Three years after the captain of a military sealift command ship was accused of raping an assistant engineer in her quarters during a port visit, he has left the merchant mariner field — and, for the first time, been publicly identified.
Yamil Sanchez Padilla was serving as captain of the USNS Carson City in December 2021, when engineer Elsie Dominguez accused him of forcing his way into her cabin while she was intoxicated and raping her. Padilla voluntarily surrendered his merchant mariner credential to the Coast Guard on March 14, according to a document posted by the nonprofit organization Maritime Legal Aid and Advocacy.
He relinquished the credential due to “being advised that I am currently under investigation for sexual assault,” the document states.
A Coast Guard case concerning the investigation was withdrawn and closed March 19, according to a service administrative law judge docket also first reported on by Maritime Legal Aid.
A lawyer for Dominguez says he will continue to pursue criminal accountability for Sanchez Padilla, with hopes for success bolstered by investigative findings that include the former skipper’s voluntary admission that he did have intercourse with Dominguez on the night in question.
Dominguez first filed a complaint against Military Sealift Command in November 2023, alleging the command had failed to adequately protect her and that the victims’ advocates she’d sought out had warned her that she risked losing her job if she reported the alleged rape. Dominguez made the unusual choice of identifying herself, but not Padilla, in her complaint.
She told Military Times in an exclusive 2024 interview that the issue was bigger than one assailant, and that she wanted to empower others by going public with her story.
“I want people to feel comfortable coming up to me and talking about this, and the more that we normalize speaking about things like this and not keeping it taboo, I think it will really help the industry as a whole in eliminating cases like this,” she said at the time.
Since she made her complaint, Dominguez has fought a complex administrative battle with multiple setbacks, taking on arcane policy that resulted in her complaint being ruled a worker’s compensation matter for the U.S. Department of Labor to adjudicate.
Her attorneys have called the notion that alleged rape by a superior is a shipboard job hazard “astonishing” and “offensive.”
Meanwhile, Padilla remained employed by Military Sealift Command as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigated Dominguez’s complaint. He was removed from federal service on March 8, 2025, according to Jillian Morris, an MSC spokeswoman.
“Upon learning of the alleged incident, MSC removed Mr. Sanchez Padilla from the vessel and offered victim advocate services to the female crew member,” Morris said in a statement to Military Times. “An NCIS investigation was promptly initiated into the allegations. MSC obtained the final NCIS investigation report in October 2024. Mr. Sanchez Padilla was notified of his proposed removal from Federal service and was provided an opportunity to respond.”
An attorney for Sanchez Padilla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reached for comment, Dominguez told Military Times in an email that she felt “relief, exhaustion and grief over what [Sanchez Padilla] took from me.”
“A firing doesn’t give back what I lost. I had a career I was proud of and a goal I was working toward. He took that from me, and the joy is gone, too,” she said. “I still show up because I won’t let him take away my career as well, but it’s not the same work it was.”
She said she was glad Sanchez Padilla’s name was now public, but said it had taken “far too long” to come to light.
“His name staying private while mine was out there was its own kind of injustice. Women who might have sailed under him deserved to know,” she said. “The Navy protected him in ways it never protected me.”
Dominguez currently serves as a first assistant engineer within MSC and continues to pursue a goal of becoming a chief engineer.
Ryan Melogy, an attorney who has represented other alleged sexual assault survivors in the merchant mariner community and is among those representing Dominguez, said seeing Sanchez Padilla forced out of the community – while Dominguez continued to advance in her career – was ” a real achievement.”
“This is a really difficult thing to do, to hold a captain accountable,” he said. “I don’t think it’s ever happened. … I’ve never seen one publicly taken down before in this way.”
In a February 2025 letter proposing to remove Sanchez Padilla from his job, MSC Executive Director Steven Cade cited NCIS findings and called the skipper’s alleged behavior “egregious” and “inappropriate,” adding that it “causes me to question your judgment and ability to work with your subordinates and fellow crew members.”
Cade further noted that Sanchez Padilla had reportedly admitted to the December 2021 sexual encounter while he and Dominguez had been under the influence of alcohol, although he maintained it was consensual.
In light of those admissions, Melogy said he planned to pursue further conversations with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding criminal accountability, despite the closure of the Coast Guard’s administrative case.
“We’re not going to let it just go away. And [Dominguez] certainly doesn’t want it to go away,” he said. “I hope that [this case] … serves as a warning to people who are thinking about doing this kind of thing; that people know that there is accountability.”
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