Former FEMA official accused of sexual misconduct
The personnel chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency — who resigned just weeks ago — is under investigation after being accused of creating an atmosphere of widespread sexual harassment over years in which women were hired as possible sexual partners for male employees, the agency’s leader said Monday.
The alleged harassment and other misconduct, revealed through a preliminary sevenmonth internal investigation, was a “systemic problem going on for years,” said FEMA Administrator Brock Long.
Some of the claims about the agency’s former personnel chief are detailed in a written executive summary of the investigation provided to The Washington Post. FEMA officials provided other details and confirmed that the individual under investigation, whose name was redacted from the report, is Corey Coleman, who led the personnel department from
2011 until his resignation in June.
In an interview, Long described a “toxic” environment in the human resources department Coleman had led at FEMA headquarters, hiring dozens of men who were friends and college fraternity brothers and women he met at bars and on online dating sites — then promoting them to roles throughout the agency without going through proper federal hiring channels.
Coleman then transferred some of the women in and out of departments, some to regional offices, so his friends could try to have sexual relationships with them, according to statements and interviews with employees, said a FEMA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The misconduct went back as far as 2015, said Long, who received a complaint from an employee, who said Coleman sexually harassed her, and forwarded it to the general counsel’s office, which started the investigation.
FEMA officials said the
inspector general’s office had received complaints about Coleman before Long’s arrival and referred them back to the agency to investigate.
Many of the men and women Coleman hired were unqualified yet are still at the agency, officials said.
The preliminary investigation found that an official described as the former chief component human capital officer had sexual encounters with two subordinates. FEMA officials confirmed this person was Coleman.
Both women accompanied
him on work trips, but one had no official duties on the trips. When the first woman ended the relationship, Coleman pressured her for dates — then denied her a promotion and tried to fire her, she told FEMA investigators. She said she kept her job by telling him she might be willing to go on dates with him again, according to the preliminary report.
When the second woman said she wanted to leave FEMA, Coleman created a new position for her for which she admitted to investigators she was unqualified.