Coast Guard Mariner Sexual Misconduct Records Lawsuit

This case began as a mariner-protection records lawsuit. Justice4Mariners and Maritime Legal Aid & Advocacy sued the U.S. Coast Guard under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain decades of records showing how the agency investigated, disciplined, settled, or failed to act on sexual assault and harassment by credentialed mariners.

The lawsuit sought records from key Coast Guard components, including the Coast Guard Investigative Service, the Office of Inspections and Casualty Analysis, the National Maritime Center, the Administrative Law Judge Program, and the Office of the Commandant. The goal was to expose the system behind the outcomes: who investigated misconduct, who pursued credential action, who declined to act, and how often dangerous mariners were allowed to keep working at sea.

The records fight became part of Ryan Melogy’s years-long investigation into the Coast Guard’s failure to protect merchant mariners from sexual abuse. Records and information developed through that work helped CNN report on failed oversight and lax punishments in the commercial maritime industry, including the lack of criminal sex-crime prosecutions involving Coast Guard-credentialed mariners over decades.

The impact did not stop with commercial mariners. The same investigative pressure and reporting helped set the stage for CNN’s later exposure of Operation Fouled Anchor, the Coast Guard Academy sexual assault coverup scandal. Senator Richard Blumenthal later called Operation Fouled Anchor one of the most shameful coverups of sexual assault in U.S. military history.

This case matters because it shows how public-records litigation can force institutional sexual misconduct failures into the open. Before survivors can change a system, someone often has to find the records the institution would rather keep buried. This FOIA lawsuit helped do that for mariners, cadets, and the public.