WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has recorded a pointy spike in complaints that its personal brokers and workers have engaged in sexual misconduct, starting from assault to harassment, regardless of a pledge by bureau leaders to remove the longstanding drawback.
An Related Press investigation discovered the FBI has obtained almost 300 allegations of sexual misconduct because the bureau introduced in 2021 it had launched an agency-wide crackdown.
The quantity marked a virtually 50% improve over complaints filed in the course of the previous four-year interval, based on bureau statistics, a rise advocates and lawmakers described as an indication the bureau is struggling to guard ladies in a male-dominated office. The FBI, for its half, mentioned the rise reveals its reforms are making it simpler to report misconduct.
“Enough is enough,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican, informed the AP in an announcement, including he’ll be utilizing his position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee “to get answers and root out further FBI misconduct.” He blamed former FBI Director Christopher Wray for permitting “the problem of sexual misconduct at the FBI to fester.”
FBI says spike as a result of crackdown
The FBI informed AP it takes allegations of sexual misconduct “extremely seriously” and acts upon them “expeditiously.” Bureau officers have attributed the spike in complaints, partly, to their outreach efforts.
“We have come a long way in addressing it in various ways using all the policy tools and legal means at our disposal,” the FBI mentioned in an announcement, “but we absolutely have more to do in accomplishing a meaningful and long-lasting cultural evolution that honors FBI Director Wray’s commitment to eradicating sexual misconduct throughout the organization.”
The FBI declined to offer particulars concerning the incidents, citing federal privateness legal guidelines and inside tips. A monthslong AP investigation, nevertheless, revealed that the incidents ranged from sexual assault to brokers paying for intercourse at therapeutic massage parlors. Different allegations involved brokers making inappropriate sexual feedback at workplace capabilities or commenting on co-workers’ appearances.
Some allegations had been so severe they resulted in legal investigations or prices. Late final yr, an FBI agent in Maryland, Eduardo Valdivia, 40, was charged with sexually assaulting two ladies he contacted by way of social media with a promise to provide them free tattoos and modeling work. His protection lawyer, Robert Bonsib, mentioned Valdivia disputes “all allegations that he engaged in any criminal conduct and expects to be cleared of all charges.”
The victims normally had been company workers, although others had been ladies whom brokers got here throughout throughout investigations or met socially. No less than a dozen sexual misconduct allegations concerned supervisors, the AP discovered, together with no less than one prime agent.
The FBI decided greater than half of the claims warranted inside investigations, statistics present, although the bureau refused to reveal what number of resulted in terminations or different self-discipline.
Time of upheaval at FBI
The AP’s findings come at a second of important upheaval within the FBI. Wray, a Republican appointed by then-President Donald Trump in 2017, spent years below withering assaults for numerous investigations involving Trump. Moderately than be fired, Wray stepped down a day earlier than Trump took workplace on Jan. 20.
Trump has tapped Kash Patel, a strident supporter and former federal prosecutor, to take over as the following director of the FBI. Patel’s spokesperson didn’t reply to requests for touch upon how he would sort out the problem of sexual misconduct. His affirmation listening to is scheduled for Thursday.
Whereas Trump and Patel have targeted virtually solely on claims of political weaponization and biased probes of their guarantees to overtake the bureau, some lawmakers see the FBI’s document on sexual misconduct as one other compelling motive to scrub home.
Final yr, the Justice Division agreed to pay greater than $22 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging feminine FBI recruits had been routinely harassed by instructors with sexually charged feedback about their breast dimension, false allegations of infidelity and the necessity to take contraception “to control their moods.”
In interviews, greater than a dozen present and former FBI brokers mentioned that male-dominated tradition can be the toughest to alter. A former analyst who as soon as aspired to grow to be the bureau’s first feminine director mentioned she deliberately gained 30 kilos hoping a harasser would cease “talking about my body.”
She’d give away clothes that grew to become triggering as a result of she’d worn it when she was harassed. “I would throw up in the office and have panic attacks in the stairway whenever I saw him,” she recalled. “I came very close to suicide twice.”
Victims, a number of of whom spoke on the situation they not be named, and advocates informed AP that many ladies stay reluctant to return ahead for concern of retaliation. Additionally they lack confidence within the FBI’s investigations and too usually have seen brokers, together with high-ranking ones, obtain what they take into account to be gentle self-discipline. Others retire earlier than they are often punished.
FBI reviews progress in reforms
The FBI has spent the final decade looking for to handle its masculine tradition, partly by boosting its variety of feminine brokers. Almost 1 / 4 of the bureau’s 13,700 brokers are ladies, the bureau says, a quantity barely larger than the share of girls in senior agent ranks.
The FBI mentioned it has made a sequence of reforms to its processes, coaching and disciplinary evaluations, together with making a 24/7 hotline to report abuse. These modifications had been applied after the AP uncovered a sample of senior FBI officers skirting self-discipline and retiring even after inside inquiries decided they dedicated brazen misconduct, together with a senior official who harassed eight feminine subordinates.
It’s unclear whether or not that method will proceed below the Trump administration, which has moved shortly to halt range, fairness and inclusion efforts throughout the federal authorities.
FBI misconduct investigations are shrouded in secrecy, and federal privateness legal guidelines obscure the general public’s view of which brokers face self-discipline. The federal government sometimes won’t reveal the place an incident passed off, even when the claims are substantiated. The AP relied on Freedom of Info Act requests and interviews with almost two dozen present and former regulation enforcement officers to flesh out particulars concerning the allegations and the ensuing investigations.
For scores of allegations it didn’t examine, the bureau mentioned it “lacked sufficient detail to predicate an investigation” or couldn’t pinpoint a selected code of conduct violation. Different investigations resulted in suspensions, transfers or firings, FBI officers mentioned.
Lack of transparency makes it troublesome to trace self-discipline
The FBI doesn’t disclose the way it disciplines particular brokers or supervisors, however the AP reviewed inside data in a number of instances that confirmed how some had been punished.
An unidentified supervisor, for instance, was fired final yr for suggesting his feminine colleagues had grow to be managers by performing intercourse acts, the data present. And an FBI boss was suspended 60 days for “unwelcome sexual conduct” at a piece occasion.
In one other case, the AP was not in a position to decide how a senior official was disciplined even after he admitted to wrongdoing. The official, an performing deputy assistant director, admitted he simulated anal intercourse on a colleague whereas performing out a graphic joke about predatory clergymen within the Roman Catholic Church, based on a 2023 report by the Justice Division’s inspector normal.
“This is going to be bad,” the agent informed colleagues earlier than closing an workplace door, based on the report. He then carried out two wrestling holds on the mortified coworker earlier than touchdown his punch line.
The agent informed investigators he solely thrust his genitals as soon as on the colleague and by no means touched him. He admitted it was inappropriate, the report says, telling investigators he “shouldn’t have told the joke in an office setting.”
Misconduct instances are troublesome to research
Sexual misconduct investigations will be troublesome to resolve, and the alleged conduct incessantly occurs behind closed doorways.
In some cases, investigators weren’t in a position to substantiate underlying allegations however however discovered brokers violated associated insurance policies or acted unprofessionally. That was the case involving allegations {that a} supervisor raped an intoxicated lady in a Washington lodge room — an accusation he denied.
The lady in that case reported to police that Shannon Fontenot met her at a bar when she was already closely intoxicated and, even after noticing her wedding ceremony ring, invited her again to his room, the place he opened his pockets and confirmed her his FBI identification, data present. Fontenot, an assistant particular agent answerable for the FBI’s Springfield, Illinois, subject workplace, had been on project in Washington.
Testifying in a civil continuing through which she unsuccessfully sought a protecting order towards Fontenot, the girl described the night time as “every woman’s worst nightmare.” She mentioned Fontenot seemed to be a “safe person” and settle for her limits, solely to attend till she was drunk sufficient to benefit from her. She mentioned she had greater than a half-dozen drinks and was so intoxicated she almost walked right into a wall.
“I think of FBI agents as our most elite law enforcement officers in the country,” she testified in that civil case. “To use your position like that is horrifically scary, and it is a huge betrayal of not only my trust, but public trust. It’s awful.”
The AP will not be naming the girl as a result of it doesn’t sometimes establish individuals who say they’re victims of sexual abuse.
Fontenot testified the encounter was fully consensual and that the girl didn’t seem intoxicated.
Federal prosecutors determined to not cost him, saying they may not show the girl’s declare. The Justice Division’s inspector normal additionally didn’t substantiate the sexual assault allegations however decided he violated FBI guidelines in failing to confide in his superiors that he was below police investigation, authorities data present.
The FBI confirmed it suspended Fontenot for 10 days and later transferred him to a non-supervisory position at its Washington headquarters. It refused to say when he was transferred.
“The incident in question was thoroughly investigated, and it was unequivocally determined that no form of sexual misconduct occurred,” Fontenot’s lawyer, Mark Rollins, informed AP.
Highest ranks of FBI
One other misconduct investigation concerned the company’s then-No. 3 official who was accused by a subordinate of getting “engaged in sexual harassment,” the Justice Division’s inspector normal reported.
The worker reported a raft of feedback and actions by Jeff Sallet that she described as violating the company’s sexual harassment insurance policies, although investigators decided, in a prolonged report, that they weren’t sexual in nature.
Amongst these the girl discovered most offensive: Sallet — who on the time oversaw the bureau’s human assets department — allegedly recommended her mom was disillusioned she wasn’t “barefoot and pregnant,” based on the report. In one other occasion he invited her to affix his good friend’s “harem.”
Within the second insurrectionists bore down on the U.S. Capitol, the girl alleged, Sallet regarded down from his FBI workplace window onto Pennsylvania Avenue and requested her, “How many of those guys are you thinking you’d like to date. That isn’t your type is it?”
The lady additionally complained Sallet sexually harassed her partly by suggesting they conduct a convention name collectively in his lodge room on a piece journey. “I felt that Sallet was pressuring me to be alone with him in a hotel room,” she wrote in a declaration for an unrelated courtroom case by a former FBI agent looking for disciplinary data associated to Sallet. She added that “we did not need to be physically together for the meeting and none of our co-workers were at the hotel.”
Sallet informed the inspector normal he didn’t recall the place the decision passed off however that it could not have been “strange or odd” to have such a name in his lodge room.
Investigators concluded Sallet “violated the Department’s zero tolerance policy on harassment by making five inappropriate comments to the subordinate employee,” the inspector normal mentioned. “None of the allegations involved unwelcome touching, and the independent investigation did not find that any of the substantiated conduct was sexual in nature.”
The report added that Sallet was additionally discovered to have acted “unprofessionally” in accordance with FBI insurance policies.
Sallet retired in 2021 earlier than the investigation was accomplished. He has denied the allegations and his lawyer, Doug Brooks, famous he was “cleared of all allegations of sexual harassment.”
Advocates expressed frustration on the lack of transparency in such instances and blasted the FBI for meting out comparatively mild punishment to these it has discovered to have engaged in sexual misconduct.
“When high-ranking officials in particular face no meaningful consequences for abusive conduct, it sends the message that anyone is free to act with impunity,” mentioned Stacey Younger, co-founder of the DOJ Gender Equality Community, an worker advocacy group that persuaded the Justice Division to undertake a brand new department-wide sexual misconduct coverage.
Different advocates and feminine brokers applauded the bureau for taking steps to handle sexual misconduct. However they mentioned it wanted to go additional to guarantee victims that their claims had been being taken significantly.
Martha Johnson, a just lately retired FBI agent who says she was sexually assaulted by an agent a few years in the past whereas working in Chicago, mentioned the bureau’s inside processes for reporting sexual abuse have lengthy been set as much as doubt and punish victims.
“They’re patting themselves on the back, but the environment is still the same in that women are too afraid to even use a hotline,” she mentioned. “I’ve seen this scenario play out over and over for 20 years. They didn’t change anything.”