The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating a Coast Guard Academy official on allegations of harassment and a hostile work environment after she publicly charged the service with covering up incidents of sexual assault and hiding a subsequent investigation from Congress.
Shannon Norenberg, the school’s sexual assault response coordinator, resigned from her position June 9 via a blog post, excoriating Coast Guard leadership for quashing an investigation into reports of sexual assault and abuse at the institution that spanned decades.
In July, Norenberg reversed course, saying in a public letter to Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan that she would not resign until the service supported the victims of the assaults and abuse and provided “them with the critical medical care and support they urgently need.”
In an online letter posted July 10, Norenberg said the service has not taken any actions to help victims through outreach, administrative support or accountability.
“Your ongoing and intentional refusal to care for these survivors is not mere neglect; you are perpetuating an ongoing, life-threatening emergency that demands immediate intervention and leadership,” Norenberg wrote. “You seem to believe that you can move forward without reckoning with the past.”
A week after Norenberg retracted her resignation, the service launched an investigation into Norenberg and other unnamed officials at the Coast Guard Academy and Coast Guard Headquarters.
According to the nonprofit Maritime Legal Aid and Advocacy, or MLAA, a group established to protect mariners from sexual assault and abuse, the Coast Guard received an anti-harassment/hate incident complaint against several individuals, including Norenberg, and is obligated to investigate it.
The Coast Guard also has moved to reassign Norenberg to a new Enterprise Victim Advocate unit designed to represent the perspectives of sexual assault victims to Coast Guard leaders, according to MLAA.
Norenberg’s attorney, J. Ryan Melogy of Maritime Legal Solutions, said the temporary duty assignment appeared to be “retaliatory.”
According to Melogy, Norenberg has been shut out of her Coast Guard computer and email and has had her access card suspended.
“This proposed 120-day detail scheme appears to be an attempt to illegally remove Ms. Norenberg from her position at the academy in order to silence and sideline a whistleblower,” Melogy said in a statement through MLAA.
In an email to Military.com on Monday, Coast Guard officials said Norenberg “remains assigned to the [Coast Guard Academy] Sexual Assault Response Coordinator position,” but they refused to comment on the proposed reassignment or the anti-harassment/hate incident investigation.
“We cannot comment on administrative matters involving Coast Guard employees,” the service said in a statement.
In 2014, the Coast Guard launched a multiyear probe into cases of rape and sexual abuse at the Coast Guard Academy, examining reports of more than 50 sex crimes from 1988 through 2006. But it never released the findings of the investigation, known as Operation Fouled Anchor.
When the results of Operation Fouled Anchor were revealed by CNN last year, the Coast Guard launched a review of its policies, procedures and culture and found the service had failed to protect many of its members. As a result, Fagan announced changes to training, education, victims services and other programs to improve the response to reports of sex crimes.
Yet few in leadership have been held accountable, though several resignations and reliefs have occurred in the past three years that may have been investigated under Operation Fouled Anchor.
In 2021, Master Chief Brett VerHulst stepped down as command master chief of the academy for behavior that included hugging and being too close to female cadets and academy personnel.
Retired Capt. Glenn Sulmasy resigned as president of Nichols College last year after he was accused of inappropriate communications with students while he was on the faculty at the Coast Guard Academy a decade ago.
And during a June 11 hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Fagan told senators she was waiting for the results of an inspector general investigation into the assaults and Operation Fouled Anchor to take steps toward “accountability,” with the service considering pursuing a reduction in rank for a person who was involved and has left the Coast Guard.
“I continue to work in full support of the [inspector general], and as that report concludes, we’ll work to understand what misconduct occurred or didn’t occur. At this point, I don’t have any direct evidence of misconduct,” Fagan said, referring to the alleged suppression of the Operation Fouled Anchor report.
Fagan is expected to testify Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee on the role of the service in defending the U.S.
In late 2018, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general found the Coast Guard retaliated against then-Lt. Cmdr. Kim McLear, an instructor at the Coast Guard Academy, after she said she was harassed and bullied by colleagues and after she blew the whistle on an environment she described as racist, discriminatory, sexist and misogynistic.
Following that experience, McLear founded the Right The Ship Coalition, an organization that aims to support victims of abuse and harassment and improve the Coast Guard’s workplace culture.
During an interview with Military.com on Monday about the ongoing investigation into Operation Fouled Anchor, McLear said the service has a history of retaliation against whistleblowers.
“The reason why these issues keep repeating is the Coast Guard has failed at step one: They deny that they have a problem. And if you can’t acknowledge that you have a problem, you can’t fix it,” McLear said.