Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 11, 1993 TAG: 9303110087
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
VA ATTACKS SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown, reacting to charges that VA officials ignored a decade of sexual harassment by top officials at the Atlanta veterans hospital, Wednesday ordered major changes in the way his department handles harassment complaints and directed all 259,549 VA employees to attend four hours of sexual-harassment lectures.Brown's directives were announced two hours after Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., condemned VA administrators for remaining silent over the Atlanta situation.
Brown's actions were the strongest any agency has taken against sexual harassment since the Navy last year ordered a one-day stand-down from operations following the Tailhook scandal in which female aviators were assaulted by fellow pilots at a 1991 convention in Las Vegas.
VA investigators found that top officials at the Atlanta hospital - including the man who handled all harassment complaints there - had harassed female workers for years. The abuses were common knowledge among the staff.
The hospital's former director, deputy director, its senior doctor, personnel chief and research director were among those implicated in a recent report by the VA's inspector general.
"Once this story hit the paper, there has been a remarkable silence at the VA, and quite frankly, I'm disappointed," Mikulski said at a Capitol Hill news conference. Referring to a Feb. 26 Washington Post article that described the Atlanta harassment as unrivaled at any other federal facility, Mikulski said she believed that women at other VA facilities also have been harassed.
"It is time to ask the painful question - how widespread is this problem?" said Mikulski, who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the VA's budget. She also released a letter she had written to Brown demanding that he make eliminating sexual harassment a top priority.
"I am concerned that the independence of each of the 171 VA hospitals, coupled with VA's culture and reputation as an `old boys' network,' may even foster such inappropriate and egregious behavior," she wrote Brown. She asked him to submit his plans to her subcommittee within 30 days.
Within two hours, the VA released Brown's response - a letter to Mikulski promising "zero tolerance" for sexual harassment at the VA. Brown added that he was instituting mandatory training on the issue for all workers, and was creating a departmental task force on harassment.
Harassment complaints will now be reviewed simultaneously by individual hospital and regional officials. Brown said that procedure should eliminate complaints such as those from the Atlanta situation.