Dutch submarine service investigating transgressive behavior

The Dutch submarine service is launching another investigation into transgressive behavior on the four Dutch submarines, group commander Jeroen van Zanten said to Trouw. The goal is to see if the culture change the submarine service is working on is having a result.

An internal investigation from 2020 showed that the submarine service had an even bigger problem with undesirable behavior than the average at the Ministry of Defense, according to the newspaper. 41 percent of submarine workers said they'd observed undesirable behavior at least once in the previous two years, and 16 percent experienced it themselves. The Defense average is 34 percent witnessed, and 9.8 percent experienced undesirable behavior.

The most common forms of transgressive behavior in the submarine service were insults, physical or verbal aggression, and sexual harassment. The investigation mentioned a few concrete examples: a tradition of soldiers "sword fighting" with their genitals and watching porn while peeling potatoes.

About 200 people work at the submarine service. Women have been allowed in the service since 2019. About 5 percent of submarine soldiers are women, Van Zanten said. He stressed that the submarine service works in exceptional circumstances, which pose an additional risk of undesirable behavior. "You're stuck together in a small space. It's a kind of caravan. You are underwater 24 hours a day, which creates a certain pressure."

The service, therefore, set up a plan of action to change the culture after the 2020 investigation. The approach has been running for a year. It involves extra guidance for new personnel, more confidential advisers on board, and sessions in which crew members talk about undesirable behavior. The new investigation must show whether the approach led to less undesirable behavior. The results are expected in mid-July.

Van Zanten expects that new reports of undesirable behavior will come out in the investigation. Changing a culture takes time. "I know it's not one-two-three," he said to Trouw.