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Open Letter To President Barack Obama: Women Firefighters Still Being Assualted, Raped And Harassed In US Forest Service -video -not safe for work viewing(video and pictre)
The White House
President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
January 31, 2014
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
Dear President Obama –
Your January 22, 2014 Memorandum Establishing a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault prompted me to write another letter to you. It is widely recognized that you and Vice President Biden have been champions of women’s safety before and during your presidency, including the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2013. Your advocacy for the safety and success of women in the military and women within the educational system is unprecedented. Today, one week after your establishment of the task force to address student sexual assault I would like to ask you to take similar actions to insure the safety and success of your own employees – women who work for the USDA, Forest Service. As I’ve notified you and your staff in the past, these women are also experiencing workplace violence, rape, and retaliation for reporting it.
First, I would like to thank you for the past action your office has taken to speak to Secretary Tom Vilsack about these issues. Secretary Vilsack’s staff has taken action on certain, specific matters because the White House was involved. Unfortunately, when this oversight is over USDA and Forest Service management quickly revert back to the benign neglect and blatant abuse of women who report harassment, discrimination, intimidation, and workplace violence. I believe USDA officials are not being truthful, i.e., telling the White House that conditions are improving. It is not the case.
On January 22, 2014 Valerie Jarrett stated, “The Administration is committed to investing in women’s education, training, and full inclusion in the workforce, and the President strongly believes that combating sexual assault is vital to that effort.” Full inclusion in the workforce is not happening for all women in the Forest Service. Women are physically and sexually assaulted. Women who report these incidents are retaliated against. Agency officials protect perpetrators. Secretary Vilsack and Chief Tom Tidwell are fully aware of this. Yet, there has been no substantive action taken to change this culture of abuse.
In July 2013, as a member of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees delegation, I met with top officials at USDA and the Forest Service to discuss civil rights issues. At that time, I advised Secretary Vilsack’s staff about a recent call I received from a female firefighter working on a Southern California (Region 5) forest. She had been raped on the job by a male crewmember. She would not report it. This young woman told me that she had seen the way Sequoia National Forest firefighter Alicia Dabney had been harassed and retaliated against for reporting assault and attempted rape. She said she could not afford to lose her job (Ms. Dabney was falsely accused of misconduct and terminated) because she was sole support for her child and because she could not take the chance of losing her health benefits. This woman had to suffer in silence in order to feed and protect her family. It was heart breaking. I told the officials in the meeting that it was not the first time I had received such a phone call. They appeared to be concerned. In fact, Deputy Under Secretary Butch Blazer and Forest Service Civil Rights Director Ted Gutman told me to contact them directly in the future and they would work with me to resolve individual employee matters. Regrettably, when I contacted them, Mr. Gutman refused to take any action and Mr. Blazer would not even return my calls.
Since that July 31, 2013 meeting, I’ve received phone calls from other women who have been raped, assaulted, sexually harassed, intimidated, and retaliated against for reporting it. Some of the perpetrators have been high-level officials such as Forest Supervisors. Agency human resources personnel more often than not help Forest Service officials discredit the victimized employee. The employee may be publicly humiliated, undermined, shunned, isolated, endure further abuse, and is likely to be targeted for discipline and termination. It is a very public process to ensure employees understand if they report abuse, it will not go well for them. This is why so many Forest Service women do not report the abuses. In her January 22nd post, Ms. Jarrett discussed a woman who had been raped. She stated, “The trauma of her attack was debilitating on several levels, but as she put it, it was her inability to tell anyone that caused the most harm.” I can only imagine the totality of suffering these Forest Service women endure, but I have seen the physical, emotional and financial impacts. This insanity must stop.
To be clear, physical abuse is not the only issue. Gender discrimination, that is, denying women equal opportunities is rampant throughout the Forest Service and Region 5. This institutionalized culture is one that insures so many women; particularly women of color cannot advance in their careers. Currently, female firefighters are preparing to file a class action complaint in Region 5 based on denial of equal opportunities and a sexually hostile work environment. This will be a huge cost to the taxpayer, and as we all know, millions and millions of dollars are already wasted yearly because USDA refuses to acknowledge the problem.
Mr. President, in your January 25, 2014 weekly address you stated that sexual violence is an affront to our basic decency and humanity and it affects the safety of those we love most: “our moms, our wives, our daughters and our sons.” To those who were assaulted, you said, “I have your back.” We are asking you to have the backs of the moms, wives, daughters, and sons in the USDA and Forest Service. By this letter, we ask that you contact Secretary Vilsack again and ask him to work with us to address this problem. Because despite what you may have been told, there has been only talk and no action from the USDA officials who have been speaking to us on a monthly basis this past year. There is a group of women waiting to step forward and work with the Secretary and Chief’s staff to actually transform the Forest Service culture – to make it a place where employees are safe, employees are accountable for their actions, and equal opportunities are available to all. Thank you for your consideration of this request.
Sincerely,
Lesa L. Donnelly
/s/Lesa L. Donnelly
Vice President, USDA Coalition of Minority Employees
Alecia Dabney wins civil rights award
America: If u are so concerned about how the government is spending your money, why don’t you write and call the President about retaining these rapists, bigots and assaultrsr in their jobs while their victimsget fired for reporting the abuse
1. Barack would support safety of women out of safety for his own ass. If he did not, Michelle would sit on him.
2. Who is doing all this student raping? The same culprits that are raping Scandinavian women with impunity? Let’s have some details and say it like it is. You cannot have these wholesale rapes in Europe by a certain class of immigrants without that same group doing their heinous deeds in North America. Let’s open this can of worms and go fishing.
Sorry, but I REALLY don’t see numbers in this whole thing.
First off, who CARES if the Forest Service won’t do something about ‘peer rapists’? Go down from your fire watch tower, report the rape to the local sheriff, and to the state police if he won’t act, JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE DOES who works for ‘Joe’s Welding’ or ‘Mamma Mia’s Coffee Shop’. Why do you need the POTUS to be ‘aware of your plight’? RAPE is not a federal crime, it is a state crime. DEAL WITH THIS IN THE STATE IT HAPPENED IN, stop trying to Federalize bowel movements.
I am not aware, in today’s world, a single county sheriff that would turn a blind-eye to a documentable rape charge. He couldn’t withstand the storm that would come for him.
I still don’t envision the numbers of actual occurrences in ‘Forest Industry’ rapes, to start with. 10 a year? 20? How many were properly reported to state police that weren’t acted on? How do you ‘Minority Report’ the potential of future crime, when the guy who will rape someone 3 years from now has no record of any transgression right now? I mean, this whole thing just doesn’t make sense.
TAKE IT UP WITH LOCAL AND STATE POLICE, don’t bring more exorbitantly priced federal police into this. Before it’s over with, you are going to have federal police stationed in your house, telling you how many grains of salt you have use for the day.