An independent watchdog found that Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie and senior VA officials sought to discredit a woman veteran and senior Congressional advisor who reported being sexually assaulted at a VA hospital.
The nearly yearlong review by the VA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found through interviews and examining thousands of documents that Wilkie and other senior VA officials repeatedly questioned and discussed the credibility of the veteran over her reported sexual assault, accusing her of having a history of making similar complaints, according to the report released Thursday. In at least once instance, a senior VA official actively sought to discredit her through the media. The veteran is not being named in this story at her request.
The OIG did not substantiate allegations that Wilkie formally investigated or asked his staff to investigate the veteran, and did not find evidence of criminal wrongdoing, according to the report.
Wilkie and other senior VA officials were heard by multiple witnesses making comments about the veteran, including that she allegedly made similar complaints previously, investigators said in their report. VA police also ran a background check on the veteran and shared the results with VA leaders two days before doing so for the man who allegedly assaulted her. VA took no action against the man, who had a criminal history and had previously sexually harassed VA staff.
The OIG said senior VA officials also stood in the way of its investigation.
"The evidence is replete with examples of VA senior leaders undertaking defensive actions and engaging in confrontational messaging while failing to recognize the need to take corrective action to address known problems," the OIG wrote in its report. "Secretary Wilkie and other VA officials privately disparaged the veteran, with the Secretary referring to her as 'the Takano staffer whose glamor shot was in the New York Times.'"
"The tone set by Secretary Wilkie was at minimum unprofessional and at worst provided the basis for senior officials to put out information to national reporters to question the credibility and background of the veteran who filed the sexual assault complaint."
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VA's response to the reported assault "points to a lack of genuine commitment by senior leaders to address the serious issues raised by the veteran's complaint," the OIG said in its report.
House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-California, called for Wilkie's resignation on Thursday.
“As I have said before, VA requires a cultural change to put an end to sexual harassment and assault at VA facilities — that change starts at the top. It is clear to me that Secretary Wilkie is not up to that task," Takano said in a statement. "He has lost the trust and confidence of all those he is charged to serve."
Though earlier reports suggested that the OIG told federal prosecutors its review may have found potential criminal conduct, an OIG spokesman told Connecting Vets Thursday that was not the case.
"The OIG never presented a criminal case to federal prosecutors to seek prosecution referrals as to the Secretary or any other VA official in this matter," the spokesman said.
Behavior of senior leaders runs counter to the mission of the second-largest federal agency, the Inspector General said.
“The response of Secretary Wilkie and senior VA officials to the veteran’s complaint of sexual assault was troubling. Scrutinizing the veteran’s background is contrary to VA’s stated goal to serve veterans with respect,” Inspector General Michael J. Missal said in a statement Thursday. “Every VA employee should commit to making VA facilities safe and welcoming places where such complaints are met with the highest standards of professionalism and responsiveness.”
Investigations
The veteran reported being sexually assaulted and harassed by a man at the Washington, D.C. VA Medical Center in September 2019. She said multiple people witnessed the alleged assault, and that she tried to report it to several VA staffers who were slow to react or unresponsive until police were involved.
At the time, Wilkie promised a full investigation from the Office of the Inspector General.
But that investigation concluded earlier in January with no criminal charges filed. Multiple sources with knowledge of the case told Connecting Vets this was due, at least in part, to a lack of functioning security cameras at the hospital in the area the assault took place. Records obtained by Connecting Vets through Freedom of Information Act requests confirmed that the one camera in the area was malfunctioning at the time of the incident.
Wilkie announced that the case was closed without charges in a letter to Congress last month, where he also called the veteran's report “unsubstantiated claims,” setting off a firestorm of criticism from veterans and lawmakers.
Shortly after, Missal in a rare rebuke told Wilkie in a letter that the OIG never told him the allegations were unsubstantiated and that no such characterization should have been made.
"Reaching a decision to close the investigation with no criminal charges does not mean that the underlying allegation is unsubstantiated," Missal said.
Wilkie told reporters earlier this year he regretted his use of the phrase and didn't intend to suggest that the veteran was lying about the assault.
But a senior VA attorney even suggested that Wilkie change the wording of his letter to avoid "deterring women veterans from coming forward (by) overly vilifying" the veteran, according to documents obtained by Connecting Vets through Freedom of Information Act requests and present in the OIG review. VA senior leaders moved ahead with the language in the letter despite the warning.
Senior VA officials appeared to focus their attention primarily on the veteran and not on the man accused of assaulting her, a VA contractor who routinely works at the hospital.
During the criminal investigation into the reported assault the OIG said it found that Wilkie made comments "suggesting that the veteran who filed the complaint had made similar claims previously."
In February, Missal told Wilkie that the OIG had received credible information from multiple sources of VA officials' misconduct and planned to review them. By that point, and in following days, Capitol Hill lawmakers called for an examination of allegations against Wilkie and how VA handled the sexual assault incident. The OIG paused its review in March to allow leaders to focus on the coronavirus pandemic and resumed in August.
That report that resulted from that review says that the OIG was unable to officially substantiate that Wilkie investigated, or asked others to investigate the veteran. But it did find evidence that he made comments in attempts to discredit her, and that those comments may have prompted staff to try to share that information with national media.
In sworn testimony, Wilkie denied investigating the veteran, and in interviews with more than 20 VA officials, none were specifically aware of an effort by Wilkie or anyone else to collect information about prior complaints from the veteran. Two other witnesses said they were aware of such efforts.
A former VA official told the Inspector General that as early as a month following the reported assault, Wilkie told him that the veteran had filed complaints while serving on active duty in the Navy and the former VA official believed Wilkie may have obtained that information from contacts at the Department of Defense. The second witness, a current VA employee, said that three days after the assault was reported, a senior VA official commented in a meeting that Wilkie or others "had obtained information about the veteran from DoD sources."
But the OIG was unable to find sufficient evidence to substantiate those allegations.
Multiple witnesses, including other senior VA leaders, testified that Wilkie made comments that he had such information, even if he had not specifically asked people to gather it, the OIG said in its report. Investigators' analysis of VA systems and a DoD system VA has access to did not find any "improper attempts to access the veteran's records." But even that is not conclusive, the OIG said, since access logging for the veteran's electronic health record wasn't turned on and there was no way to track who had accessed it.
'See if she's done this sort of thing in the past'
In sworn testimony, Wilkie denied investigating the veteran, questioning her credibility or knowing whether she made previous complaints. But eight senior VA employees told investigators about discussions in Wilkie's presence that involved the veteran's alleged history of filing complaints during her military service that were supposedly unfounded. Six of those eight attributed the comments to Wilkie himself.
Six days after the veteran reporter the assault, Wilkie made a "surprise visit" to the Washington, D.C. VA Medical Center where the incident was reported and the medical center director told investigators Wilkie told him that the veteran's statement about the assault was "'similar to other complaints she's made other places' or words to that effect."
Wilkie's second-in-command, Acting Deputy Secretary Pamela Powers, and another top deputy, Brooks Tucker, told the OIG that Wilkie made similar comments during meetings in his office, "questioning whether the veteran had made similar reports in the past."
In addition to those eight witnesses, three others testified to participating in conversations in which other VA officials made similar comments.
Wilkie's comments questioning the veteran's credibility had a direct effect on senior staff, who sought to share information about her background and credibility with the media, according to the OIG report.
VA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs Curtis Cashour suggested to a journalist that they should "look into -- see -- if she's done this sort of thing in the past." Cashour said he did so because of communications he had with Wilkie about the veteran, but that Wilkie did not explicitly tell him to do so.
VA leaders "failed to make meaningful efforts" to respond to the veteran's assault allegations while asking the media to focus on her, according to the OIG.
'Unusual' level of involvement by senior leaders
Senior VA officials questioned the veteran's credibility and VA police scrutinized the veteran from the start, even if not on Wilkie's direct orders, the OIG found.
Within hours of receiving word of the reported assault, senior VA officials began communicating about whether the veteran had previously complained about verbal abuse from a VA provider and the next day, Wilkie accused House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano, D-California, of "laying the grounds for a spectacle."
Senior VA officials' involvement in the case from the start "created pressure on VA police and focused their attention on the veteran herself," investigators found. VA police told investigators there was an "unusual level" of involvement from senior VA officials in the ongoing criminal investigation, including that some traveled to the Washington, D.C. Medical Center the following day to review available security footage.
One VA police officer told investigators that a visiting VA official suggested the veteran had made similar complaints previously.
During the video review, VA police ran a background check on the veteran and shared the results, something "multiple VA police officers considered unusual," the report said. That background check was run two days before the background check for the man accused of sexually assaulting the veteran. That man, a contractor, had a criminal record, and his parole officer was notified of the allegations.
The man also had a history of sexual harassment at the VA hospital. Earlier that same year, a female VA employee complained of being "repeatedly sexually harassed by the same contractor" and VA knew of his criminal history. VA senior officials, including Wilkie, "did not examine this information, readily available in VA's files," the OIG report said.
'These allegations are false'
Wilkie was on the defensive even before the OIG report was released on Thursday.
In a statement provided to Connecting Vets Wednesday, Wilkie said the Inspector General "cannot substantiate that I sought to investigate the veteran. That's because these allegations are false."
But the Inspector General's report specifically notes that there is a difference between being unable to substantiate allegations and finding that allegations are unsubstantiated. Being unable to prove the allegations means that there was "no conclusive evidence to either sustain or refute the allegation."
Wilkie further argued that the OIG couldn't identify any instances of VA staff violating rules, regulations or policies.
The allegations against him came primarily from former VA Deputy Secretary James Byrne, Wilkie argued, who he dismissed earlier this year.
In an interview with Connecting Vets last month, Byrne said he was fired at least in part because he refused to follow repeated orders from Wilkie to "shop dirt" on the veteran to the media. Byrne also accused Wilkie of believing that the assault allegation was an attempt to personally attack him and VA. On Thursday, Byrne told Connecting Vets he had not yet read the OIG report, but stood by his previous statements.
Wilkie accused the OIG of scrutinizing "confidential internal deliberations among VA staff" including the assertion that "discussion or scrutiny of public and high-profile allegations against the department, or a general desire to know the truth are somehow improper."
Wilkie did not appear to believe anything that the OIG's report found was out of the ordinary for other agencies.
"If any organization had its confidential internal deliberations cherry-picked and packaged into a public report, the result would no doubt be similar to this one," he said.
VA takes all allegations of sexual assault seriously, Wilkie argued, which was why he immediately reported the veteran's assault allegation to the Inspector General and Attorney General's Office.
'Persistent problems reported by women'
Issues of harassment and assault at the D.C. VA were not limited to the single male contractor, the OIG found.
VA officials were aware of "persistent problems reported by women" at the D.C. VA hospital, "but did not ensure facility leaders were addressing these issues," the OIG found. Acting General Counsel William Hudson Jr. told investigators that he wanted to investigate "what else we need to do in terms of fixing the gauntlet," a term used by veterans and VA staff to describe an area of many VA facilities where people -- mostly men -- gather and frequently harass others, especially women.
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"I saw for myself where you’ve got the coffee shop there and you have people sitting there and you have women running through and going to the clinic," Hudson said. "And I could see for myself that it is very distressful for anyone and especially females to go through that and be gawked at."
When asked by Connecting Vets about "the gauntlet" at VA facilities nationwide, officials have repeatedly said they are aware of the problem and working to fix it, including by providing separate entrances for women veterans.
The D.C. VA also did not participated in VA's national anti-harassment campaign announced the month after the reported assault, the OIG found.
Previously, when confronted by Congress about issues of sexual harassment and assault within VA, Acting Powers told lawmakers that such incidents were not "pervasive" at VA. Dozens of women veterans told Connecting Vets that those comments made them feel unsafe and unsupported by VA leaders in the days and weeks following Powers' testimony.
The OIG review found that statements and conduct of senior VA leaders "appear to undermine VA's stated goals of providing a safe and welcoming environment for all veterans and to treat complainants of sexual assault with respect."
Reports and survey results released earlier this year showed at least one in four women veterans reported sexual harassment at VA and one in four VA employees reported sexual harassment at work. The Government Accountability Office earlier this year released a report showing that VA's sexual harassment policies were "inconsistent and incomplete."
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'He had stopped cooperating'
Further attempts to interview senior VA officials were met with refusals, and the initial interviews of Wilkie and Powers, were less than 90 minutes each.
The OIG said its review was "hindered by the refusal of several senior VA officials to cooperate with requests for follow-up interviews" including Wilkie, Powers, Assistant Secretary for Public Intergovernmental Affairs James Hutton and Cashour.
Wilkie and Powers asked the OIG to provide its questions in written form so they "could consider whether to respond," according to the report.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, earlier linked to the allegations against Wilkie by an anonymous complaint filed with the House Veterans Affairs Committee, refused to participate in the OIG review, investigators said. At least three witnesses told the OIG that the disparaging comments Wilkie made about the veteran were based on information Crenshaw provided. Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, served in the same unit as the veteran at one time.
Crenshaw's staff has repeatedly denied his involvement, saying he was never contacted by anyone at VA about the veteran.
Wilkie told the OIG that he spoke with Crenshaw about the veteran at a fundraiser in December 2019, but that the extent of the talk was that Crenshaw had served with her. Minutes after Wilkie left the fundraiser, however, the OIG report said the VA Secretary sent an email to two top deputies -- Powers and Tucker -- suggesting Crenshaw had shared information about the veteran.
Other internal VA communications indicated that Wilkie's discussion with Crenshaw included allegations the veteran had a history of "false accusations" and the OIG determined that Wilkie's testimony was "incomplete or incorrect" but couldn't investigate further because the secretary declined follow-up interview requests.
"Ask me in the morning what Congressman Crenshaw said about the Takano staffer whose glamour shot was in the New York Times," Wilkie wrote in the email. Wilkie told the OIG that he only discussed Crenshaw having served with the veteran, and couldn't remember why that was notable enough to share with his deputies. Wilkie also said he regretted the "glamour shot" remark.
The OIG does not have the authority to compel VA staff to appear for interviews, though it is authorized under the law to require such testimony. Instead, investigators have to depend on cooperation from VA leaders to hold employees and officials accountable. But since Wilkie and his senior advisors themselves were not cooperating, the OIG "determined that compelling employees' cooperation would be futile because it would require the Secretary to take accountability actions concerning individuals who declined to cooperate in the very matter in which he had stopped cooperating."
Read the full Inspector General report here.
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For confidential help with sexual assault 24/7, call the National Sexual Assault hotline at 800-656-4673 or go to online.rainn.org.
Reach Abbie Bennett: abbie@connectingvets.com or @AbbieRBennett. Sign up for the Connecting Vets weekly newsletter to get more stories like this delivered to your inbox.