Op-Ed: For Decades, Officials Knew of SASH Issues at Coast Guard Academy

 

When will the admirals be held accountable? A simple question I asked Admiral Fagan two years ago at a healing event hosted by the Coast Guard after the Operation Fouled Anchor report was released by CNN. At the time, I thought that a handful of admirals were responsible for the lack of prosecutions at the Coast Guard Academy. I’ve since learned that dozens of admirals and civilian officials had knowledge of the crimes that went unprosecuted for five decades.

The Operation Fouled Anchor (OFA) memo dated July 9, 2019 discusses the lack of actions taken by Coast Guard Academy superintendents from June 1989 to 2006. The superintendents were all admirals and they were responsible for the day-to-day operation of the school.  They reported to other admirals, located in Washington, DC, who were responsible for the daily operation of the service.

The DC admirals were the commandants, vice commandants and Coast Guard Chief Counsels. They too reported to someone - the Secretary of Transportation, the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, and the Department of Transportation General Counsel. After March 1, 2003, the Coast Guard admirals reported to the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Department of Homeland Security General Counsel.

The 2019 OFA memo doesn’t discuss the DC admirals. Nor does it discuss officials at the Department of Transportation or the Department of Homeland Security. The lack of reference is puzzling given that they too had knowledge of what was occurring at the school. A simple compilation of newspaper articles, reports, and Congressional testimony establishes this knowledge.

Associated Press reporter Dan Hall covered the first graduation of women at the Coast Guard Academy.  Per AP article dated May 21, 1980, Admiral John B. Hayes, then Coast Guard commandant told attendees at the graduation ceremony that "we have not in the Coast Guard solved all of our sexual harassment problems.” The article includes another quote, “Ensign Mark J. Yost of Des Moines, Iowa, confirmed Hayes' observation, saying, ‘We can't deny that there were some instances.’”

Admiral Gracey served as commandant from 1982-1986. On February 19, 1984, UPI reporter Timothy Elledge wrote about a hearing in Alameda, California. Per the article, “(w)itnesses told of rape and sexual harassment at the Coast Guard Academy.” On February 10, 1984 Elledge wrote “A woman officer was raped while a student at the Coast Guard Academy and then got an abortion paid for by the government, witnesses said.”  Coast Guard Public Affairs tracks news articles related to the service, sharing them daily with Coast Guard leadership. In 1984 those leaders included Admiral Gracey.

The Department of Transportation also tracked Coast Guard-related articles. Same for the Department of Homeland Security. I learned about the tracking of articles as a Coast Guard JAG and then as the Maritime Administration Chief Counsel, a political appointee position in the Department of Transportation.

Gracey retired in 1986 and was replaced by Admiral Yost (1986-1990). At its spring 1988 meeting the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) recommended that the upcoming study on women in the Coast Guard examine sexual harassment. This recommendation would have been based on knowledge of a problem - sexual harassment and sexual assault. Admiral Yost would have been given information about the problem as part of the study and he would have been responsible for sharing information about the sexual harassment and sexual assault with political appointees in the Department of Transportation.

In 2023, lawyer Peter Gleason wrote a letter to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The letter was referenced in an article published by the Daily Mail. “(I)n the early 1980’s, I personally met another enlisted Coast Guard service member while stationed on Governors Island. He related to me that while he was stationed at the Academy one of his collateral duties was to escort female cadets who had become pregnant to abortion clinics. He told me this was sanctioned by the Academy leadership where any pregnant female cadet was given the choice to either being dismissed from the Academy or forced to have an abortion. This is shared to illuminate the plight of the choices females at the Academy were forced to make: whether to report a rape or sexual assault which could result in their dismissal from the Academy.”  The Department of Homeland Security public affairs team would have noted this article for then Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas and then Commandant Fagan.

Admiral Kime served as Commandant from 1990-1994. On April 15, 1991, Washington Post reporter Bill McAllister wrote an essay entitled “US Coast Guard Confronts Sexism Charges”.  McAllister wrote about the DACOWITS study that was started when Admiral Yost was commandant. “In a report on "Women in the Coast Guard," a task force convened by the service's commandant charged that most male cadets and many men in the service did not want women in the Coast Guard in general "and at the academy in particular."”

Per the article “officials acknowledged that they expelled one student and disciplined several others after they discovered several male cadets had plotted to videotape the seduction of a female cadet. Sensing something was afoot, the woman left the dorm room unharmed.” Additionally, “officials know of only one rape at the school, in the fall of 1984, and said the accused student, here on a foreign exchange program, was quickly deported.” Admiral Kime told McAllister that “he fears that officials may be 'trying to fix a bad situation that doesn't exist.'”  

Two years later - July 16, 1993 - States News Service reporter Louise Palmer noted that “unacceptably high levels of sexual harassment, low morale and serious management problems found at the New London-based Coast Guard Academy have prompted a Capitol Hill-style rap on the knuckles: a budget cut. Members of the House committee that oversees the academy found the results of a recent 'climate assessment' study - and the reaction of the Coast Guard to it - so disturbing, they decided to reprimand the academy and cut in half its $1.2 million request for additional funding for 1994."

The examples cited above are just a few noted in the compilation of newspaper articles, reports, and Congressional testimony I’ve compiled over the past two years since I asked Admiral Fagan when the admirals would be held accountable. The compilation is now 510 pages and includes 627 references. It spans five decades.

The compilation references numerous rapes and sexual assaults at the Coast Guard Academy but only one prosecution, in 2006. It references students fearing retaliation for reporting crimes. It also notes Coast Guard Academy students asking why there are no examples of students reporting crimes and then going on to have successful Coast Guard careers.

Sexual assault and rape are crimes. They have been crimes for over 50 years, and I’m saddened that Coast Guard admirals in Connecticut and Washington, DC failed to address these crimes at the Coast Guard Academy. I’m saddened that political appointees in the Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security with jurisdiction over the service failed to address the crimes.  I’m saddened that three generations of Coast Guard Academy students, many of whom finished their careers as admirals, thought that the reputation of their alma mater was more important than the safety of their fellow students.

K. Denise Rucker Krepp is a Coast Guard veteran and former Maritime Administration Chief Counsel.