For more than two decades, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigated sex-crime allegations connected to the Military Sealift Command system: civilian mariners and Navy personnel, shipboard workplaces and overseas ports, and the gray zone where civilian employment meets military authority. Until now, that record sat scattered across investigative files that were never organized for the public to read. MLAA has assembled it into a single searchable archive.
The archive began with a FOIA request MLAA filed on July 19, 2022, asking NCIS for complete investigation reports and associated records involving crew aboard MSC-operated vessels dating back to January 1, 2002. In its August 1, 2022 response, NCIS said its records were not organized around MSC vessels or personnel, but agreed to search closed reports using the terms “USNS,” “Military Sealift Command,” and “MSC.” What came back was not a finished archive. MLAA reviewed the production, separated it into individual investigations, converted the files into readable text where possible, built a case page for each one, and linked every page back to its underlying source document.
The result is 116 case files documenting how NCIS handled allegations aboard or connected to U.S. government-operated ships across more than 20 years.
Explore the full archive of 116 case files
What the Files Show
The records involve allegations against civilian mariners, Navy personnel, contractors, academy cadets, and others aboard or connected to MSC vessels. They span sexual assault, abusive sexual contact, voyeurism, child exploitation, indecent exposure, and related misconduct, with incidents occurring aboard USNS vessels, during liberty in foreign ports, inside shore commands, and in settings where mariners, service members, contractors, cadets, and dependents crossed paths.
Read together, the files show how hard these cases are to investigate at sea. Evidence is delayed, witnesses rotate off ships, incidents cross jurisdictions, and decisions pass between NCIS, military commands, federal prosecutors, local police, foreign authorities, and civilian employers. Some cases produced courts-martial, guilty pleas, nonjudicial punishment, or administrative action. Many ended because prosecutors declined charges, evidence was thin, suspects were never identified, jurisdiction was uncertain, or victims chose not to participate further.
Many files are heavily redacted, and some leave basic questions unanswered. But one pattern is hard to miss: when credentialed merchant mariners were involved, the NCIS files show no consistent referral trail to the Coast Guard officials responsible for mariner credentials.
Why That Gap Matters
NCIS can investigate alleged crimes, but the Coast Guard controls merchant mariner credentials. When a credentialed mariner is accused of sexual misconduct, the criminal process and the credentialing process answer different questions. One asks whether a crime can be charged or proven. The other asks whether the mariner should remain authorized to work aboard U.S. vessels.
A prosecutor's decision to decline charges does not resolve the second question. A mariner can avoid criminal prosecution and still hold a credential that the Coast Guard has authority to suspend or revoke. In the cases MLAA reviewed, the NCIS files do not show referrals to Coast Guard Suspension and Revocation investigators when credentialed mariners were involved.
Why This Matters Now
The Coast Guard now says that pathway has been revised. In its April 13, 2026 report to Congress, Sexual Misconduct on U.S. Vessels (FY 2025), the Coast Guard states that it revised its Memorandum of Agreement with Military Sealift Command to create voluntary reporting procedures for sexual assault and sexual harassment involving credentialed mariners.
If MSC now reports these cases to the Coast Guard, credentialing officials may be better positioned to decide whether a mariner's credential should be suspended or revoked after an NCIS investigation, even when federal prosecutors decline to bring criminal charges.
But the public record has not yet caught up to the policy change. MLAA does not have evidence that MSC is making those referrals in practice. The archive shows what NCIS released in response to MLAA's FOIA work; it does not show whether the revised agreement has changed what happens after an allegation is reported aboard an MSC vessel. That is the next question for the record.
Why MLAA Published the Archive
NCIS told MLAA that its records could contribute to public understanding of government operations, but also that those records were not organized around Military Sealift Command as a category. That is often where public records stop: released, redacted, and difficult to use.
MLAA built the archive so the records could be read as a body of evidence. Each case page links back to the source document. Readers can move from summary to file, from file to pattern, and from pattern to unanswered question.
The archive is not a verdict on any allegation. It preserves the documents, names the gaps, and gives survivors, mariners, journalists, lawyers, policymakers, and the public a way to examine the federal record for themselves.
