U.S. Coast Guard vs. Richard J. Tietge: In Secret Settlement Agreement, USCG ALJ Judge Gave Registered Sex Offender 20 Month Suspension After a Child Porn Conviction, Then Allowed Him to Ship Out

New York, NY

By: MLAA

     According to the Secret Settlement Agreement he signed with the U.S. Coast Guard, Merchant Mariner Richard J. Tietge was convicted in the Kitsap County Superior Court of “possession of depiction of minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct [Revised Code of Washington 9.68A.070].

     Child porn. 

      This conviction for possessing child pornography is what the U.S. Coast Guard calls a "conviction that would preclude the issuance of Merchant Mariner Credential." However, with a good lawyer, and sometimes even without any lawyer at all, there are ways around this “preclusion.”

     In the case of Merchant Mariner Richard J. Tietge, the Coast Guard was inclined to offer the man a break, and agree to a settlement agreement that was unlawful, because, they wrote, Tietge was cooperative. The Secret Settlement Agreement states:

“In light of Respondent’s cooperative attitude, and his good faith efforts to reach compliance and completion of conditions ordered by the Kitsap County Superior Court…the Coast Guard agree[s] to a mitigated Suspension and Revocation penalty of a minimum of 12 months outright suspension…followed by an additional outright suspension…to fully meet Community Custody and any [sex offender] rehabilitation imposed by the Court in this matter.”

     In the end, Tietge’s merchant mariner credential was suspended for 20 months, and then returned to him.

      Tietge was required to register as a sex offender in Washington State, but the U.S. Coast Guard allowed him to continue shipping out anywhere in the country, without notifying any of his shipmates that he was a registered sex offender.

      Tietge’s story does not have a happy ending.

     Almost four years after the U.S. Coast Guard returned a Merchant Mariner Credential to a registered sex offender, the partially decomposed body of Richard J. Tietge was found in a camper on Lund Avenue in Kitsap, Washington. 

     Sheriff’s deputies who found Tietge’s body reported that from the outside, his camper “smelled like cigarettes” and had a “musty dirty odor.”

     But when the deputies forced an entry into Tietge’s camper, “the odor of death and decomposition was overwhelming.”

Deputies reported that Tietge was laying on the floor “with his head up against the toilet door pointing towards the camper door,” but “there was no sign of injury to the body.”