I’m a Current USMMA Student & I was Raped During Sea Year. My Message To My Fellow Cadets Is This: We Must Report These Predators, Remove Them From The Industry, & Make Them Fear The Victims

*This account was submitted to MLAA through our website’s anonymous contact form by the author, who claims to be a current student at the U.S. Merchant Merchant Marine Academy. MLAA does not know the author’s identity.*

I am a female engineering student currently enrolled at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, and I wish to remain anonymous. 

During the time I spent at sea as an engine cadet, I had widely varying experiences on the ships I sailed aboard. During my first sailing I went out as a solo engine cadet, meaning I was shipping without a sea partner. For the most part my crew was very respectful and they kept their distance. I never once faced sexual assault on that ship, and I actually remain in contact with many of my former crewmembers, who seem to have a positive view on my potential as an engineer in the industry. The worst thing that happened on that ship was when a 3rd Engineer told me he thought I “was better fit to work in the porn industry than the maritime industry,” which was devastating to hear as he told me this on his last day and I did not know that he really viewed me that way. 

I thought I had done good work, and I had been told many times by my 1st Engineer, who was a hawsepiper and has been sailing for longer than I’ve been alive, that I was performing better than any first-sailing engine cadets he had ever worked with. Later, that 3rd Engineer told me he had simply been joking when he basically told me that I was not meant to sail. I don’t know if he made that comment because I was a female, or because he really thought I’d make a bad engineer, or because he found me to have the “qualities” of a porn star. But that comment has stuck with me as motivation to prove him wrong. 

And while I’ve used his porn star comment to motivate me to stick with my goal of becoming a professional marine engineer, his comment has also pushed me to avoid ever being viewed that way by my coworkers again. Afterwards, I questioned whether it had something to do with the way I dressed. 

On that ship I worked in women’s boot cut utility jeans and old t-shirts that were a little oversized for my small frame. During a coffee break early in my first sailing, someone commented that they had never seen an engineer wear such tight pants (I can’t remember who said it). I brushed off that comment and simply told them that the pants were comfortable to work in and that they got the job done. But looking back, I wondered if my tight work pants were the reason the 3rd Engineer told me I should be a porn star.

I am very average overall, and quite frankly below average in my chest area, so I never thought that wearing pants that I didn’t need to zip tie to my waist to keep from falling down and size medium Gildan t-shirts on my size small frame would be too much of the female form to keep these grown men from making comments about my body.

I felt like one of the guys almost the entire time I was on that first ship. I was respected as a crew member and a coworker and, aside from the comment from the 3rd Engineer, I knew by the end of the trip that I definitely wanted to pursue a sailing career when I graduated from Kings Point.  

I loved the work, and loved getting dirty while solving the puzzles that the engine room has to offer and the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. While I had been warned before going out to sea for the first time that I needed to be cautious working with so many “sexually deprived” men, when I came back to the Academy after my first sailing I honestly felt that I had been misled into believing that male sailors were going to be attacking me and that I would struggle to exist as a female out there.

But then I went out on my second sailing as an engine cadet. Before meeting the next ship, I bought all new work clothes. I bought men’s utility pants with the smallest waist size I could find, but the pants were still so big on me that I looked like one of those before/after weight-loss ads where they put on their old pants to show how much weight they’ve lost.

The pants were uncomfortable, and even with a belt I had to constantly pull them up because the lower crotch in the pants would literally restrict my ability to walk. But the “porn star” comment and the “tight pants” comment from my first ship had affected me to the point that I was willing to sacrifice comfort in an effort to cover up any semblance of my female shape. 

I got on the 2nd ship roughly a week before my sea partner (a female deck cadet), and right off the bat I could tell things were very different from my first ship. The members of the engine department were all slightly older than the men on the first ship, and they all seemed to know each other very well. This was an American Maritime Officers (AMO)-crewed ship, so all of the engine officers that I worked with were permanent employees and had been sailing together for quite some time. 

At that time I had a lot of issues going on at home, and some pretty extreme things happened in my life leading up to me going out to sea, so I tried to keep mostly to myself because I did not want to talk about my life with strangers. But the engineers asked me all kinds of questions about myself and my life, and I answered the ones I felt comfortable with. We had many interesting coffee breaks discussing politics and world issues and the places we had been. On that ship I worked directly with the 3rd Engineer. He joined the ship the same day I did, but was on his second rotation on the ship. 

He was very smart and we worked together well when it came to maintenance and large jobs. He taught me a lot. I learned a lot about his life, and found out he had gotten engaged right before getting on the ship. And he told me he would be getting off early to get married. I genuinely thought he was a cool guy. He’d done a lot before going to a maritime school and quite frankly his fiancé was gorgeous. 

We completed an ocean crossing and the very first port we tied up in I went out with my Sea Partner, a young A.B. that she had befriended, and the 3rd Engineer. The four of us went out and started the night at a bar. As I mentioned, I had been going through a lot (“more material for my future therapy sessions,” as I referred to it) and I had been not-so-healthily dealing with those issues by way of drinking alcohol. At the bar I drank a few beers with my shipmates, and then the A.B. left to go sober-up before returning to the ship for watch. 

That left me, my Sea Partner, and my 3rd Engineer. We all probably had one or two more rounds of beer before we decided to go find a new bar. While paying for the last round (my Sea Partner and I had paid for a few of the rounds), the 3rd ordered a round of tequila shots. I was tipsy enough at this point that I forgot my personal rule of not mixing beer and liquor and gladly took the shot. We then made our way to the next bar suggested by the bartender. 

This bar was awesome, with a fake grass ceiling, carved rock walls, blasting music, and loads of people. While we pushed our way to the bar to order drinks, I started chatting with a woman who looked about my age, and she made drink suggestions. She told me she loved my American accent, and then added me on social media. When the bartender finally made his way to us, we decided on melon vodka shots—something I will never drink again. 

The woman I was chatting with ordered right next to us and she ordered 2 rounds of shots for her group of friends, me and my sea partner, and the 3rd Engineer. We all took these shots together, back-to-back, and then we joined them at their table outside. That is the point I can put my finger on and say I started to blackout. From that point on, I have only small and very blurry blips of memory from that night. One of the things I remember is being woken up at that table outside, because apparently I had passed-out, and they had woken me up to take another shot of whatever they had ordered. Then, blank. 

The next thing I can remember I was at a pizza parlor with my head on the table. Blank. In a bathroom puking. Blank. In the port surrounded by the warehouses on the walk back to the ship rubbing my sea partner’s back as she puked. Blank. Laying on the floor of the cargo deck with my sea partner curled up beside me and everyone laughing (we had been bunkering when I left and still were bunkering, and I remember seeing the surveyor laughing at me on the ground). Blank. 

Then I remember standing in the adjoining bathroom that my Sea Partner and I shared and asking her if she had been rubbing my thigh in the cab. Blank. Hearing my phone ping while I was asleep in bed and reading a text from the 3rd Engineer to which I responded I was dying of thirst (my naïve self forgot to fill my water bottle and leave it beside my bed before I left). Blank. Then seeing the 3rd standing in front of me handing me an open Gatorade bottle. Everything I remember is like a very foggy dream with a strobe light—it’s all choppy and there are lots of blanks. 

In my room I can remember sitting up against the wall so I could drink the Gatorade and telling myself not to gulp it or I might puke again while spilling some on myself. I remember my 3rd looking out of my window and standing there for what felt like forever just staring out through the glass. Looking back, I feel like I can guess what he was thinking, especially since blocking the view outside my window was a fan house wall painted white. It wasn’t a view to stand there and take in. I don’t remember laying back down but, I do remember feeling him lay down in my bed behind me. Then I remember his arm around me, but I don’t remember how it got there. From there the only memory I have is of the overbearing smell of cigarettes. He had been chain-smoking while we drank at the bars. 

The next morning, I woke up late for work and was still drunk. I saw the nearly empty Gatorade bottle on the back of my bed, but couldn’t figure out where it came from. I just simply stumbled around as I got dressed and made my way down to the engine room to clean scav air boxes. It was hell. I was so hungover and felt like absolute shit. I didn’t see my 3rd Engineer until I was done cleaning the scav boxes, and he avoided me, but I wasn’t sure why. After I finished cleaning up from the scav boxes I was knocked off from work and went back to my room. While I was showering, the Gatorade bottle popped back up in my mind. I checked my phone for the first time that day and my messages were open to the texts with the 3rd. I didn’t remember much of the night before, and to be completely honest I still don’t remember much at all, but I remembered even less at that point. 

Reading the texts, I figured out that the 3rd brought me the Gatorade, and then the memory of him in my bed behind me hit me like a smack in the face. I told myself there was no way. It had to have been a weird dream. He was engaged. I was in a serious relationship for two years at that point.  There was no way I would ever cheat on my boyfriend, and no way I would ever sleep with an engaged man. And I didn’t think there was any way that he would want to sleep with me. I’m nowhere near as attractive as his fiancé. Absolutely no way, I told myself. It all had to have been a drunk dream. 

It wasn’t until two days later that the reality of what happened was forced on me. After the 15:00 coffee break, I got told to go assist the 3rd Engineer with prepping the slops manifold. We were both working in total silence, unbolting the manifold cover, and putting anti-seize on the bolts. It was so uncomfortably quiet until he asked me a question: “Are you on birth control?” he asked. 

That was the first thing he had said to me since that night, and the weight of what that question meant hit me hard. I stood there with my mouth open while the thoughts raced through my mind. Birth control? Why would he want to know that? Does that mean it wasn’t a snippet from a dream? It was real? Birth control...he would only ask that if he had sex with me.

I told him I was. Thank God, I was. And then we went back to working in silence. 

I wanted to cry. I wanted to curl up in my bed and cry. I kept running through what I did remember and trying to piece together anything that would tell me it wasn’t true. But with his question, I knew what had happened. A man roughly ten years my senior, a mentor in my work, an engaged man, a drinking buddy, someone I hadn’t felt the need to be cautious with, came into my room bearing a Gatorade and left my room with the knowledge that he had sex with me.

I say “had sex with me” because I am still trying to distance myself from labeling it rape. But by definition, it was rape. I was so intoxicated I didn’t remember to set my alarm for the morning, let alone remember half of the night. I was in no way capable of consenting, and had I been capable, I know I would not have consented to have sex with him. I would never cheat on someone that I love, and I would never have sex with someone who I knew was in a relationship, let alone someone who was engaged and practically married at that point. 

I didn’t have sex with him. He had sex with me. He used my body for sex. If any of the numerous videos I have seen of myself drunk from that night are any indication, I can only imagine that I was simply a limp body on the bed, which just makes what he did even more disgusting to me. Who would want to have sex with a limp body? I’m not sure why I felt the need to keep his secret, but when he asked me if I had told anyone, I could tell he was terrified that I would. 

After he asked me if I was on birth control, I started to reason with myself as I tried to process what had happened, and I tried to tell myself I had not been raped. He was an attractive man, I told myself. I had been away from my boyfriend for 5 months due to Sea Year, and I must have been lonely, craving attention and physical touch. That’s why I LET him have sex with me, I told myself. But that was my biggest mistake right there. 

I took something traumatizing and tried to reason it into something that I could better handle. I couldn’t handle being raped, but I could handle hating myself for “cheating” on my boyfriend of two years. So that’s what I told my boyfriend, and we broke up over it. I could handle the idea that I was overly-needy for attention and touch, and I even made a pass at my 3rd later on, which he turned down by telling me that I was just a “drunken mistake” to him. 

When I broke up with my boyfriend, I told my sea partner what I remembered from that night. She was the only person I had told. My Sea Partner was the first person to say it out loud to me. “He raped you,” she said. I immediately started to reason with her that it wasn’t rape. I told her that if I wasn’t blackout drunk, in a relationship, and he was single, I would have consented. But the flaw in my mental Band-Aid of reasoning was that none of those qualifications were met. But my Sea Partner allowed me to keep that mindset. I don’t know if it was because she believed me, or if she thought it was better for me, but it at least allowed me to remain capable of working alongside him. 

After completing the crossing back to the United States, my Sea Partner and I met up with the 2nd and 3rd Engineer out in port, and it was clear they had already been drinking for a few hours. The 2nd Engineer had signed off the ship that day, and he was staying in a hotel for the night. 

The 4 of us went to a nearby bar/club and drank and danced. That night the 2nd Engineer began trying to get me alone with him, and he kept grabbing me by the waist where my shirt didn’t cover my stomach, pulling my hair, putting his hand on my ass, and touching me whenever he could. There was a pool at his hotel, and he tried to throw me in it. 

My Sea Partner and I went back to our hotel (we had permission to stay ashore for the night) to get some more appropriate clothes as it had gotten colder, and the 3rd and 2nd came with us. On the ride back to the 2nd’s hotel, I was sitting in the back seat in between the 2nd and the 3rd. I tried to sit by a window, but they both slid in at the same time on both sides of me. During the cab ride, my 3rd started to rub my thigh and I tried to get him to stop without making it obvious to the 2nd what was going on. With everything that happened I was sitting there protecting my rapist from getting caught by another man who had been assaulting me throughout the night. 

We got back to the 2nd’s hotel, and despite me doing my best to stay far enough away from him to keep him from touching me, the 2nd was persistent and continued to put his hands on me. Here was this man who was almost 20 years my senior, who gave me six feet of space in the engine room and excessively apologized if he ever accidentally even touched my arm for a second during a job in a tight space, but now he wouldn’t stop touching me and trying to get me alone. And he was doing it all shamelessly. He made me extremely uncomfortable with his unexpected change from very respectful, almost overly respectful at times, to touching/grabbing/poking me. It got to be too much, and I wanted away from him completely. I went to my Sea Partner and told her that it was time to go. She agreed, and we left.

He texted me the next day and asked me if I wanted to come swim in the pool at his hotel. I never answered him. My Sea Partner and I went back to the ship, and after a few more ports the 1st Engineer was relieved by the other permanent 1st Engineer. The new 1st asked me my opinion of the 2nd Engineer who had signed off, and I told him that I “thought very highly of the 2nd Engineer up until last night he was with us.” I included no details and said nothing else, but he didn’t need any additional information to get an idea of what happened. Then the 1st Engineer apologized to me and told me that there are too many men like the 2nd Engineer in this industry. 

Then the 1st told me that the skeezy 2nd Engineer had a reputation for trying to sleep with all of his female cadets on his last day. “Great,” I thought. “A serial predator. Someone that his coworkers are aware of and yet have done nothing about. Someone that waits until he is signed off from the ship so he cannot be held accountable by the company and their policies because he’s just a civilian at that point. No policy to protect the cadets applies to him at that point. Just great.”

During my time on that ship a few more things happened that were all reported directly to the Captain, but these two things, my accounts of rape and of assault, I never reported during my time on that ship. Despite being constantly surrounded by memories of what had happened during my days on that ship, like having to leave the room every time my 3rd brought up his wedding, constantly hearing both of the Engineers’ names brought up even after they had signed off the ship—despite all of that and more—I stayed on the ship and said nothing. I stayed and said nothing because I needed to get my sea days to graduate, and I needed to get my sea projects completed (an excruciating task when all I wanted to do was sleep away the wandering thoughts and hide from my traumas).

But most of all I needed to be okay. If I was working and eating and going to the gym then I had to be okay, right? If no one knew what had happened to me, then I must be just fine, right? I was so very wrong. While I kept working and learning and joking with my crew and holding myself together, I was nowhere near okay then, and I’m still not there yet. My final breaking moment when I was sailing on that ship came during my last time out in port. I went out with my Sea Partner, the second rotation 2nd Engineer, and my Chief Engineer. I had no plans to go out, but we wanted to celebrate because it was my Chief’s last night. 

The Chief was a great guy. He had a lot of great qualities as a Chief Engineer, even though it was his first trip sailing as one. The 4 of us went out and I was having a blast. I had been slipping further and further into a dark place for a while leading up to that night, but finally I was having genuine fun. I was drinking, but not excessively and we decided that we wanted to bar hop the length of the street we were on. There were a lot of bars, so we picked one and started there. I danced with my Sea Partner and laughed with my Engineers. We hit a few more bars, played pool, and listened to live bands as we went along. It was probably the happiest I had been in a long time. 

When we got to the final bar of the night, there was another live band and the energy in that place was electric. The singer was amazing and was getting the crowd involved and the next thing I knew we were up there dancing and I didn’t think it could get much better. Then I felt someone put their hand on my waist from behind, and then another hand on the other side. I didn’t want anyone touching me. I didn’t look behind me to see who it was, because I didn’t need to. It was someone taking yet another thing from me without my permission. 

It’s one thing to be touched in a packed area where everyone is dancing (mind you the kind of dancing going on here was not grinding and shaking ass—the singer was singing “Rolling on the River” and most of the bar goers looked to be early thirties), but it is a whole other thing for someone to put their hands on my waist and hold me without my permission. The singer then pulled a group of us into the space where she was performing, and we all danced with her. The hands on my waist disappeared, and I peeked behind me to see my 2nd Engineer standing there. 

When the song ended I took my Sea Partner to the bathroom and it felt like glass shattering inside me. I tried to get the words out to explain how I felt when he put his hands on my waist, and she tried to console me, but I was too close to breaking down. I tried to explain that it wasn’t him that upset me. We had become pretty close, and still are, and if everything else hadn’t been affecting me I would have actually liked it. A part of me did like it, but that was overshadowed by an oncoming panic attack. My Sea Partner told me we were going back to the ship in an Uber, and that we were going to say goodbye to the engineers so they didn’t think we got kidnapped. She said bye to them, and we headed out to the curb to wait for our ride. 

I had been holding back tears and they finally fell. I sobbed while sitting on the curb outside of a bar because someone had put their hands on my waist. I sobbed in the Uber. I sobbed in the back of the security car that took us through the port to the ship. I sobbed on the way to my room, and once the door to my room was shut my sobbing only got worse. I told my Sea Partner that I was exhausted from holding myself together all this time, exhausted from lying to myself, and exhausted from people who think they can touch me without my permission. It was at this point that I first said it out loud, that I started to accept reality. 

I said to her, “He raped me.” 

And then I started to ramble about how he raped me, but that wasn’t enough for him. He had to call me a “drunken mistake,” and then beg me to not tell anyone because of how much money he had already spent on his wedding. That’s the kind of man he is. 

The thing that keeps coming up when I think about the night I was raped is the blurry image of my 3rd Engineer standing at my window. He texted me, then came to my room with a Gatorade, then stared out that window with nothing to look at. The only thing that makes sense to me is that his mind was made up before he even texted me, before he came into my room— that he had a goal and was on a mission. 

As he stared out that window, I wonder if he was thinking about his fiancé. I wonder if he was thinking about how drunk I was, about how I was struggling to drink the Gatorade without spilling it, about how I was going in and out of consciousness right before his eyes. All I wanted was hydration and sleep, and that must have been so obvious. When he raped me, I wasn’t even conscious, and I didn’t get a choice. But he did. He was fully capable of choosing not to rape me. He was fully capable of walking out the door of my room and leaving me in my bed unviolated. But that’s not what he decided to do. And then to call me a “drunken mistake” was more of a slap in the face than anything else. 

This is my message to my fellow Kings Pointers and cadets from all other maritime academies: We cannot solve the problem of sexual assault by sticking yet another Band-Aid on it. I think the only solution is to remove these predators from the industry. And the only way we as students can do that and protect future cadets is to report these people. We have to report these creeps, these rapists, and these monsters who terrorize young adults and violate our rights as human beings so that the next cadet doesn’t have to experience it.

The Kings Point administration has put some good reporting protocols in place, and it is our job to use them. My Sea Partner and I signed off of that ship not long after my breakdown, and after that I began to consider my options moving forward. 

When we got back to the Academy, the Sea Year liaison from the SAPR office reached out to both of us and offered her services (as I said, we had made other reports on that ship to the Captain that I will not divulge here, but they were handled well by the Captain and company). When she offered her services, I took her up on it and had a meeting with her. I didn’t intend to tell her what happened, but only intended to find out what my options were and what resources I had available to me. 

Unfortunately, this was not the first nor second time I had been raped or assaulted. I never sought help for the previous attacks, and I ended up in very dark places. After the first time I was raped, I was suicidal for two years, and this time I wanted to do it differently. This time, I chose to take care of myself mentally and physically along my journey to becoming okay. 

In my meeting with the SAPR Sea Year liaison, I alluded to one aspect of what had happened, and then it all just spilled out. She heard the entire story. She is a confidential reporting source, and cannot share what I have told her with anyone. That is something I can congratulate the Academy on with their process for reporting and responding to assault, harassment, and rape. Confidential reporting sources are vital to a victim’s recovery. 

In that meeting we discussed the reporting process and the different kinds of reports I could choose from if I decided to report my rapist. We discussed different resources available to me—options on campus and private options off campus, but near the Academy. Then she asked me to think about what I wanted to do for a few days, and she informed me that I did not have to make a report if I didn’t want to.

From her, I learned that one of my options was to file a “Restricted Report.” If I filed a Restricted Report, it would be filled out by me and the SAPR liaison, and no one else would be able to read it. After filing the Report, it would be placed into a locked filing cabinet with all of the other restricted reports. But if I included the perpetrator’s name, that vital piece of information would be collected from the Report and tracked by the SAPR office.

The SAPR office keeps track of the names of people being reported (all classified), and if someone becomes a repeat offender then they can take action. For example, if the man who raped me is ever reported by another Kings Point cadet (and God I hope he never gets the opportunity to do that to anyone else ever again) then the SAPR office can see that he has been reported before. 

I also had the option of making an “Unrestricted Report,” at which point I can choose a criminal (police) investigation or an internal (company) investigation into the events. No one pays attention during the SAPR lectures we have every year. Some of us don’t pay attention because we think we will never need it, some of us don’t pay attention because the discussion of rape and assault and consent is a hard topic to sit through. And some of us don’t pay attention because we just simply don’t view it as being important. 

But I wish I understood this process better before I went out to sea, and I wish I really believed that I could have sent a message on my SAT phone and been removed from the ship without any probing from the ATRs. I wish I believed my ATR would get me out of a bad situation. And now here I am. The way out was messy, and emotionally—it sucked the life out of me. But now that I have seen the reality of how the process is supposed to work, I wish I could do it all over again. 

We have to report these predators. Whether it is Restricted Reporting, Unrestricted Reporting, or reporting to the Captain or to the DPA, we need to take our power back by showing these predators what happens when they are held accountable for their actions. I’m not supporting rushing anyone through the process of recovery by opening a police investigation right away if a victim is not ready for that. To traumatize a victim all over again when they are in an unhealthy mental state with probing questions, demanding a detailed account of everything that happened, lawyers and everything else is never okay. 

But I do encourage others to at least utilize the Restricted Reporting system. Leave a paper trail. You don’t have to divulge a single detail other than the basic facts like “What” (rape, assault, harassment, etc.), “when,” and “who?” There are a few more items that go into the report, but knowing that I can file one without reliving the entire experience gives me more confidence in the process. By leaving that paper trail, you give the school (and in turn the USCG and the DOT) a more accurate statistic to look at, because I know with every fiber of my being that the sexual assault/harassment statistics that I’ve been seeing put out by the school are absolute bullshit. 

You also give the SAPR office data to track and a means to protect future cadets. Ultimately, you also give yourself the right to choose how it is handled. The paper trail exists once you report and if you choose to do anything with it (100% up to you) having that report is a vital foundation to any investigation. I understand that we all handle these situations differently, but I am encouraging you to report. If it was something that happened your plebe year on campus and now you’re a junior, if it happened out at sea, if it was a staff member, REPORT. 

You can sign that restricted report and never think about it again, or choose an unrestricted report and seek justice. But regardless of how you choose to report, that is what we can do as students. That is the power we have, and that is how we can best contribute to breaking this perpetual system of assault we have been indoctrinated into. I understand this was a very long read, but I hope that I have been able to inform and encourage others in situations similar to mine, or even completely different situations, to take these important steps required for us to change this industry. 

Let’s make them fear the victims.

“There is no timestamp on trauma. There isn’t a formula that you can insert yourself into to get from horror to healed. Be patient. Take up space. Let your journey be the balm.”

—Dawn Serra