FEMA Failed to Properly Address Hundreds
of Sexual Harassment Cases against its employees
The absence of a tracking system of sexual harassment cases at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the lack of a uniform process for investigating complaints were the main findings of an audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General (DHS-OIG).
The audit found that FEMA did not always adequately report and investigate internal allegations of sexual misconduct — including sexual assault, unwelcome sexual advances, and sexual comments — at its operations in the United States and its territories. The finding came after the DHS-OIG analyzed 305 complaints about sexual harassment by evaluating 7,000 internal FEMA documents dated between 2012 and 2018.
Several months ago, the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) interviewed and reviewed official documents from 19 people who work or worked at the FEMA Joint Recovery Office in Puerto Rico, which oversees the recovery process after the strike of Hurricanes Irma and María.
This documented a pattern of gender-based violence, sexual and/or workplace harassment that Puerto Rican employees have experienced by supervisors and coworkers between 2018 and 2021. The affected people agreed in exposing FEMA’s negligence in addressing these situations, as the DHS-OIG audit now confirms.
For example, the audit mentions that a person — whose origin was not revealed — alleged that, in the workplace, several FEMA employees talked about having sexual relations and that a colleague told her that “to keep her job she had to have sex with him.”
Although the male coworker was removed and FEMA’s Anti-Harassment Unit (AHU) said it would investigate the matter, seven months after the allegation, the case remained open with no outcome.
A study on sexual harassment in the workplace referred to by the US General Accounting Office (GAO) indicates that the magnitude and effects of being victims of this type of situation in the workplace is not understood fully, because it is estimated that only 6% of workers who suffer sexual harassment report the incident.
No evidence of investigations or disciplinary actionOf the 305 complaints documented in the audit, FEMA was unable to prove that it acted on 153 of them. The FEMA offices responsible for investigating and disciplining employees for this type of conduct do not keep evidence of the investigations or disciplinary actions, the report concludes.
The DHS-OIG was also unable to determine whether FEMA fully investigated documented complaints adequately. Furthermore, the audit stated that FEMA did not review sexual harassment complaints prior to giving promotions or jobs.
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