The Chaplain's Case

It was a tawdry story, almost as if Confidential had rewritten Somerset Maugham's Rain for the U.S.O. In this case, the clergyman was a Baptist chaplain in the U.S. Navy, his accusers wives of fellow officers. On trial at the Jacksonville, Fla., Naval Air Station for conduct unbecoming an officer is Commander Andrew Jensen, 43, a 16-year Navy veteran, married and the graying father of two. The trial marks two embarrassing firsts for the Navy: no officer had ever stood trial solely on adultery charges, and no chaplain had ever been court-martialed.

The Jensen trial reached its seamiest stage last week when the defense tried to show that Jensen had been physically incapable of committing at least some of the acts of which he is accused.

He is also an unlikely philanderer, pale and mild-mannered. But according to Lora Gudbranson, 40, the wife of a naval supply officer, she and Jensen made love in a motel near the base last July 8. Testifying for the defense, Dr. Clay Wickham told the court that at the time the skin around Jensen's midsection had been covered with "a rash and boils," which would have made sex a painful enterprise at best. A character witness, Captain Thomas Loomis, who had served aboard the carrier Ticonderoga with Jensen, offered a well-meant if ill-phrased testimonial. Jensen, he said, was "the finest example of moral turpitude on the ship."

The case against the chaplain was compounded by the testimony of Mary Ann Curran, 24, the wife of a flyer. She said that she had had relations with Jensen 17 times between August 1970 and

April 1971--after her husband had asked the chaplain for counsel about their marriage. The prosecution produced a note, purportedly from Jensen to Mrs. Curran, which said: "You are everything to me. Please share your love with me forever."

Mrs. Gudbranson claimed that she had found out last August that the chaplain was also having an affair with Mrs. Curran. "After agonizing over it for two days, I decided he'd have to be reported," she told the court-martial. Mrs. Gudbranson confessed to her husband, who informed the base executive officer. Naval authorities tried to persuade Jensen to resign his commission, but he refused, protesting his innocence.

Not the least of the problems created for the Navy by the trial is the heavy bombardment it is sustaining from a formidable opponent, the American Baptist Convention. The case poses a serious jurisdictional question: Should the military or Jensen's denomination have priority in handling it?

The Baptists, besides declaring the case an attempt at character defamation, emphatically contend that they are the sole judges of the moral and spiritual qualifications of their ministers. To underscore its ire, the convention has announced that it will send no more chaplains to the Navy until the Government formally recognizes its claim.

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