Coast Guard Cutter Stone makes way in the Atlantic Ocean on June 29, 2024. (Thomas Settle/U.S. Coast Guard)
The Coast Guard is facing a service-wide moral failure to address sexual assault and harassment in its ranks, which has been allowed to spread through closed-door proceedings, honorable discharges and a look-the-other-way mentality, according to a report released Wednesday by senators investigating the service.
“Until the Coast Guard is willing to fully reckon with its failures, it will remain tethered to them,” wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the chairman of Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subpanel on investigations.
The subpanel began investigating the Coast Guard about a year ago after it learned of an unflattering internal review of sexual misconduct at the Coast Guard Academy that service leaders hid from the public.
The Senate report, “A Pervasive Problem: Voices of Coast Guard Sexual Assault and Harassment Survivors,” was released ahead of the subpanel’s field hearing scheduled for Thursday in New London, Conn., where the Coast Guard Academy is located. The hearing will be held at Connecticut College — just a short walk from the academy — and will include testimony from two current and three former members of the Coast Guard.
The subpanel’s inquiry into the Coast Guard focused on the cover-up of Operation Fouled Anchor, an internal review of sexual assault and harassment cases that occurred between 1990 and 2006 at the academy. As part of Fouled Anchor, the Coast Guard Investigative Service reviewed 102 reports of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment at the academy and identified 63 potential victims, according to the Senate report.
The Coast Guard conducted the Fouled Anchor investigation for six years and issued a final report on Jan. 31, 2020, which found the academy knew of allegations against 30 of 43 people, but only five were reported to criminal investigators.
It concluded academy leaders failed to take sufficient action to ensure a safe environment, yet no one was held accountable. Congress only learned of Fouled Anchor in 2023 as reporters at CNN learned of its existence and began reporting about it.
The subpanel’s focus has been on the Coast Guard’s original mishandling of these cases, and the service’s failure to reveal Operation Fouled Anchor, and its associated report, to Congress and the public. Yet senators have also heard from dozens of veterans with stories of misconduct that extend beyond Fouled Anchor.
The Coast Guard did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s report from the Senate.
The 49-page report presented accounts from more than 80 whistleblowers with personal experiences from the 1970s through today that portray systemic and ongoing failures at the Coast Guard Academy and throughout the service. Common themes involved victims being ostracized, shamed and deterred from reporting abuse. For those who did report, the veterans said the investigations were traumatizing and inadequate and led to retaliation and little accountability.
Of the whistleblowers, 39 said they were sexually assaulted, and 27 said they were sexually harassed. Roughly 44% of the assaults, and 2% of the harassments described to the subpanel occurred at the academy, and the majority occurred within the active-duty fleet.
One cadet who reported a sexual assault in 2020 told senators that classmates immediately stopped speaking to her while her attacker told fellow cadets that she was lying. Another cadet told the subpanel that Coast Guard lawyers discouraged her from reporting her assault by telling her that it would impact her ability to graduate in the spring and arrive at her first duty station.
An enlisted member told the subpanel that after telling a supervisor about enduring months of sexual misconduct, she was asked to consider the careers of the men involved and reporting the misconduct would ruin their lives and investigators would show her to be a liar.
“It is imperative that the Coast Guard uses all means available to hold accountable both individual perpetrators and the leadership that covered up their wrongdoing. And it is equally essential that the Coast Guard begins to leverage meaningful, swift, and consistent accountability against present and future perpetrators. The culture will not change until the Coast Guard makes clear that sexual assault and harassment will not be tolerated,” Blumenthal wrote.
No one has been held accountable for the cover-up of Operation Fouled Anchor, and veterans of the service have called on past service leaders to testify before the subpanel about what they knew about it.
Adm. Linda Fagan, the Coast Guard commandant, took command of the service after the decision was made to bury the Fouled Anchor report. She has said she is cooperating with an ongoing Department of Homeland Security inspector general investigation and awaiting its results and recommendations.
She has also directed 33 actions be taken that stem from an internal accountability and transparency review. Nearly half of the recommendations have been completed, according to the Coast Guard.
One action already implemented is a safe-to-report policy, which intends to protect members from discipline for collateral misconduct involved in their sexual assault, such as underage drinking. All other military branches implemented a similar policy two years earlier under congressional mandate.
The fear of punishment for collateral misconduct came up among whistleblowers who spoke to the subpanel. One cadet said during her time at the academy in the 2010s, her underage drinking was used as blackmail by her perpetrator to keep her from reporting.
Senators said they will continue their investigation into the Coast Guard and Fouled Anchor.
“We pledge to continue investigating what has gone wrong to identify what needs to be done to prevent future harm,” Blumenthal wrote.
