In Answer to MLAA Lawsuit Filed in SDNY, U.S. Coast Guard “denies the USCG gave extraordinarily lenient punishments to USCG-credentialed mariners who the USCG knew were sexual predators.”
New York, NY
By: MLAA
On June 28, 2002 MLAA filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Coast Guard seeking records related to the Coast Guard’s enforcement of laws and regulations against sexual misconduct in the U.S. maritime industry.
The suit is an action under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and seeks to enforce a FOIA request MLAA submitted to the Coast Guard more than two years ago on June 30, 2020.
On August 19, 2022 the U.S. Department of Justice, representing the U.S. Coast Guard, filed its answer to MLAA’s lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The Coast Guard is represented by DOJ attorney Carly Iris Weinreb, and the case is being overseen by Senior Judge Denise L. Cote, who suddenly and without explanation replaced the originally-assigned Judge Vernon S. Broderick on Wednesday August 17, 2022.
In the Coast Guard’s response, the agency denies any and all wrongdoing, and specifically denies that the U.S. Coast Guard “gave extraordinarily lenient punishments to USCG-credentialed mariners who the USCG knew were sexual predators.”
The question of whether or not the U.S. Coast Guard protected and enabled sexual predators in the U.S. maritime industry over the course of decades is at the center of the dispute between MLAA and the Coast Guard.
And MLAA is confident that through this litigation and future litigation, it will eventually offer clear and convincing evidence to the American public that the U.S. Coast Guard has a shameful and sickening record of not only “giving extraordinarily lenient punishments to USCG-credentialed mariners who the USCG knew were sexual predators,” but also a long record of intentionally and knowingly allowing sexual abuse to occur aboard U.S. Coast Guard documented vessels because the Coast Guard did not believe stopping the abuse or punishing the predators was important.
A full PDF version of the U.S. Coast Guard’s answer to MLAA’s lawsuit can be found here.