MARAD Leader Ann Phillips Commits to Investigating and Exposing the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy’s Dark History of Sexual Abuse

New York, NY

By: MLAA

During an April 27, 2022 hearing before the House Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, MARAD Deputy Administrator Lucinda Lessley committed Ann Phillips, her agency’s new leader, to a full accounting of the horrific history of sexual harassment, assault, and abuse endured by generations of students who have passed through the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and its Sea Year program.

In Lessley’s prepared testimony, she said in addition to implementing the new “EMBARC” Sea Year standards, MARAD is “also committed to a comprehensive review of sexual harassment and sexual assault incidents experienced by cadets, both on campus, and aboard commercial vessels during Sea Year.”

This is the first time MARAD has committed itself to confronting the dark history of sexual abuse it has enabled over the course of generations, and many questions remain about the scope of the “comprehensive review” and whether or not MARAD intends to release its comprehensive review of every single SASH incident that has ever been experienced by a USMMA student (whether on campus or at sea) to the public.

Given MARAD’s history of secrecy, deception, coverups, and outright lies regarding how the agency has handled incidents of sexual abuse committed against its students, its seems likely that MARAD will attempt to hide the results from the public and prospective students of the USMMA. It is also possible that MARAD will never actually complete its Comprehensive Review or even begin work on it.

Many in the USMMA community have stated that the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and MARAD will never be able to move forward and truly create culture change that will make students safer without first confronting the dark history of abuse Academy students have endured on campus and at sea.

In an article published by CNN in February titled “Culture of fear at Merchant Marine Academy silences students who say they were sexually harassed and assaulted,” Ann Sanborn, a captain and lawyer who worked for the USMMA for 27 years before retiring at the end of 2020, said “until they confront their history they’re never going to move forward.”

In the article Sanborn expressed skepticism that any of MARAD’s new policy changes would actually protect students, and said that in order to find new and effective approaches to the SASH problems, “the school needs to learn from past attempts and failures.”

MLAA is committed to forcing MARAD to complete the Comprehensive Review as well as obtaining and publishing the results.