Ryan Melogy: The Accidental Advocate
By: Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN
An academy graduate and merchant mariner himself, 39-year-old Ryan Melogy never imagined he would become a one-man watchdog for the maritime industry.
But that’s what happened. From his studio apartment in Los Angeles and even while working on a ship, he has spent the past two years battling the federal government for information about sexual misconduct at sea.
As he posted updates, memes and criticism of the academy and the Coast Guard on social media and his blog, he gained a following and began hearing from mariners all around the world. Some blasted him for scaring women away from the industry, while others rallied behind his mission.
Then, one day in early September last year, he received a message from a current student at the US Merchant Marine Academy. The woman wrote, in painstaking detail, how she was repeatedly sexually harassed and eventually raped at sea by her boss in 2019 when she was 19 years old. She described waking up to find blood on her sheets after being pressured to take repeated shots of alcohol the previous night, and said that since returning to campus, she learned of nine other female students at the academy who said they had also been raped during their Sea Year.
At the end of her message to Melogy she wrote, “You can publish this.”
Under the pseudonym “Midshipman X,” Melogy posted the woman’s account, which would go on to spark the current reckoning inside the academy and industry.
Melogy knew firsthand the consequences of reporting sexual assault.
Back in 2015, while working as a second mate aboard a container ship, he reported a senior crew member he said sexually harassed and groped him and two cadets from the Merchant Marine Academy. His alleged assailant continued working on the same ship, however, and the shipping company, Maersk, didn’t notify the Coast Guard of the complaint as required by law, according to an agency letter reviewed by CNN. A spokesman for Maersk Line, Limited said that while the company was initially fined for failing to notify the Coast Guard of Melogy’s complaint, it appealed and said those charges were dismissed.
When Melogy discovered, years later, that the crew member he accused of misconduct had been promoted, he said he finally decided to take his allegations to the agency himself. The Coast Guard launched a criminal investigation in 2019, finding evidence corroborating Melogy’s allegations, records show. Nonetheless, Melogy said, nothing happened to him and more students were sent to train on a ship where the man worked.
The US Maritime Administration, which oversees the academy, did not dispute this claim but said the academy does not assign cadets to vessels where personnel are known to have “outstanding allegations of sexual misconduct against them” and that if this changes while students are already on board, they are removed as soon as possible.
In an effort to hold the federal government – and perpetrators – accountable, Melogy started his blog, Maritime Legal Aid & Advocacy and posted about his own case. Soon, he said other students came to him with new allegations and information about the man Melogy said groped him and others. As the evidence mounted, the Coast Guard filed a complaint against the alleged abuser in 2020, seeking to suspend or revoke his mariner credentials. More than six years after coming forward, Melogy is awaiting the final determination. The Coast Guard did not comment on the case.
Much like publishing his own ordeal, Melogy suspected that posting Midshipman X’s account would force the academy and the maritime industry to take notice.
And it did.
In the days and weeks following the blog post, Maersk, one of the biggest shipping companies in the world, suspended and then fired five crew members, though it said this month it was “unable to make any findings with respect to the rape allegation” because certain employees refused to cooperate with the investigation. The Coast Guard launched an investigation into the rape as well, and the academy suspended its landmark training program for the second time – just weeks before students were set to board ships and embark on their Sea Year voyages.
A need for accountability
“When is it going to stop?” Stephanie Vincent-Sheldon asked herself as she read the headline about Midshipman X…