The man Donald Trump chose to lead the US Coast Guard covered up explosive details about decades’ worth of rape and abuse allegations at the service’s academy, attempting to hide from the public attacks and harassment endemic at the institution since at least the 1980s, CNN reports.

Karl Schultz took over as Commandant of the Coast Guard in April 2018 as the seven-year investigation was wrapping up.  Operation Fouled Anchor, as the probe was called, looked at dozens of rapes and sexual assaults that happened on the New London, Connecticut campus of the Coast Guard Academy, which typically accepts fewer than 400 cadets each year.

The report outlines the way Academy leadership downplayed sexual assaults at the institution, sometimes burying reports or refusing to investigate allegations of sexual assault, including leaving the accused on duty; many of the accused ended up accepting commissions into the Coast Guard.

Schultz’s predecessor, Admiral Paul Zukunft, had developed a comprehensive communications plan to share the report with Congress, the Executive branch, his fellow service academy leaders and the public before his retirement in 2018, but the report was not ready.  When it was completed, Schultz and his second-in-command, Admiral Charles W. Ray, sat on the report until this past June when Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell of Washington and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin demanded an update.