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An FBI deputy director retired after being accused of drunkenly groping a subordinate on a ladder. Another senior FBI official left after it was discovered that he had sexually harassed eight employees. Another high-ranking FBI agent retired after he was accused of blackmailing a young employee into having sexual encounters.
An Associated Press investigation has identified at least six allegations of sexual misconduct involving senior FBI officials in the past five years, including two new complaints filed this week by women who say they have been sexually assaulted by high-ranking agents.
Each of the accused FBI officials appears to have avoided discipline, and several were quietly transferred or removed, keeping their pensions and benefits in full even as investigations confirmed the sexual misconduct allegations against them.
Beyond that, federal law enforcement officials remain anonymous even after the disciplinary process runs its course, allowing them to land on their feet in the private sector or even remain in law enforcement.
“They’re hiding it under the rug,” said a former FBI analyst who alleges in a new federal lawsuit that a supervisory special agent licked her face and groped her at a colleague’s going away party in 2017. She ended up leaving the FBI and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“As the main police organization that the FBI claims to be, it is very discouraging when they allow people who they know to be criminals to retire and pursue careers in law enforcement related fields,” said the woman, who asked to be identified in this story just because of her first name, Becky.
The AP’s count does not include the growing number of high-level FBI supervisors who have failed to report romantic relationships with subordinates in recent years, a pattern that has alarmed investigators at the Office of the Inspector General and raised questions about the office policy.
The recurring sexual misconduct has drawn the attention of Congress and advocacy groups, which have called for whistleblower protections for FBI rank-and-file employees and for an outside entity to review the office’s disciplinary cases.
“They need a #MeToo moment,” said US Representative Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California who has criticized the treatment of women in the male-dominated FBI.
The FBI has been affected by a series of sexual misconduct cases involving senior leaders in recent years.
“It’s disgusting and underscores the fact that the FBI and a lot of our institutions are still good kid networks,” Speier said. “I’m not surprised that, in terms of sexual assault and harassment, they are still in the Middle Ages.”
In a statement, the FBI said it “maintains a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment” and that complaints against supervisors have resulted in their removal from their posts while the cases are investigated and adjudicated.
He added that severe cases can result in criminal charges and that the FBI’s internal disciplinary process assesses, among other factors, “the credibility of the accusations, the seriousness of the conduct and the rank and position of the people involved.”
AP’s review of court records, reports from the Office of the Inspector General, and interviews with federal law enforcement officials identified at least six allegations against senior officials, including a deputy director and special agents in charge of all offices. fields, ranging from unwanted touching and sexual advances. to coercion.
None appear to have been sanctioned, but another allegation of sexual misconduct identified in the AP’s review of a base agent resulted in the loss of their security clearance.
The FBI, with more than 35,000 employees, keeps a tight grip on such accusations. The last time the Office of the Inspector General conducted a comprehensive investigation of sexual misconduct within the FBI, it recorded 343 “crimes” from fiscal years 2009 to 2012, including three cases of “videotaping naked women without consent.”
The latest allegations come months after a 17th woman joined a federal lawsuit for systemic sexual harassment at the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia. That class action case claims that male FBI instructors made “sexually charged” comments about women needing to “take their contraceptive method to control their mood,” inviting female apprentices into their homes and openly despising them.
In one of the new lawsuits filed Wednesday, a former FBI employee identified only as “Jane Doe” alleged that a special agent in charge in 2016 withdrew without discipline and opened a law firm even after “incarceration, torture, harassment. , blackmailed, stalked and manipulated her into having several “non-consensual sexual encounters,” including one in which he forced her to go in a car. The AP is withholding the name and location of the accused special agent to protect the identity of the woman.
“It is the policy and practice of the FBI and its OIG to allow senior executives accused of sexual assault to quietly walk away with full benefits without prosecution,” the woman’s attorney, David J. Shaffer, alleges in the lawsuit.
One such case involved Roger C. Stanton, who prior to his abrupt retirement served as deputy director of the Office of Insider Threats, a division at Washington headquarters tasked with stamping out leaks and safeguarding national security information.
According to an Inspector General report completed earlier this year and obtained by the AP through a public records request, Stanton was charged with drunk driving a subordinate home after a happy hour after work. The woman told investigators that once inside a staircase in her apartment building, Stanton wrapped his arm around her waist and “moved his hand to her rear” before she could escape and climb the stairs.
After Stanton left, he called the woman 15 times on her FBI phone and sent her what investigators described as “garbled text” complaining that he couldn’t find her vehicle. The heavily redacted report does not say when the incident occurred.
Stanton refuted the woman’s account, telling investigators that he “had no intention of doing anything” and only put his arm around her due to the “narrowness” of the stairs. But Stanton acknowledged that he was “very embarrassed by this event” and “assistant directors should not put themselves in these situations.”
The last two claims, which occurred in December 2020, were from women who say they have been sexually assaulted by supervisors.
Stanton withdrew at the end of 2018 after the investigation determined that he sexually harassed the woman and sought an inappropriate relationship. He did not respond to requests for comment from the AP.
Earlier this year, the Inspector General discovered that the special agent in charge of the Albany, New York office, James N. Hendricks, sexually harassed eight subordinates of the FBI.
Hendricks was also not named in the OIG report despite his findings. He was first identified in September by the Albany Times Union. A current colleague and a former colleague of Hendricks confirmed their role in the case to the AP.
Hendricks now writes a law enforcement blog touting his praise for the FBI but not mentioning the misconduct allegations. He did not respond to requests for comment.
Becky, the former analyst, told the AP that she once believed that the “organizational values and mission of the FBI aligned with the way I was raised.” But she was disillusioned with that idea after informing management that Charles Dick, a supervising special agent at the FBI Training Academy at the time, sexually assaulted her at a going-away party.
Becky told the AP that her attacker had threatened her at least twice before. “Once, while we were waiting for the director, he said, ‘I’m going to touch your butt. You know what’s going to happen.’
“His rude behavior was well known,” he added. “He was getting away with it.”
In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday, Becky accused the former agent of wrapping his arm around her chest while posing for a photo and “searching under her and faking” penetration of her “with his fingers through her jeans.”
Dick denied the charges and was acquitted in Virginia state court by a judge who ruled it was “totally unbelievable” that Becky “just stood there and took it and said nothing,” according to a transcript of the proceedings. Dick retired from the FBI months before the Inspector General followed up on Becky’s internal complaint, Becky alleged in her lawsuit, adding that she faced retaliation for coming forward.
“It is much easier to suffer in isolation than to go public,” he told AP. “But if I do not report it, I am complicit in the cultural and institutionalized cover-up of this type of behavior.” – AP
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