Sailor jailed for three months over disclosing location of Naval ship

A NAVAL SERVICE sailor who disclosed the location of his ship to his girlfriend by text has been sentenced to three months in prison and discharged from the Defence Forces.

Able Seaman Eoin Gray’s conduct was a “serious offence”, “totally unacceptable” and showed he could no longer regain the trust of his superiors and therefore he had no future in the Naval service, Military Judge Col Anthony McCourt said.

Gray will now become the only prisoner in the Curragh which was reopened in November last year as a detention camp to coincide with the new military justice system.

Gray (24) pleaded guilty on Tuesday at his court martial hearing in McKee Barracks to a single offence of knowingly and without due authority disclosing the whereabouts of his ship the LE Orla to his girlfriend, an offence under section 158 (1) of the Defence Act 1954.

Charges of aiding the importation of cocaine into Ireland and possession of cocaine were dropped against him along with another charge relating to disclosing the status of a State ship at sea and being in possession of counterfeit hair straighteners.

The court had been told that Gray had made repeated attempts to contact a friend at the Fisheries Monitoring Centre in Haulbowline in Co Cork to find out the status of his vessel and see if he was free for the weekend. He then texted the information to his girlfriend.

The judge told him that it was understandable that he would want to inform his girlfriend about when he was off duty, but his conduct “went way beyond that”.

“Your off-duty social life does not entitle you to disclose information about the whereabouts of your vessel,” he said.

Gray joined the Naval Service in June 2006 and was there for 2½ years when the incident took place some time between December 4th and December 18th, 2008.

The judge said the accused had been in the Navy long enough to know of the sensitivities of disclosing such information to outside parties. It made his conduct “all the more unacceptable” because he had “betrayed the trust and confidence” of those he worked with in the Naval Service.

Col McCourt described the offence as in the “middle range” of seriousness in relation to the charge of disclosing the location of a State ship at sea.

His disclosures did not have an impact on Navy operations, but it nevertheless merited a 12-month jail sentence and discharge from the Armed Forces. In sentencing, he took into account a number of mitigating circumstances including the fact that Gray had only one previous disciplinary sanction against him, which was dealt with summarily when he went Awol for five hours and 30 minutes, and had no civil convictions.

He also took into account that Gray was described as an “excellent student” at the Army School of Catering. Other factors mitigating his sentence was his age and the fact that he had a two-year-old daughter.

Before sentencing, Gray’s counsel Ross Maguire said the original charges against his client of importation and possession of drugs “could hardly be more serious” for a member of the Defence Forces.

Mr Maguire stressed, however, that the offence for which his client pleaded guilty was an “entirely private matter” between himself and his girlfriend and had no sinister undertones. This fact was accepted by the Director of Military Prosecutions, he added.

“He was away from his family and may not be back for the weekend. That was the context. Everything else is irrelevant,” he told the judge.

Military police jostled with press photographers as Gray was led out of the courtroom.