Ex-captain pleads guilty to drugging, sexually assaulting U.S. Merchant Marine Academy cadet just as trial was to begin

A former cargo captain pleaded guilty on Wednesday to drugging and raping a Kings Point merchant marine cadet in 2019 during her on-the-job training year at sea.

Moments before opening arguments were set to begin, John Merrone, 54, of Tennessee , withdrew his original not guilty plea and admitted to all five counts of aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse and abusive sexual contact for his attack on the 21-year-old woman, identified only as Jane Doe, on a merchant cargo ship bound for Corpus Christi.

“Jane drank alcohol,” Merrone said during his allocution. “I knowingly gave her an intoxicant without her knowledge or consent. Jane became incapacitated. I then had sex with her without her consent.”

U.S. District Court Judge Ramon Reyes had spent two days selecting a jury and swore them in on Tuesday before releasing them Wednesday morning after the plea.

The victim, who sat crying in the audience during the hearing, said “It’s over” to her attorney, Ryan Melogy, after Merrone read his statement. She was expected to testify after opening arguments.

“It’s kind of been a struggle over the last six years,” the lawyer said. “It just would never go away. It's just something that you know she's just had to deal with. She doesn't hear anything for four months, and then all of a sudden something comes back, oh, they're not going to prosecute, oh, they are going to prosecute. She's trying to put her life together, and it just wouldn't go away.”

The top counts against Merrone carry a maximum life sentence, but federal prosecutor Kayla Bensing said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would recommend between 15 and 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on Dec. 22.

At least five other women have come forward, going back to 1999, to accuse Merrone of sexual assault or drugging them, prosecutors said.

The victim and another female cadet said that they were drugged on Sept. 9, 1999 during their Sea Year, 12 months maritime academy midshipmen aboard a working ship, gaining practical experience for their future careers.

Prosecutor Rachel Bennek charges that the former captain started messaging the victim and another female cadet over Facebook before they even started their voyage on the Liberty Glory.

He continued to correspond with the two young women and a week before the end of the Sea Year he invited them to his stateroom for a “soda.”

Text messages show that the two cadets were suspicious of the invitation.

“Are we drinking coke,” the female cadet wrote the victim. “I feel like it’s code.”

“Bruh,” she replied. “It’s alcohol.”

The victim demurred, saying that she was staying away from soda.

“Your [sic] killing me kid. LOL. Just get [Jane Doe #2] come up. U may

enjoy it!!! Read between lines,” Merrone wrote.

Prosecutors said that alcohol was banned on the ship.

The two women eventually went to the captain’s quarters, where he served them each a drink with alcohol.

He began asking them questions about their sex lives, and, according to prosecutors, neither woman could remember the remainder of the evening after the first drink.

The victim said that she awoke the next morning wearing a shirt and no underwear or pants.

She told investigators that she felt nauseous and felt pain in her groin consistent with sex.

When she asked Merrone if she couldn’t remember the evening, prosecutors said he told her “one thing led to another.”

When she told him that it was not consensual, according to court records, he offered her money, which she turned down.

Later in the trip, Merrone came to the victim’s room and returned the underwear that she had been wearing the night of the alleged attack.

The young woman told her mother after she returned from the Sea Year, but did not report it to the authorities until 2021.

Prosecutors argued in court papers that the two cadets were part of a pattern of behavior, citing two other women who said that they had been drugged and sexually assaulted. One other woman said that she had been drugged, but not attacked.

Merrone’s “use of substances to incapacitate his victims is a common scheme or plan seen across all of his assaults,” Bennek wrote in court papers.

The former captain surrendered his U.S. Coast Guard certification ahead of an investigation launched in 2022 by the military branch’s Suspension and Revocation National Center of Expertise.

The American Maritime Officers union revoked his membership, calling him “an immediate threat to the safety of our members and that of their crew."

The maritime industry has struggled for decades to curb sexual harassment on the high seas, Newsday has previously reported.

There were two dozen incidents of unwanted sexual conduct in the USMMA’s 2023-2024 annual report to Congress, which includes 2 assaults, 19 incidents of sexual harassment and 3 claims of relationship violence during that school year. The latest report covering the last school year has not yet been released, according to the Kings Point academy.