When I left the room a while later, I found one of my friends and told him “I think I just got raped.”

** This anonymous U.S. Coast Guard Survivor Testimonial was originally submitted to “The Pettiest Officer of the U.S. Coast Guard” on Facebook in May of 2024 and re-published by MLAA. MLAA does not know the identity of the author and has not verified any of the claims or allegations made in this testimonial. Light formatting changes for readability, or redactions for PII may have been applied before publishing. **

Thank you for all your hard work in being an advocate for us.

I tried to keep it as authentic to what happened but as vaguely as possible. This happened in 2020/2021. My boat had a lot of racist issues that went unnoticed/uncorrected by command (100% of my command was white - officers and chiefs). It took me a while to understand why I never reported it, but that was part of the reason.

I was sent up to a cutter in 2020 as a nonrate. I naturally gravitated towards a group of Hispanics of different ranks and to the people in my department. One of those people was a Hispanic third class (only a few months younger than me), we shared many similarities and got along well.

On patrol, the third class and I became friendlier, but nothing that crossed any lines. There was one instance when we were on watch and he asked me to get a knot on his back, so I did. The interaction lasted all of 30 seconds. He distanced himself from me. I later found out his div-o told him to "get away" from me because I "was trouble and would get him in trouble because I have tendencies." When I asked what "tendencies" he was talking about, they told me it was because I was Hispanic and people from my country are flirtatious and "overly sexual", so it was best to get away from me before he got himself into trouble or I got him into trouble. I had never had an interaction with his division chief and that officer; it was my second week on the boat.

I began seeing someone a few months later and he started seeing a civilian friend of his. Everything was okay. He had broken up with his girlfriend sometime during patrol.

We were always around each other during this second patrol because we were translators, so we became friendly again.

During watch, we would talk about future plans and what we wanted to do with our lives with everyone on the bridge. He said his contract was almost done and he was going back to his birth country. I was getting orders to A-School soon.

When we got to port, we got pier beer privileges. I was tipsy but not drunk, but he was definitely on the edge of drunk/wasted. I went to the head several times, and each time he came from the pier down to the door to female berthing, which was next to his berthing. Each time he told me how he wanted to kiss me/have sex with me and how he should've followed through with our plans (getting dinner at his house during our time in home port) and how dumb it was for me to be with my then-boyfriend. I told him he was drunk and we could talk about it when he was sober.

This lasted for 3 bathroom trips in about 2-3 hours. During one of those, he peeked his head into my berthing to look for me. On the 4th time, he kissed me in front of my berthing and I pushed him off, saying that it was inappropriate and I was in a relationship. He basically said he didn't care and dragged me to one of the shared spaces.

He locked the door and pulled down his pants, pulled himself out and said "look how hard I am." He forced me to give him oral, and then turned me around and assaulted me. I remember crying and whispering desperate pleas for him to stop.

The only reason he stopped was because someone was trying to open the door. He told me to tell no one, and then he left. When I left the room a while later, I found one of my friends and told him "I think I just got raped." He asked if I wanted to do anything about it and I said no because it was late.

The next day after leaving port, we had an unscheduled SA/SH training and he kept looking at me. He asked if I had said anything because he didn't want anything to affect him going back to his home country.

I stayed quiet about it because I feared our advocate wouldn't believe me because they were friends with his div-o and his chief, and they were already wary about me to begin with. He's now in his home country, and I'm out of the service.

I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and MST PTSD because of this incident.