Accused Exec Stays at VA

THE DAILY FED

Accused Exec Stays at VA

Seven senior executives at the Veterans Affairs Department accused of sexual harassment in the last four years were asked to retire and another took a $25,000 buyout, The Washington Post reported today. A ninth executive was given a job at a VA facility in another state and kept his salary. The department paid his moving expenses.

Members of the House Veterans Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee yesterday blasted the department for what subcommittee chairman Terry Everett said was a "good old boy network" at VA. Senior managers are protected from punishment for their sexual harassment at the expense of their victims, Everett said.

"I feel betrayed by the very system by which I am employed," Susan Caruana, a VA employee who charged that her supervisor sexually harassed her, said.

The subcommittee heard testimony from five female employees of a Fayetteville, N.C. VA hospital who accused its former director, Jerome Calhoun, of sexual harassment.

After an investigation supporting the women's charges was completed, Calhoun was transferred to a hospital in Florida. Everett called the department's handling of Calhoun's case "the Club Med treatment."

VA officials told the subcommittee they agreed to transfer Calhoun because they didn't think the charges against him would hold up in court.

Several members of the subcommittee said they doubted VA Secretary Jesse Brown's position of "zero tolerance" of sexual harassment. Everett said the Fayetteville case is reminiscent of a 1992 case involving sexual harassment at a VA hospital in Atlanta.

"Much of what we've heard today is deja vu," Everett said.