ABSTRACT
Publicity about the Newport scandal begun the day Kent went on trial accelerated following his acquittal; within days what had started as an attempt to prove a single man guilty of homosexuality was transformed into a broadscale attack on the navy. At the same time, a letter of complaint addressed to President Woodrow Wilson by a number of Rhode Island ministers brought the case to the attention of the highest officials in the U.S. government. Forwarded to the Navy Department, it stimulated the first of several official investigations. When these two prongs — newspaper publicity and official investigations — drew together, the sex investigation that could have been forgotten once Kent’s trial ended grew into a scandal of national proportions.
