“Not One Word”: Ryan Melogy’s Presentation to the Maritime Law Association; New York, NY, May 2, 2024
Not One Word: How and Why the U.S. Department of Justice is Hiding from Maritime Sex Crimes
May 2, 2024
New York, NY
Maritime Law Association of the United States (MLAUS)—Marine Pollution and Maritime Crimes Committee
Remarks by J. Ryan Melogy:
About 10 years ago I was serving as 2nd Mate aboard the U.S.-flag containership Maersk Idaho, when my boss—the Chief Mate—groped me inside of an enclosed lifeboat that was being lowered over the side of the vessel while we were docked in Salalah, Oman.
I eventually reported this incident (as well as many other related incidents of sexual misconduct committed by the Chief Mate) to the Captain and to Maersk.
In my written report to Maersk, I alleged that I had either experienced or witnessed the Chief Mate commit at least four separate sexual assaults during the two months I worked for him.
Two of those sexual assaults I alleged had been committed against male Cadets from my alma mater—the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point.
Because these alleged crimes occurred aboard a U.S. flag ship, they occurred within the Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction of the United States and were therefore federal crimes.
Specifically, the assaults I alleged would have constituted Abusive Sexual Contact as defined at 18 USC 2244:
The slightly abbreviated definition of the federal crime of Abusive Sexual Contact is:
The Intentional touching through the clothing, of the inner thigh with an intent to humiliate, harass, degrade, arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.
The Shipboard Sexual Assault Reporting Requirement was (and still is) located at 46 USC 10104, which, in 2015, read:
A master or other individual in charge of a documented vessel shall report to the Secretary a complaint of a sexual offense prohibited under chapter 109A of title 18, United States Code.
Pursuant to Section 10104, once I reported these allegations, Maersk and the Captain of the Maersk Idaho were required by federal law to report my allegations of sexual assault to the United States Coast Guard.
However, in 2015, the maximum penalty for violating 10104 by not reporting a rape or other sexual assault was only a $5,000 civil fine—not a very strong deterrent for a company with billions of dollars in annual revenue.
A $5,000 civil fine was not even a strong deterrent for the Captain of an American-flag cargo ship, who earned a couple hundred thousand dollars per year.
By 2015, when I gave my written report to Maersk, the reporting requirement at 10104 had been part of the U.S. Code for over 25 years.
The Federal Shipboard Sexual Assault Reporting Law arose out of an investigation conducted in the late 1980’s by the Government Accountability Office into the prevalence of sexual assault in the U.S. Merchant Marine.
The subsequent GAO report was released in December of 1988 and titled “Coast Guard: Information Needed To Assess the Extent of Sexual Assaults on Ships.”
I encourage you to read this disturbing report, primarily to understand how long ago our government knew about the sexual abuse crisis in the maritime industry, and to understand that this problem was intentionally ignored for decades.
The December 1988 GAO Report discusses an incident where a female mariner aboard a U.S. flag tanker reported to the Captain that she had been raped at sea by a senior officer. The Captain of the ship (and the shipping company) then failed to notify the Coast Guard or any other law enforcement agency of the rape allegation.
After leaving the ship, the victim then attempted to report the rape to the Coast Guard directly. However, three different Coast Guard district offices flatly refused to investigate the alleged sex crime. When she finally prevailed upon the 4th Coast Guard Office to investigate, the investigation eventually uncovered that at least 8 other women had previously filed complaints of sexual misconduct against this ship’s officer with the same shipping company.
None of these complaints had been reported to the Coast Guard, none were reported to the U.S. Department of Justice, and each victim was terminated, while the predator was protected, over and over again, while his HR file at the company’s office filled up with sexual abuse complaints.
This is how it has always worked in this industry. Companies aligned themselves with predatory employees—especially senior ship’s officers—because the companies believed doing so was in their financial best interests, and would maximize profits.
Things are just now beginning to change, but this industry still operates this way, unfortunately.
The disturbing December 1988 GAO Report had one primary recommendation, which was:
The Secretary of Transportation should direct the Commandant of the Coast Guard to require that masters of vessels or other responsible officials promptly report to the Coast Guard any complaint of a criminal sexual offense as soon as possible following report of its occurrence.
This GAO recommendation was accomplished with the enactment of section 214 of the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 1989, made law on December 12, 1989—about one year after the release of the GAO Report.
The enactment of the Shipboard Sexual Assault Allegation Reporting law was not an accident. The GAO Report and the Reporting law were both the result of 10 years of struggle by the Women’s Maritime Association, the first advocacy group for women in maritime, which was led by a pioneering maritime safety activist named Anne Mosness.
In June of 2020—a little over four years after I gave my written Report to Maersk, and more than 30 years after the reporting requirement of 10104 became part of the U.S. Code—I filed a FOIA request with the U.S. Coast Guard seeking:
All reports of sexual offenses received by the U.S. Coast Guard pursuant to 10104, since January 1, 1990; and
All records relating to investigations and punishments for failures to comply with the reporting requirement of 10104, since January 1, 1990.
I also sought, very broadly, all records related to all investigations of Merchant Mariner sexual misconduct cases over the previous 30 years. Two years later, I filed a FOIA lawsuit in the Southern District of New York to enforce that FOIA Request.
The results were shocking. There were more than 200,000 U.S. Coast Guard credentialed mariners working in the U.S. maritime industry. However, in more than 30 years, the Coast Guard had not received a single report of sexual assault in accordance with the reporting requirement of 46 USC 10104.
Zero.
In 30 years, the Coast Guard had also not punished anyone for violating the reporting requirement of 10104. Eventually, I would prevail upon the Coast Guard to fine Maersk Line, Limited for not reporting my allegations to the U.S. Coast Guard. A not small effort was involved in bringing about that historic sanction.
In a Preliminary Assessment Letter (PAL) dated November 3, 2020, S.M. Griffin—Commander, U.S. Coast Guard Hearing Office—notified William Woodhour, President and CEO of Maersk Line, Limited, that Maersk was being fined $10,000 for a violation of 46 USC § 10104 that occurred on February 3, 2015—the day I gave my written report to the Master of the M/V Maersk Idaho.
My investigation into the Coast Guard’s actual policies towards Merchant Mariner abuse proved that the Federal Shipboard Sexual Assault Reporting Law had simply been intentionally buried by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Enforcing the reporting law would have required the agency to assume what would have amounted to a new marine safety mission involving the extremely difficult issue of sexual misconduct in maritime.
Beginning in 1990, it was much easier for the Coast Guard to simply ignore the new Reporting law, not enforce it, not promote it, not initiate the rule making process to create implementing regulations, and to let it die, which is what happened.
Until I came along.
If you’re interested in the history of 10104, you can Google a policy paper I wrote titled, The Long Tragic History of 46 USC 10104. This policy paper would eventually circulate widely on Capitol Hill in 2021 and 2022, and would lead to an historic and dramatic strengthening of the 101014 by Congress with the passage of the Safer Seas Act in December of 2022.
Because of my experiences aboard the Maersk Idaho, and subsequent experiences dealing with the U.S. Coast Guard, I became what CNN called “an Accidental Activist” on this issue. That title is very accurate.
For several years I made a lot of noise about the fact that the Coast Guard was not enforcing 10104, that the Coast Guard was not investigating maritime sex crimes, and I published extensively about these problems on the website of Maritime Legal Aid & Advocacy (MLAA). However, my efforts gained very little real traction. That suddenly changed in September of 2021 when I met Midshipman Hope Hicks, a member of the Kings Point class of 2022.
Hope and I subsequently worked together to turn a tragic, but all-too-common experience she had had endured aboard a U.S.-flag Maersk cargo ship during her USMMA Sea Year into a powerful and nauseating 1st person narrative that we published on MLAA under the pseudonym of “Midshipman-X.”
Hope’s story exploded, and sparked the current reckoning we are talking about in the U.S. maritime industry around the issue of shipboard abuse. Congress became immediately involved, and when members of Congress and their staff went to the MLAA website to read Hope’s story, they also found The Long Tragic History of 46 USC 10104, and dozens of other originally reported stories of maritime sex crimes, as well as stories exposing the Coast Guard’s true policies towards Merchant Mariner abuse, which were based on investigation files I had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Two CNN reporters named Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken contacted me soon after we published Hope’s story, and the duo began investigating the issues I had been reporting on for several years. The involvement of Ellis and Hicken would lead to CNN reporting a series of horrifying stories about maritime sex crimes that helped propel a movement underway in Congress to pass strong maritime safety legislation.
One of these stories reported by CNN, which was based on documents and information that I provided to Blake and Melanie, involved the case of Captain John Merrone, who was accused by the Coast Guard via its administrative law Suspension & Revocation (S&R) process, of drugging two Merchant Marine Academy cadets, and then raping one of them, aboard his American-flag cargo ship where he was the Master.
Ellis and Hicken reported that Captain Merrone had previously served two years in prison in Florida in connection with the alleged rape of another woman, yet was commanding a U.S. flag ship and training female mariners from our nation’s federal maritime academy.
Released near the one year anniversary of the day we published the Midshipman-X story on MLAA, CNN’s bombshell story on Captain John Merrone emphasized to the world how bad this problem was and how intentionally negligent the Coast Guard had been in its duty to protect American mariners from shipboard sexual abuse.
CNN’s story on Captain Merrone also added tremendous force to the legislative effort to pass maritime safety legislation.
The legislative effort that began with the publishing of the Midshipman-X story succeeded in December of 2022 with the passage of what has become known as the “Safer Seas Act,” passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The foundation of the Safer Seas Act is a dramatic strengthening of 46 USC 10104, which is now actually being enforced and talked about by the Coast Guard.
In March of 2023, a few months after the Safer Seas Act became law, CNN published a story titled, “Failed oversight, lax punishments: How the Coast Guard has allowed sexual assault at sea to go unchecked.”
The story explained that the U.S. Coast Guard had never in its history successfully referred a criminal sexual assault involving a mariner to the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecution.
In 2024, we are still waiting to see that first prosecution.
To prosecute a maritime sex predator, there are 4 steps:
The crime must first be reported to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard must conduct an investigation.
That investigation must be referred to a prosecutor.
The prosecutor must make the prosecutorial decision to bring charges against the accused.
Since these are federal crimes we’re talking about, the prosecutor is the U.S. Department of Justice.
In the past 2 years, we have made a lot of progress on the first two steps, i.e. mandatory reporting and then Coast Guard investigations into those reports.
Since September of 2021, when we published Hope’s story, and especially since the passage of the Safer Seas Act, we have heard a lot from the U.S. Coast Guard about the issue of sexual misconduct in the U.S. maritime industry.
In September of 2022 Admiral Wayne Arguin, the Coast Guard’s assistant commandant for prevention policy, told Tradewinds the Coast Guard is, quote, “committed to ending sexual harassment at sea.”
That was a very strong statement by the Coast Guard’s top marine safety officer. In fact, I can’t think of how the statement could be much stronger. He was talking about eradication.
Just last month, Admiral Arguin was again talking to reporters. He gave on-the-record statements to both Tradewinds and Lloyd’s List on this issue. Regarding the historic strengthening of 46 USC 10104, Arguin said, quote:
“Before, we didn’t have that visibility. An individual company could have gone through their own HR investigation… and terminated [the mariner’s] employment. That person then walks down the pier with an active [Coast Guard] credential and then gets hired [by a different company]. Now we have that visibility and if there is a termination for that type of activity, we can evaluate whether there needs to be some action taken against the credential.”
The Tradewinds reporter told Arguin that advocates for the rights of seafarers, like myself, have been complaining that there have not been any criminal prosecutions of mariners accused of sexual assault against their coworkers or against cadets.
The Tradewinds article states, and I quote:
When asked if the Coast Guard could form a better partnership with the Justice Department, Arguin said that there needs to remain a clear line between his agency’s role of building a case and a prosecutor’s role in taking it forward. But Arguin said the Coast Guard is seeking to engage with the Justice Department to figure out what is missing in cases that do not go forward after Coast Guard investigators refer them for prosecution. Arguin said he is looking forward to seeing someone held criminally accountable.
“I think that will also send a message,” Aruin said. “But we need to preserve that line between adjudication and investigation.”
Now, getting back to the Title of this talk:
How and Why is the U.S. Department of Justice Hiding from Maritime Sex Crimes?
I think the most important part of the analysis of these two questions, is simply asking the questions, and realizing that the DOJ obviously has a critical and fundamental role to play in addressing this crime problem of sexual assault at sea.
The role of the DOJ in this maritime safety revolution that is happening in the United States is simply not talked about enough, and the role of the DOJ has not penetrated the consciousness of our industry in the way that the role of Coast Guard has.
We need to talk about the DOJ.
Why is the DOJ hiding from this problem?
I think we can figure this one out. The DOJ has a shameful history on this issue, and they don’t want to drag that out into public and have their record scrutinized. Also, Prosecutors don’t like sex crime cases. They like slam dunk cases, and sex crimes are notoriously difficult to prosecute. When you add in the fact that these crimes are occurring at sea, there is an additional layer of difficulty in gaining a conviction, because of the difficulty involved in investigating something that happened in the middle of the ocean.
How is the DOJ hiding from this problem?
By keeping their mouth shut and saying absolutely nothing about this issue publicly. The statements of Admiral Arguin and others in the Coast Guard I have spoken with indicate that the Coast Guard itself is very frustrated with the DOJ. The Coast Guard has acknowledged this is a problem and acknowledged they have a role to play in addressing the problem. The DOJ has not done that, and what I see is the DOJ using the exact same tactics that the Coast Guard previously used, which at its foundation involves simply exercising their right to remain silent.
There is much more that I could say about the DOJ’s role in this and about the many interactions I’ve had with DOJ prosecutors over the past 2 years involving maritime sex crime cases they have evaluated involving my clients. If you’re interested in hearing about that, and about the DOJ and its handling of the Midshipman-X case, I’m happy to speak with anyone about that.
But what I would like to ask all of you to do it to talk about the DOJ and the role they should be playing in addressing the maritime sexual abuse crisis.
I also ask that you to do your own investigations into what’s going on at the DOJ. We need to bring much more visibility to the DOJ’s role in this, and I hope you can help in that effort.
Thank you very much for inviting me here to speak to you today. It is a honor.
Acta Non Verba.
J. Ryan Melogy