U.S. Coast Guard Lied To Hide Sexual Assault Victims From Congress, Whistleblower Says

A U.S. Coast Guard Academy official resigned ahead of a congressional hearing for Coast Guard leaders this week, alleging that she was instructed to lie to past victims of sexual assault at the academy to prevent Congress from learning about their experiences.

“The Coast Guard deceived me into violating a basic principle of my profession, which is to never lie to victims,” Shannon Norenberg, who served as the sexual assault response coordinator at the Coast Guard Academy since 2013, wrote in a blog post announcing her resignation Sunday.

Norenberg said she hoped to right a wrong and publicly apologize to the victims she says she misled after she was called in 2018 to assist the Coast Guard’s Operation Fouled Anchor investigation, which secretly examined and documented years of harassment and assault allegations within the military branch.

“The whole thing was a cruel coverup at the expense of the victims, with the entire purpose being to preserve the image of the Coast Guard and avoid scandal,” Norenberg wrote. “And the Coast Guard used me as part of their plan.”

The final Fouled Anchor report reached a similar conclusion, stating that the Coast Guard’s leadership placed more importance on protecting the Academy’s reputation than on the welfare of the victims. Most of the perpetrators were found not to have been criminally investigated for dozens of cases of alleged sexual assault or harassment at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut over nearly two decades.

The commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan, took questions before Congress on Tuesday about Norenberg and Operation Fouled Anchor, which was first exposed to the public last summer by CNN.

Fagan, who started leading the Coast Guard in June 2022, said