Editor’s Note: This article is reprinted with permission from the Aug/Sept issue of the Coast Guard Academy Alumni Association’s Bulletin.
From the moment we first raised our hand and began our Coast Guard career, we took an oath to the Constitution and began a journey instilled by shared values, a sense of purpose, and a knowledge of belonging to a great organization with a higher calling. Thirty years ago, our leaders established our Core Values – Honor, Respect, and Devotion to Duty – as doctrine to guide our actions and make our oath real.
We take pride in our storied Coast Guard history and in the distinguished service of our Coast Guard members every day. But we also know that we haven’t always lived up to our Core Values. While we witness the extraordinary accomplishments of our Coast Guard around the globe while we also confront the legacy of sexual assault and harassment revealed by Operation Fouled Anchor (OFA), and the stories and testimony of our past and present Coast Guard women and men who make clear that these problems continue today. The distressing findings of OFA, a Coast Guard investigation into sexual assault and sexual harassment at the Coast Guard Academy during 1988 through 2006, were compounded by the fact that the report had not been shared with Congress or DHS when it was completed in 2020.
Failure to disclose the Fouled Anchor report was a mistake. As Commandant, Admiral Fagan has conveyed how this prevented oversight, missed opportunities to connect with victims, and eroded trust. Clearly it has. It has also provided a cause for immediate and comprehensive action to make lasting, positive change going forward.
The Commandant appointed me in January to lead an effort to unify and coordinate Coast Guard support to outside investigations in the aftermath of OFA, to energize ongoing actions to address sexual assault and harassment, and set the foundation for cultural change. My role is to synchronize existing programs, support them with resources, challenge notions of what can and can’t be done, and make sure we communicate with Congress, DHS, our workforce and the public, in a transparent and constructive way. Her direction recognized that issues of harassing behavior were neither limited to the past nor exclusive to the Academy.
The testimonies of courageous victims who stepped forward, and our own inquiries, revealed to us the travails of the many victims who for years suffered in silence and needed our support. We learned about their experiences, their pain, and their suffering. Through it all, we learned that we needed to move quickly – to fortify all the good that is the Coast Guard – while honestly confronting that which compromises our Core Values. We must foster healthy workplace cultures that proactively and aggressively challenge inappropriate behavior and ensure our members feel safe, supported, and valued.
So we got to work. Following revelations of the OFA investigation, the Commandant directed the Accountability and Transparency Review (ATR), a 90-day intensive examination to assess the Coast Guard’s current culture, policies, and processes. Acting decisively on the ATR’s finding, the Commandant directed 33 initial actions (CDA) focused on strengthening the Coast Guard’s culture. Eighteen are now complete.
The Commandant has also prioritized funding. The Service has invested over $13 million over the past year to advance ATR priorities, including improving cadet oversight with additional cadet development system personnel and strengthening Coast Guard Academy security through access control and privacy upgrades. The $19 million provided in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 appropriation will catalyze improvements including additional medical capacity, personnel to modernize the processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, and attorneys to staff the Office of the Chief Prosecutor.
The Coast Guard requested $11 million in the FY 2025 budget to further advance CDAs and ATR initiatives. That funding would allow us to grow our Integrated Primary Prevention Program, expand the Anti-Harassment Program Management Office, invest in mental health services at the Academy, and begin transforming the Officer Evaluation System. Additionally, our FY 2025 Unfunded Priorities List includes over $140 million to update our human resources IT systems, expand legal support and oversight, invest in infrastructure at both the Academy and Training Center Cape May, and directly support additional ATR actions. This funding will be crucial to the success of our efforts.
Underscoring this progress, I would like to discuss five areas of focus: strengthening service culture, actions at our accession points, prevention, victim support, and accountability, and transparency. [Editor’s note: The printed version of the article in the August/September issue of The Bulletin only included updates on victim support and accountability and transparency.]
Strengthening Service Culture
Culture is the bedrock of our service. Each day, culture and our Core Values inform our behaviors – how we interact with each other and the people we serve, both on and off duty. The Coast Guard’s senior enlisted leadership recognized the importance of reinforcing positive culture by launching the Strengthening Service Culture initiative. This effort will engage and empower our workforce to ensure that all members of Team Coast Guard have the positive workplace experience they expect and deserve. Together, we will invigorate and sustain the Coast Guard’s culture to more effectively align our behaviors with our values. Amongst these efforts, the 30th anniversary of our Core Values gives us an historic opportunity to revisit them, clarify what they mean to us today, and recommit to them in a thoughtful and deliberate manner. Through surveys, conversation, training, and workshops, we are engaging Coast Guard members in our service-wide effort to more clearly describe our Core Values and define the expected daily behaviors that match.
Cultural transformation will not happen overnight, and we will continue to pursue initiatives and investments to ensure we can identify and prevent harmful behaviors, hold members accountable, and support victims through recovery, both in the fleet and at our accession points.
As we began to address these key issues surrounding culture, we immediately understood that neither the Coast Guard nor any other organization should attempt to take on cultural improvement on its own. We solicited the support of professionals in the neuroscience of harmful behaviors and of long-term culture change, including RAINN, a leading national anti-sexual violence organization, and Dr. Annie McKee, an author, academic leader and leadership advisor specializing in building resonant cultures.
Already, the Core Values team has involved over 500 people – examining their values, hearing hundreds of their stories, understanding when our values helped us shine, and when they should have guided behavior but did not. After announcing an initial set of Core Values definitions based on a roll-up of data and analysis from these interviews, the Core Values Project will deliver a series of workshops for Coast Guard members in Fall 2024 and Winter 2025. Far from typical training, these workshops will give participants an opportunity to look at their personal values, integrate them with the Core Values definitions from earlier engagements, and make decisions about how they want to – and will – act on our values.
This is crucial, foundational, and enduring work that will fundamentally strengthen our service culture. It will take time and consistent effort as we continue, and we look forward to providing you an update as we reach milestones.
The Academy and Cape May
While our Core Values endure, the incoming generation of Coast Guard women and men are encountering a different service experience from day one. This summer, the Coast Guard Academy Class of 2028 reported to a transformed Swab Summer. Their basic training regimen is more deliberately scripted. Oversight is stronger. The focus on Core Values is woven more deeply than ever into their experience from the moment they set foot in Chase Hall. Immediately following graduation from Training Center Cape May, our newest enlisted members will soon experience Sentinel Transformation and Readiness Training (START), where they will have a profoundly improved introduction into the Coast Guard. START’s key focus areas – intervention skills, interpersonal communications, reinforcement of Core Values, financial literacy, and resilience building – will prepare them with essential knowledge to thrive personally and professionally.
Regardless of their accession source, our newest Coast Guard Sentinels will learn that they have joined an incredible organization, one in which they are safe and valued, and where they will serve a vital role in ensuring the safety, security, and prosperity of our nation. The changes they will experience are only the beginning of significant progress the Coast Guard is making to strengthen our culture, ensure a safe and supportive workplace, and empower all of our members to lead consistent with our Core Values.
Prevention
Prevention is a critical element of our efforts. New Coast Guard members need to be supported throughout their careers with engagement that reinforces the workplace behaviors we expect and administrative tools that keep us true to Core Values. We have made strides and investments in preventing harmful behaviors, especially with our creation of a Coast Guard Integrated Primary Prevention Program. Across the range of Coast Guard leadership courses, we are integrating facilitated dialogue to help leaders normalize difficult conversations regarding intervention. This will ensure commands are addressing harmful conduct when most effective – through immediate peer intervention and correction, or supervisor engagement, through prompt and informal resolution or administrative sanction.
In 2025, all Coast Guard members will receive in-person Bystander Intervention Training, which will deliver an intensive and engaging curriculum that normalizes the expectation for any member to speak up when witnessing, or experiencing, harmful behaviors, just as we do when an action places the team in danger during Coast Guard operations. Additionally, the first ever service-wide Defense Organizational Climate Survey (DEOCS) is helping us pinpoint problem areas and focus our leadership efforts to prevent harmful behaviors before they occur. We need to and are investing more in prevention – it’s the most effective way to achieve the workplace we want for each other.
Victim Support
When someone is the victim of sexual assault, sexual harassment or other harmful behaviors, we need to center our response on victim support. To drive this effort, early this year the Coast Guard created an Enterprise Victim Advocate (EVA) position and appointed Captain Laura Collins (ret) into this first-of-its-kind role within the armed forces. The EVA amplifies victims’ voices and seeks to address service-wide issues that affect the prevention of, response to, and recovery from harmful behaviors, while ensuring a victim-centric approach to how we develop and implement human resources policy. The EVA is different than a trained victim advocate (VA) and does not replace a VA in providing direct services to a victim. Rather, the EVA provides referrals and contact information, connecting them to a VA or SARC should a victim wish to seek services. Above all, the EVA is someone who knows the Coast Guard, and is empowered to be a connection between leadership, affinity groups, victims’ organizations, and networks of survivors, making us better in the process.
The EVA also addresses rumors to provide facts, both to external stakeholders and back to leadership. One example is Captain Collins’ actions to correct misperceptions regarding form CG-6095 entitled “Victim Reporting Preference Statement”, which allows a victim to elect whether to make a restricted or unrestricted report. At any time, victims of Military Sexual Trauma can gain services from the Department of Veterans Affairs by visiting a Vet Center. No form is needed. Our Sexual Assault Response Coordinators (SARC) will ensure victims have access and assistance in completing the CG-6095 should a victim wish. Additionally, our Strengthening Service Culture website – designed as a comprehensive, one stop location for background information, resources, and policy updates – provides guidance on how any current and former member can go to a Vet Center for treatment, and be seen the same day.
Many victims would like to see the investigation into their allegations – a seemingly simple way to support victims and their recovery. However, the Coast Guard is bound by law, the FOIA and Privacy Act, which requires victims to submit a FOIA request to receive criminal or administrative investigations. This also requires redactions, or the masking of text, when necessary to protect the privacy of reporting sources, witnesses, or other information covered by law. The Coast Guard has made Congress aware of these restrictions, and we have added staff and streamlined steps to make the FOIA process more efficient to better serve victims’ needs.
Just as our workforce must have access to the support they need, they must be able to trust in the process to report misconduct free from fear or retaliation. One recent policy change supporting reporting was based on the recommendation of a Coast Guard Academy Cadet who testified before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. This ‘Safe to Report’ policy enables victims to report sexual misconduct without fear of consequences if collateral misconduct such as underage alcohol use is involved. We are also reinforcing across leadership – officer, civilian, and enlisted – the expectation that retaliation or failure to take action will not be tolerated – long standing Coast Guard policy that will be vigorously enforced.
Accountability and Transparency
We have heard clear demands for accountability following OFA. The sense that those who committed acts of wrongdoing, through action or inaction, have not been held responsible challenges our sense of justice and erodes trust in our system and leadership. Accountability is critical for mission success, and essential for creating and maintaining trust with our workforce, with Congress, and with the public we serve. Actions to assure accountability for the past are being overseen by investigations by five Congressional committees and subcommittees, in addition to an investigation by the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The OIG has been tasked by the Senate Commerce Committee to examine the Coast Guard’s conduct of the Fouled Anchor Investigation and its final actions, as well as past decisions to withhold the report from Congress and the public.
While they investigate, the OIG, reinforced by the Senate Commerce Committee, has directed the Coast Guard not to engage in any further investigative activities regarding OFA or to take any other action that may interfere with their ongoing investigation. For the Coast Guard to investigate matters related to OFA itself, while these other investigations continue, risks conflict and could negatively impact those investigations.
We are fully supporting the OIG and Congressional investigations. We’ve built a team undertaking an intensive effort to respond to broad requests for information, including the examination of over 1.8 million pages of e-mails from an expansive search. Through this ongoing and expeditious effort, which includes a multi-tiered review to identify potentially relevant e-mails, we have delivered over 75,000 pages of responsive documents across all five Congressional committee requests. As Admiral Fagan has directed, we are doing this in a spirit of transparency recognizing that providing information, whatever it may reveal, is the best way to learn lessons and build a reputation worthy of the trust of our workforce and the public.
We look forward to the results of the OIG and Congressional investigations. We will carefully evaluate their findings to determine whether any actions are warranted or available within the law or regulation., and at what level in government to hold Coast Guard members accountable, regardless of seniority.
As we support ongoing investigations, we will not hesitate to take appropriate action outside of the confines of the OFA-specific investigation. As part of the CDAs following ATR, the Coast Guard established a policy allowing victims to be present – and to speak – during administrative separation proceedings related to sexual assault. Where retired officers are found to have committed sexual assault or harassment while on active duty, we have strengthened our policy to trigger reopening those officer’s Highest Grade Satisfactorily Held Determination. Members, including cadets, found guilty of sexual assault or harassment will be processed for separation, without receiving an honorable discharge.
Finally, we are aware of the recent increase in social media conversations related to sexual assault and sexual harassment in the Coast Guard. We acknowledge that social media plays a significant role in people’s daily communication and recognize that making a report can be a deeply personal and challenging decision. Many of these posts also express a distrust of the system and are anonymous. In some cases we have been able to connect through social media to determine an individual’s willingness to discuss sexual misconduct, but we cannot guarantee that we will see or be able to act on social media posts or other informal communications. The best way to help ensure accountability or gain access to resources is to use the established following options. Individuals who may be victims should make a report through a Coast Guard SARC or other official resource so we may take conclusive action.
Conclusion
Our reputation for Coast Guard excellence is built on a tradition of service and sacrifice, and by being transparent about our shortcomings and fixing them. Every time a crew begins a Coast Guard mission its members go through a process of evaluating risk against the plan, with an honest assessment of each other and their operating environment. When we do suffer a mishap, we investigate and openly evaluate what went wrong. Then we fix it. It isn’t just Service leadership that makes this happen, it’s every Coast Guard member. We’re grateful to you, the members of the Alumni Association that support critical investments, advocate the diverse needs of Sentinels, and sustain needed conversations well after your own service. This honest, mutually supportive approach is how we eliminate sexual assault, harassment, and other harmful behaviors and remain the World’s Best Coast Guard.
As we Strengthen our Service Culture through our Core Values, we will be focused not just on duty to mission, but on duty to each other, being open to the tough conversations and corrective actions that everyone across the workforce will embrace. The culture of an organization – any organization – needs to be continuously cultivated and nourished to ensure that all members of the workforce embody and espouse values and principles of the organization. That takes time. But we have made great progress and are setting the foundation for enduring change. As Admiral Fagan recently said, “We are a better Coast Guard today than we were a year ago, and we will be even better a year from now.”