Coast Guard apologizes for covering up long history of sexual assault

The U.S. Coast Guard on Friday apologized for covering up dozens of documented cases of sexual assault and harassment that took place at the agency’s academy, and failing to properly investigate or punish those accused in dozens of other cases over a span of nearly two decades .

The nature of the incidents, which occurred between 1988 and 2006, were disclosed last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee during an informal briefing, according to two Democratic senators who sent a letter Friday to Coast Guard Commander Adm Linda L. Fagan, demands more details.

According to Senators Maria Cantwell of Washington, the chair of the panel, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, an internal Coast Guard review dubbed “Operation Fouled Anchor” found that 62 incidents of rape, assault and sexual harassment occurred on the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., or were committed by cadets in those years.

Those cases may be only part of the problem. According to the letter, Coast Guard officials told the senators at the briefing that their internal investigation had turned up an additional 42 cases of rape, assault and sexual harassment that had never been properly investigated. The letter said officials also revealed what Ms Cantwell and Ms Baldwin called a history of leaders “discouraging survivors from making formal complaints or otherwise publicizing their attacks”.

Coast Guard officials acknowledged the internal investigation, which was conducted between 2014 and 2020, after details of the investigation were reported CNN on Friday.

In a statement, a Coast Guard spokesman apologized to the victims and said that “by not taking appropriate action at the time of the assaults, the Coast Guard may have further traumatized the victims, delayed access to their care and recovery, and some cases are not referred to the military justice system for appropriate accountability.”

But the apology was unlikely to quench the simmering anger on Capitol Hill about the scope of the attacks and the secrecy with which the Coast Guard conducted its internal investigation of them, which both Ms. Cantwell and Ms. Baldwin said in their letter were “disturbing.” .”

One of the most disturbing revelations they cited was the lack of disciplinary action against the perpetrators of assaults. At least two senior officers who committed such offenses were allowed to retire with full pensions and unadulterated access to veterans’ benefits, which they still retain. The senators also expressed outrage that those two officers had been recommended to the Senate for promotions while under investigation, when the allegations against them were never made public.

“It is unclear how many other officers substantiated claims against them, went unpunished and remained in command or management positions,” Ms Cantwell and Ms Baldwin wrote.

The Coast Guard also disclosed that officials had not updated the personnel files of individuals determined to have committed assaults and incidents of harassment, the senators said, omissions that allowed certain individuals to pass background checks they might not otherwise have approved.

The senators said some had described the Coast Guard’s failure to publicize its investigation as “intentional.”

Congress has been investigating the issues of sexual assault in the military services for years and recently passed legislation to make decisions about placing perpetrators outside the chain of command. The issue flared up again this year after the Pentagon released statistics showing student-reported attacks at West Point, the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy rose to record levels in the 2021 academic year.

No information from the Coast Guard Academy is included in that report; while the Coast Guard is part of the Armed Forces, it is placed under the Department of Homeland Security.

A Coast Guard spokesman said the agency has made “major improvements” in how officials investigate reports of sexual assault in recent years, and is “creating a culture to prevent assault and sexual harassment.”