Sexual harassment complaints at the State Department have increased nearly threefold during the tenures of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Secretary John Kerry, the department's inspector general warned in a report released Thursday.
"A significant increase in reported harassment inquiries in the Department of State [between fall of 2011 and fall of 2014] supports the need for mandatory harassment training," State Department Inspector General Steven Linick wrote upon reviewing the work of the department's Office of Civil Rights, which is responsible for propagating fairness in the workplace.
"Mandatory online harassment training ... would make all department personnel aware of their responsibilities pertaining to harassment," the report said. "Such training also could assist the legal section by decreasing the number of in-person training sessions requested by department bureaus and posts."
Formal sexual harassment claims rose from 88 cases in fiscal year 2011, Clinton's third year as the nation's top diplomat, to 248 claims in fiscal year 2014, the second year of Kerry's tenure, according to the report. Hundreds of additional informal complaints were also filed over the same period, including 332 initiated in 2014.
"With a continuous increase in harassment inquiries each fiscal year, the current staff risks not being able to sustain current work performance levels," the report stated.
The report found that 38 percent of formal complaints filed in 2014 alleged "reprisal and sex discrimination" as reason for filing, while 43 percent alleged harassment and unfair hiring and promotion practices.
The Office of Civil Rights attributed the sharp increase in complaints to "improved outreach" efforts to inform employees of sexual harassment policies and the complaint process. According to the Office of Civil Rights, "Department employees are more educated about harassment strictures and more knowledgeable about the reporting process than in the past," the report said.
Though both Clinton and Kerry previously issued internal directives on discrimination and sexual harassment, the report suggests that both Secretaries failed to facilitate optimal redress, since they didn't order department managers to require mandatory harassment training.
The inspector general also said the legal section of the Office of Civil Rights, which is responsible for overseeing the harassment complaint process, needs to initiate disciplinary action in a more timely manner.
"One matter expressed during this inspection, as well as a previous OIG inspection, is the need for action offices to process cases sent for their action in a more timely matter," the report said. "Senior Department officials must emphasize the need for action offices to process cases in a timely manner and hold individuals accountable for their inappropriate actions."
Following the report's release, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that there is "nothing that Secretary Kerry takes more seriously than making sure that everybody here at the State Department is treated with dignity and respect. And he has zero tolerance for harassment of any kind, sexual or otherwise."
As for whether Kerry intends to pursue the inspector general's recommendations and create a mandatory harassment training program, Kirby said officials had just received the report and plan to review it before moving forward.
"I'm not going to get ahead of decisions that the secretary will or won't make about the recommendations," Kirby said.
