Culture of fear at Merchant Marine Academy silences students who say they were sexually harassed and assaulted

By Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN

On a 1,000-foot cargo ship in the middle of the ocean, the 19-year-old student felt trapped. Trapped by the crew member she said sexually harassed and groped her, and trapped by the academy that sent her there.

She still had at least 40 more days at sea. If she left the ship before completing “Sea Year,” a mandatory training program at the US Merchant Marine Academy where students are placed on commercial or government ships to gain “self-reliance,” she risked derailing her graduation and worried she would be shut out of a career in the shipping industry.

She also knew it would be impossible to stay anonymous if she decided to come forward because she was the only female student on the ship, and returning to campus early would be a dead giveaway. If her predominately male classmates and teachers found out she reported something that could hurt the elite academy’s reputation and put the coveted tradition of Sea Year in jeopardy, she thought to herself, she would be blamed — or not believed — and the rest of her time on campus would be torturous.

On top of all that, she had been drinking when the crew member touched her, and even though it was a single beer, she worried the school could use that to undermine her report and kick her out for violating the academy’s strict alcohol policy. The government covers the cost of tuition at the academy, and she feared she could owe hundreds of thousands of dollars if she were expelled or tried to leave.

So she stayed silent.

The woman, who graduated in 2016 and went on to work in the military, received permission from her supervisors to share her experience with CNN anonymously. She is hoping to become an attorney to represent sexual assault victims in the maritime industry.

She and others in the school community told reporters that sexual assault and harassment are disturbingly common at the academy, but a culture of fear has silenced victims for years. They spoke out in the wake of an explosive account from a current student who wrote that she was raped at sea in 2019 by her supervisor. As her allegations spread throughout the maritime industry and federal government last fall, lawmakers slammed the academy for failing to keep students safe. Government officials then temporarily suspended Sea Year and rolled out new safety measures for ship operators and the academy.

But this is not the first time the academy has promised to better protect students, and government data reveals how rarely alleged assailants have been held accountable both on campus and at sea, despite previous reforms. A CNN review of school policies, meanwhile, shows that victims still face significant barriers to reporting sexual assault and could jeopardize their education and careers by coming forward.

Fierce loyalty

Founded during World War II, the prestigious Merchant Marine Academy sits on the north shore of Long Island in Kings Point, New York, directly across the sound from New York City.

While less widely known than some of its counterparts such as West Point and the Naval Academy, it is one of the country’s five federal service academies and the training ground for future military officers, ship engineers and captains aboard the country’s fleet of government and commercial vessels transporting cargo and passengers around the world.

Merchant mariners are not part of the military, but they can be called on during wartime or following natural disasters. They delivered millions of tons of cargo to support troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, and assisted in the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy.

Women were first admitted to the school in 1974, and the number of female students has been increasing over the years, to a record of 74, or just over 26%, in the class of 2023. But the school’s own reports and surveys show how difficult it is for female students to speak up when they routinely face misogyny, discrimination and abuse.

Even when they do, academy and government data show how rare repercussions are.

Only one merchant mariner has had his credential suspended or revoked for sexual misconduct involving an academy student at sea in the past five years, the Coast Guard said. In that case, the crew member was accused of sexually harassing and groping a female deck cadet and his credential was suspended for three months as part of a settlement agreement.

Of the 22 official reports of sexual assault received by the academy between the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years, the most recent data available, four resulted in investigations at the school level. When alleged assaults occur on commercial ships during Sea Year, the school doesn’t have the authority to investigate unless both people involved were students, meaning it is typically up to the shipping company or the Coast Guard to pursue investigations and take any action. Government officials said they are aware of only one criminal prosecution of a sexual assault case involving a student at the academy and it was more than two decades ago.

And the official reports of sexual misconduct are just a fraction of the incidents that occur. When permitted to be anonymous in a 2018 survey, less than half of those who said they experienced unwanted sexual contact during the academic year said they officially reported the incidents.

“There is a toxic culture,” said an academy employee, who requested anonymity to talk freely about student allegations. The employee told CNN that in the last year alone, seven current students said they were sexually harassed during Sea Year. None of them made formal reports. “They don’t want to betray the academy and hurt their careers … you’re almost trapped. You’re getting a great education, but there is an air of indentured servitude.”

‘They just don’t trust anybody’

Amid the historic buildings scattered across the 82-acre campus sits an old gray house, right next to the running track and an outdoor gym where students go in large groups to lift weights and socialize.

This is where academy officials took Michelle Underwood and told her she would be living when she was hired to head up the school’s sexual assault prevention efforts in 2017.

The school publicizes that the sexual assault response coordinator “lives on campus and is available 24/7 should anyone need assistance with reporting a sexual assault.” But Underwood knew as soon as she carted her luggage into the house that its high visibility would make it likely no student reporting misconduct would seek her out there.

“This is like a bad, bad dream,” Underwood remembers thinking upon seeing the location of her residence. “I complained and said I really think this is prohibitive, a barrier from coming to talk to me.”

She started working at the school not long after the infamous “Sea Year Stand Down” of 2016. That was the first time the academy suspended the sea training program amid reports of sexual assault and harassment at higher levels than any other federal service academy — prompting media coverage about the academy’s failures and specific sexual misconduct allegations. Before reinstating the program the following year, officials pledged to implement changes reflecting a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault and harassment.

Given the increased scrutiny, Underwood assumed the academy would be truly committed to creating a safer place for students, but she said it soon became clear this was not the case.

Instead of seeking advice and opinions from outside experts to help the academy improve its policies, she said the school only worried about protecting its reputation — denying her the resources and staffing she needed and turning down recommendations she made such as auditing ships during Sea Year to make sure students felt safe.

The office where she and other victim advocates worked sits in a highly trafficked location in the middle of campus as well. And while students can also either call a 24-hour phone line to make reports or request a meeting in their barracks, Underwood said the prospect of her walking down the hallway and arriving at a victim’s door was just as mortifying. As a result, she resorted to finding a dark alley off campus where she would walk at night with the few students who did come to her to talk.

“They just perpetually created roadblocks for creating safe space,” said Underwood, who resigned in 2019. She filed two complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, one for a hostile workplace and one for retaliation after making the first complaint.

Both were substantiated, she said. The academy declined to comment.

The accidental advocate

An academy graduate and merchant mariner himself, 39-year-old Ryan Melogy never imagined he would become a one-man watchdog for the maritime industry.

But that’s what happened. From his studio apartment in Los Angeles and even while working on a ship, he has spent the past two years battling the federal government for information about sexual misconduct at sea.

As he posted updates, memes and criticism of the academy and the Coast Guard on social media and his blog, he gained a following and began hearing from mariners all around the world. Some blasted him for scaring women away from the industry, while others rallied behind his mission.

Then, one day in early September last year, he received a message from a current student at the US Merchant Marine Academy. The woman wrote, in painstaking detail, how she was repeatedly sexually harassed and eventually raped at sea by her boss in 2019 when she was 19 years old. She described waking up to find blood on her sheets after being pressured to take repeated shots of alcohol the previous night, and said that since returning to campus, she learned of nine other female students at the academy who said they had also been raped during their Sea Year.

At the end of her message to Melogy she wrote, “You can publish this.”

Under the pseudonym “Midshipman X,” Melogy posted the woman’s account, which would go on to spark the current reckoning inside the academy and industry.

Melogy knew firsthand the consequences of reporting sexual assault.

Back in 2015, while working as a second mate aboard a container ship, he reported a senior crew member he said sexually harassed and groped him and two cadets from the Merchant Marine Academy. His alleged assailant continued working on the same ship, however, and the shipping company, Maersk, didn’t notify the Coast Guard of the complaint as required by law, according to an agency letter reviewed by CNN. A spokesman for Maersk Line, Limited said that while the company was initially fined for failing to notify the Coast Guard of Melogy’s complaint, it appealed and said those charges were dismissed.

When Melogy discovered, years later, that the crew member he accused of misconduct had been promoted, he said he finally decided to take his allegations to the agency himself. The Coast Guard launched a criminal investigation in 2019, finding evidence corroborating Melogy’s allegations, records show. Nonetheless, Melogy said, nothing happened to him and more students were sent to train on a ship where the man worked.

The US Maritime Administration, which oversees the academy, did not dispute this claim but said the academy does not assign cadets to vessels where personnel are known to have “outstanding allegations of sexual misconduct against them” and that if this changes while students are already on board, they are removed as soon as possible.

In an effort to hold the federal government — and perpetrators — accountable, Melogy started his blog, Maritime Legal Aid & Advocacy and posted about his own case. Soon, he said other students came to him with new allegations and information about the man Melogy said groped him and others. As the evidence mounted, the Coast Guard filed a complaint against the alleged abuser in 2020, seeking to suspend or revoke his mariner credentials. More than six years after coming forward, Melogy is awaiting the final determination. The Coast Guard did not comment on the case.

Much like publishing his own ordeal, Melogy suspected that posting Midshipman X’s account would force the academy and the maritime industry to take notice.

And it did.

In the days and weeks following the blog post, Maersk, one of the biggest shipping companies in the world, suspended and then fired five crew members, though it said this month it was “unable to make any findings with respect to the rape allegation” because certain employees refused to cooperate with the investigation. The Coast Guard launched an investigation into the rape as well, and the academy suspended its landmark training program for the second time — just weeks before students were set to board ships and embark on their Sea Year voyages.

A need for accountability

“When is it going to stop?” Stephanie Vincent-Sheldon asked herself as she read the headline about Midshipman X.

When she graduated more than two decades ago, she tried to put her time at the academy behind her — leaving New York, changing careers and starting a family. But all these years later, she felt a flood of anger as she pictured this 19-year-old student going through the same backlash and mental anguish that she did.

Vincent-Sheldon is the only student at the academy known to have had a sexual assault case criminally prosecuted, and that was back in 1997, when she reported an older male student barged into her room and molested her in her bed.

School officials told her to keep what happened quiet, she said, but she ignored this advice and went to local police, and her assailant was eventually found guilty and sentenced to prison.

Her remaining time on campus was excruciating because of how isolated and ostracized she was.

“It’s basically a firing squad,” she said. “How many bullets are you going to take before you disenroll?” She said she was subjected to intense psychological exams to determine whether she was fit to participate in Sea Year because she had reported she was a victim and was told that if she left the school, she would have to pay around $225,000 for the cost of the years she had already been there. The academy did not comment on her account or legal case.

Vincent-Sheldon said the only way to change the school’s culture and for perpetrators to actually be punished is for more students to follow in Midshipman-X’s footsteps and speak up, despite all the reasons to stay silent.

“It’s a personal sacrifice to come forward,” she said. “But would you really want another woman to go through this because you’re too afraid?”

‘Critical we get this right’

When Midshipman X’s account made its way to officials at the Maritime Administration, they knew they needed to act quickly.

Under pressure from lawmakers demanding that students be kept off ships until they were safe, the agency halted Sea Year, a decision it told students was “one of the most difficult we have faced.”

Then a top-to-bottom review of academy policies began and the agency solicited input from students, employees, ship operators and others in the maritime industry to figure out how to move forward.

“All of us have agonized over this; it’s just simply horrific,” Lucinda Lessley, the acting administrator of the Maritime Administration, said in an interview with CNN. “That’s why it is so critical that we get this right. It’s a long-term process and it has to be a culture change and it has to be owned by every single actor in the space.”

In December, almost three months after Midshipman X spoke up, the agency rolled out a series of reforms it hopes will be the first step in this process. Students will be given satellite phones while at sea, for example, and a new alcohol amnesty policy states that victims, bystanders and witnesses won’t get in trouble if alcohol or drug use policies were violated at, or near, the time of an alleged assault. Ship operators, meanwhile, must meet a number of requirements before they are allowed to carry students during Sea Year, such as prohibiting crew members and cadets from entering each other’s rooms and immediately reporting any incidents of sexual misconduct to the school if the ship is carrying an academy student, whether or not the student was involved.

Given the academy’s troubled history and past pledges to change, some in the school community are skeptical the new reforms will make a difference.

“Until they confront their history they’re never going to move forward,” said Ann Sanborn, a captain and lawyer who worked for the academy for 27 years before retiring at the end of 2020.

Sanborn said that as an associate professor and assistant dean for three years, she and others voluntarily mentored victims at the school until 2012 when a sexual assault expert was hired by the academy. After that, she continued to be disappointed to see the school’s reports each year showing how many students said they had been victimized. Though she said she believes recent leadership has genuinely wanted to better protect students, progress has been painfully slow. The school needs to learn from past attempts and failures and find new approaches, she said.

Several of the reforms Sanborn and others said sounded the most promising, such as implementing more video monitoring on ships, are considerations, and not mandated at this point. And the requirements only focus on the Sea Year program even though most alleged sexual assaults have occurred on campus.

Students also enter the broader industry as soon as they graduate, and Midshipman X wrote in a November blog post that more needs to be done to address the “toxic culture of unpunished sexual harassment and sexual assault that plagues the U.S. maritime industry.”

Lawmakers proposed legislation last fall aimed at addressing sexual assault both within the industry and specifically at the academy, though its future is uncertain. Underwood, the school’s former sexual assault response coordinator, said she was heartened by this bill but that more avenues are still needed for victims to report sexual assault to someone outside the academy given the distrust of school officials.

Denise Krepp, a former chief counsel for the Maritime Administration, said the academy has had plenty of chances to change. She said she tried to ring the alarm back in 2011 when she requested an independent investigation into a “credible report” of multiple sexual assaults being covered up by the school. Instead of looking into the allegations, she said officials forced her to resign.

“There’s been no accountability,” she told Congress in 2019. Krepp also pointed to a $1.4 million settlement agreement the agency entered in 2020 with a student who alleged he was sexually assaulted, leading her to question what is stopping more settlements in the future.

The agency didn’t comment on the criticism, but Lessley did agree there is more to be done and that barriers preventing students from speaking up still exist. She emphasized that the new plan includes a requirement that the agency continue to evaluate whether additional changes are necessary.

When asked about victims who may be concerned they won’t be able to graduate or find a job if they report sexual assault or harassment and have to get off a ship early, fail Sea Projects or receive a negative evaluation from a crew, a spokesperson for the Maritime Administration said the agency understands these are issues and will continue to look into them. “Fear of being unable to obtain the requisite sea time has been a barrier to reporting,” the spokesperson said, explaining that new policies also stress the school will do whatever it can to help students obtain the required time at sea and finish their projects so they can graduate.

In terms of students being required to repay the government or enter active duty if they leave the school after two years, the agency said the maritime administrator has the discretion to waive this in cases of hardship.

Lessley, the acting administrator, said it is unacceptable for any students to feel unsafe at the academy or at sea.

“It’s not enough for us now to say that we are making a change,” Lessley added. “What’s critical is that we make the change.”

Do you have an experience or information to share about the US Merchant Marine Academy or the maritime industry? Email us at watchdog@cnn.com.

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