In Latest CNN Bombshell, Female Former Coast Guard ALJ Judge Says The All Male Court Doesn’t Take Sex Crimes Seriously, Has a Culture of Misogyny, & a Cultural Transformation is Needed
New York, NY
By: MLAA
Judge Jeffie Massey served as a Coast Guard Administrative Law Judge from 2004 to 2007, famously blew the whistle on corruption within the Coast Guard court and publicly clashed with the court’s chief justice after she retired.
In a sworn statement Massey wrote that she was told by the Chief Judge of the Coast Guard ALJ Court hat she was part of a “big happy family” within the Coast Guard, not part of an independent judicial system.
Massey swore that she was ordered by the Chief ALJ Judge to always rule in the Coast Guard's favor in cases, and “that if I ever found myself faced with a circumstance when I just absolutely positively could not find anyway to rule in favor of the Coast Guard on an issue, that I should rule against them, but word it delicately and just apologize for it as much as I could.”
Journalist Richard Gaines wrote that Massey’s explosive allegations against her former employer described the Coast Guard’s ALJ Court as “A corrupt system where justice was a charade.”
On March 16, 2023 CNN published a bombshell investigative piece on the Coast Guard titled, “Failed oversight, lax punishments: How the Coast Guard has allowed sexual assault at sea to go unchecked,” which included contributions from Judge Massey.
In the CNN article, Massey, who is one of the only women to have ever served as a Coast Guard ALJ judge, described the agency as having a “culture of misogyny,” and said “All the boys were running the show.”
The Coast Guard ALJ Court currently consists of 5 male judges and the court has not had a female judge in more than a decade, according to CNN.
During her time as a judge, Massey said she witnessed the “rabid” way the Coast Guard's judges went after even minor drug offenses and said that “sex crimes were not recognized as a serious issue” by the Coast Guard or the ALJ Court.
Massey told CNN that a cultural transformation at the agency is long overdue.
According to CNN, the Coast Guard acknowledged that not even a single mariner had their merchant mariner credentials revoked for shipboard sexual misconduct in the last decade, and the agency couldn’t point to a successful sex crime prosecution of a credentialed mariner within the last 30 years.