was also ordered to repeat after each blow, “Thank you shellback may I have another.”

I also have some videos that I have never broadcast showing how a sailor is being psychologically tortured by the same man who overcame my resistance to his hitting the sailor in the IE broadcast.

I would probably show that to the Armed Services Committee, but out of respect for him—he was a teenager and was being coerced to participate by the man standing over him in a small shop with only a few people around as I caught them on camera—I didn’t show that to the media and have never put it online anywhere.

Especially important to my case, in the IE video, the captain of the aircraft carrier USS RANGER states, “For anyone who doesn’t wish to participate, I highly encourage it.”

I was too emotionally traumatized at the time I was being fired by the Cologne School District to cope with searching for evidence I could have provided at a full-blown trial.

I had been a tenured teacher and the wrongful termination cost me 750,000 euros of future income, while I did win a Wrongful Termination settlement of 15,000 euros.

In the letter to the court in Germany, the School District (“Bezirksregierung Köln”) stated that my admission to pupils that I had participated in this (Navy sanctioned) event equated to Conduct Unbecoming of a person in charge of high school pupils and therefore required my dismissal as a teacher. Here is the relevant paragraph and a translation:

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It was incredible to me that one’s participating in an activity his ship’s captain “highly encouraged” was the explicit reason for immediate dismissal as a teacher in Germany.

Grossing 4500 Euros per month as a full-time teacher in 2007, under the “Conduct Unbecoming” accusation, I was unemployable thereafter, having to go on (German) welfare, causing a massive emotional drain on my wife.

A German proud of her American husband, she had to observe all of this and slid into depression and severe alcoholism until, despite being a devout Catholic church board leader and a high-level international insurance executive in charge of customer satisfaction, she lost these positions of respect and employment, and she eventually was ordered to leave our home by Child Protective Services—the home she had provided for me and our children—and a few months after she had moved back into her father’s home, she took her life—on the morning of Christmas Eve in 2012—leaving me to raise our three sons alone.

She left me her life insurance that got me off of the stigma of welfare until it ran out; by then, I was awarded full unemployability retirement until I reached the age of full retirement in 2018.

Only in the calm of a meager retirement have I been able to go back and, particularly in applying for PTSD from the VA, provide documentation that connected the dots to realize my participation in the Shellback initiation had destroyed my noble career.

Arguably I knew this at the time, but as I said, events were coming at me fast and furiously. I was not allowed to defend myself in front of the school director, and later I was blamed by the district for not having defended myself in front of the director. (!)

At the time of settling in court, I was advised by my wife and our legal counsel that fighting for my career would be a losing proposition.

The judge did admonish the district they had better quickly agree because they could lose in a trial. But to put it behind us all, I agreed to the settlement. But I was never hired again as a teacher anywhere.

Germany awarded me a total individual unemployability pension, and I began the long awakening process that led to my letter to the House Armed Services committee last week.

In the video that aired twice on RTL Explosiv [sic] although in German, my camera points to a wall clock in the “81-Man” berthing (enlistees’ living quarters) of Fighter Squadron One (VF-1) proving that brutal whipping is occurring at 4:20 am, whereas the official ceremony is to forbidden to begin prior to 6:00 am “and starts in the hangar bay” and anything before that was “strictly forbidden” — the exact behavior I was recording .

I am the author of Military Secret, a 1993 Navy exposé covering more than just hazing, and my book is cataloged at the US Naval Academy, Naval War College, Harvard, Yale, and various other libraries worldwide.

As it was published by Monument Press in 1993, just as I left the country, I was unable to effectively promote book sales in the USA from Germany or effectively promote it in Germany due to its specialized (Navy jargon) content in English.”