Feds look into harassment claims at Yellowstone

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Government investigators were expected to visit Yellowstone National Park to look into an employee’s claims of sexual exploitation of female workers and financial misconduct, park officials said.

The visit Tuesday is part of an investigation by the inspector general of the U.S. Interior Department following reports of widespread sexual misconduct at national parks such as Grand Canyon and Yosemite, where the superintended has apologized to his staff in an email.

In Yellowstone, the sexual exploitation of female employees has been rife in the park’s special projects division, which does construction and maintenance, equipment operator Robert Hester said in a statement submitted last week to the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

In one case, a supervisor kept a young female worker drunk and she was in effect paid to have sex, a situation that was common knowledge in the park, Hester said.

“From the date I started to work at the park, I was shocked and amazed at what I saw and heard in regard to the talk and acceptance of sexual exploitation of female workers,” Hester wrote.

He worked from 2010 to 2012 in the special projects division, which Hester described as being like a “men’s only club.” He now has a permanent job as an engineering equipment operator at Yellowstone, which includes portions of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho and was the nation’s first national park.