Coast Guard routinely dismissed reports of rape

The US Coast Guard covered up more than 100 instances of rape, sexual assault and other sexual misconduct at its Connecticut officer training academy dating back to the 1980s, a secret investigation found.

The “Operation Fouled Anchor” probe, which was kept confidential by top military officials for several years, revealed that the alleged crimes were ignored or covered up by top officials, CNN reported Friday.

“There was a disturbing pattern of not treating reported sexual assaults as criminal matters,” a draft of the report stated.

Most of the credibly accused suspects never faced criminal investigations, instead being slapped with extra homework or lowered class standings if they were punished with administrative violations at all.

Some offenders who were pushed out of the academy in connection with the assaults were not discharged from military service, even as their accusers — who were often blamed for drinking alcohol or not resisting forcefully enough — left the academy, the report found.

In one case, a woman who reported a rape by her classmate was discipline for “engaging in lewd acts,” and was blamed for the attack by officials, who wrote she was “confused, indecisive, lonely, naïve, and sexually inexperienced.”

Another accuser who said she was pinned down and raped by a cadet was punished for fraternizing with a different male classmate in his room, the report found.

In another case, officials declined to prosecute a cadet accused of raping two women because they determined that he had “used poor judgment” by having sex with one of them “without her consent.”

Coast Guard officials finally briefed House leaders on the report earlier this month after inquires from the network, which had reviewed internal documents connected to the investigation, according to the report.

“This investigation made clear that the [school’s] leadership was more concerned at that time about organizational and [Coast Guard Academy] reputation than about the victims of crimes who were members of our service,” a draft of the Fouled Anchor final report from 2019 reportedly said.

Other assault survivors reported that their treatment by academy officials in the wake of reporting the attacks affected their personal relationships and careers and left them suicidal, depressed and dependent on medications to help them deal with trauma, CNN reported.

“Whose fault is it that he was still in the (Coast Guard) 20 (years) later? If I’m sounding frustrated it is because I am,” veteran Kerry Karwan wrote in a letter a 2018 letter to Coast Guard officials and former President Donald Trump.

“I upheld the Coast Guard Corps Values and an individual that assaulted me and other women retired honorably with higher benefits than I did…We are a service that saves people for a living. I’d like to think our own service members are people worth saving,” she reportedly continued.

“Operation Fouled Anchor” was closed by military leaders, many of whom had who had worked and studied with accused attackers at the US Coast Guard Academy in New London, raising questions about the institution’s culture of abuse and cover-ups, CNN found.

It was launched in 2014 when an academy graduate said she had never received justice in connection with her prior accusations of rape decades earlier and claimed she was pressured to drop the issue.

Her alleged rapist, a top officer in the Air Force, was the only accused perpetrator in the investigation to be charged in military court in connection with the investigation, but an appeals court dismissed the charges because the charges came nearly 20 years after the alleged crime, the report said.

Investigators found some two dozen other more recent sex crime allegations had been ignored or buried by academy leaders, and found some 90 purported assaults from the late 1980s to 2006 were also swept under the rug.

In almost 40 of the cases, the statutes of limitations had expired or the suspects were no longer under Coast Guard jurisdiction, so no action was taken, according to CNN.

US Sens. Maria Cantwell (D – Washington) and Tammy Baldwin (D – Wisconsin) sent a letter to Coast Guard leaders Friday, asking why the report had been hidden from those in Congress with oversight authority over it.

“We write to express our grave concern regarding the reports of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment at the United States Coast Guard Academy between 1988 and 2006 and the Coast Guard’s lack of action to properly and timely investigate, prosecute, and report these criminal acts,” the senators wrote.

“We are also concerned about the Coast Guard’s failure to disclose its investigation that began in 2014 and ended in 2020, the withholding of which some have described as intentional.”

The Coast Guard did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.