Maritime Legal Aid & Advocacy is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization fighting for the human rights of seafarers and fighting to make the maritime industry safe for everyone.
We launched our website on June 22, 2020 and began by writing about our own struggles against shipboard harassment and abuses of power. Soon our stories reached other victims and survivors, and those brave men and women began submitting their own stories to us for publication.
We then created the Survivor’s Speak section of our website, started an Instagram account, and published dozens of first-hand accounts of maritime abuse.
These stories have now reached hundreds of thousands of readers from all over the world, and we are receiving and publishing new stories all the time.
All of these stories submitted by these courageous men and women have weight, and we believe that if we continue stacking up this weight, eventually something will break. If you would like to submit your story, either under your name or anonymously, please visit our Contact Page.
As part of our mission to be legal advocates on behalf of all mariners, MLAA has also initiated legal action against the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Maritime Administration via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process in order to learn the truth about the policies of these agencies’ efforts to combat abusive shipboard behaviors.
For example, there are over 200,000 American mariners credentialed by the U.S. Coast Guard, but we could not find one example of a mariner being publicly punished for shipboard sexual misconduct within the past 25 years.
200,000 mariners, 25 years, and ZERO publicly announced punishments.
Something was clearly not right, and we decided to work on getting to the bottom of things. We want to change the culture of the U.S. maritime industry afloat by forcing the U.S. Coast Guard to take the issue of SASH seriously.
If you care about our mission and think you can contribute, please contact us.