Sex harassment charges discredit Interior’s zero-tolerance policy

Superintendent got new job, bonus, despite allegations

WASHINGTON — On his first day in office, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pledged “zero tolerance” for sexual misconduct. The acting National Park Service chief testified to Congress in June that he’s bringing a culture of “transparency, respect, and accountability” to a workplace he acknowledged is often hostile.

But the park service recently gave a new job and performance bonus to a national park superintendent in Florida who investigators found made unwanted advances to a woman he supervised — with hugs, lingering handshakes, inappropriate comments about her appearance, and sitting or lying on her desk while she was trying to work. Investigators said he also harassed another woman who no longer works at the park.

Then, the park service issued a one-page set of talking points for media inquiries. The talking points, obtained by The Washington Post, instructed staff to praise the superintendent, Jorge Acevedo, for making “a substantial contribution” during his four-year tenure at De Soto National Memorial, a coastal park near Bradenton.

Acevedo has served since March as partnerships manager at the Tuskegee Airmen and Tuskegee Institute national historic sites and Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, a consortium of park service properties. He is no longer supervising employees but kept his $82,000-a-year salary, according to an agency official. Just before his transfer, the official said, he received a $1,000 cash bonus.

When interviewed by investigators, Acevedo denied the allegations and said his staff perceived his actions differently from the way he intended them.

The case was investigated by the Inspector General’s Office for the Interior Department, the park service’s parent agency, and detailed in a March report that was not made public. The report, as well as the talking points, were initially obtained by the environmental watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which provided them to the Post.

Acevedo, through a park service spokesman, declined to comment, and he did not respond to an email and message left on his cellphone.

Agency spokesman Tom Crosson declined to discuss Acevedo’s transfer, citing “ongoing personnel actions.”

Jeff Ruch, PEER’s executive director, blasted the agency’s handling of the case, saying it “perpetuates a culture of impunity.” He said that by issuing the talking points, the park service “re-victimized the victims and implied that they were not as valuable to the agency.”

The case comes as the agency confronts a string of episodes of sexual misconduct disclosed more than a year ago by Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall’s office.

The revelations — at Yosemite, Yellowstone and Grand Canyon national parks and Canaveral National Seashore — have led to congressional hearings and a survey prepared by the outgoing Obama administration of Interior’s 70,000 employees to gauge the extent of the problem.

House lawmakers, particularly Republicans, scolded Obama’s park service chief for failing to fire or move quickly to discipline managers and employees after findings of misconduct, and criticized a lack of accountability at the top.

A year later, the Trump administration is still dealing with sexual harassment and how to punish it, even though Zinke promised to take a hard line on ethics, warning employees in an email on his first day, “I expect us to do better.”

The administration has sent mixed signals on how aggressively it intends to address the problem.