The U.S. Coast Guard has completed 36 of 49 actions intended to address sexual misconduct across the service. A September 2026 snapshot from the Government Accountability Office credits the progress, then identifies the thing still missing: any completed system for determining whether the reforms have actually changed anything.
How It Got Here
Operation Fouled Anchor was a Coast Guard Investigative Service inquiry into more than 100 sexual-assault allegations at the Coast Guard Academy spanning 1990 to 2006. The investigation concluded in 2020 that the academy had routinely mishandled cases and failed to create a safe environment for cadets. Congress did not learn about it from the Coast Guard. According to an April 2025 GAO report, leadership notified the relevant committees only when media reporting on the investigation was imminent, in June 2023 — a delay GAO concluded had materially impaired congressional oversight.
The Coast Guard subsequently committed to reforms. A November 2023 internal review identified 33 corrective actions; 16 more were added later, bringing the total to 49. By August 2026, the service reported 36 complete.
The Measurement Gap
GAO’s concern is not the count. It is that the Coast Guard initially had no mechanism to obtain feedback from personnel on whether the changes were working, and that as of June 2026 its new combined-data tool — designed to establish a baseline for evaluating cumulative reform effects — still lacked goals or measures. The service developed a workforce feedback tool in June 2026 and provided GAO with an updated implementation plan in August, which is movement. But GAO first raised the absence of a performance plan before Congress in March 2024. More than two years later, the Coast Guard still had not completed one capable of tracking progress over time. Timelines for the 13 unfinished actions also remained unupdated, with no clear next steps documented.
What Congress Has Been Told
Federal law requires the Coast Guard commandant to submit an annual report to three congressional committees on sexual assault and harassment involving Coast Guard members, due by January 15 each year, with specific elements enumerated under 14 U.S.C. § 5112. The reporting record since Fouled Anchor became public has not been clean.
GAO’s review of the FY2022 report found five of eleven required elements fully included, four partially included, and two missing entirely — including congressionally mandated statistics on victims who themselves faced misconduct charges collateral to the assault investigation. That requirement had been added in 2021; Coast Guard officials told GAO they could not account for why it was absent. The report also arrived roughly a year late. A draft of the FY2023 report had the same problems, which caused the Coast Guard and DHS to withdraw a version already approved by the Acting Commandant in June 2025 for correction and re-review. The FY2024 report improved: six elements fully included, four partial, one omitted — and the previously missing victim-misconduct data restored.
Then the FY2025 report. Completed in July 2026, declared complete by Coast Guard officials. GAO’s September snapshot says required elements are still missing. GAO has not publicly specified which ones, and has contacted Coast Guard officials for their response.
Where That Leaves Things
The Coast Guard is in an awkward position to have arrived at several years after Fouled Anchor became public. It can report 36 of 49 reform actions complete, but lacks a finished system to measure their cumulative effect. Its annual congressional reports have been late, incomplete, or both in every cycle GAO has reviewed. And all of this follows an investigation into more than a century’s worth of sexual-assault allegations at its own academy that Congress learned about only when a journalist was about to publish.
GAO acknowledges that institutional change at this scale takes time and credits the steps already taken. But completing action items and measuring outcomes are different things, and the Coast Guard has now had more than two years since GAO first said so publicly to close the distance between them.
Sources: GAO, Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Improve Congressional Reporting and Evaluation of Sexual Misconduct Reforms (GAO-25-107481, April 2025); 14 U.S.C. § 5112, Annual report on sexual assault and sexual harassment.
