State Department officials have yet to implement policies that would ensure its own employees don’t engage in human trafficking, a new inspector general report found.
Sen. Chuck Grassley called the report “alarming” in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry Thursday responding to the watchdog’s findings.
The Iowa Republican, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, highlighted a recent case in which a U.S. diplomat stationed in Japan and her husband imprisoned and raped their Ethiopian housekeeper.
The diplomat, Linda Howard, was removed from her overseas post after the housekeeper complained in federal court that she was kept in the Howard’s home at the U.S. embassy in Japan and forced to work 80 hours a week for $0.88 cents an hour.
But Howard seemingly remained employed at the agency and was permitted to retire, Grassley noted.
“[T]his case, viewed in light of today’s OIG report, raises questions about the Department’s commitment to holding itself to the same standard by which it judges other countries in assessing their compliance with anti-trafficking standards,” Grassley wrote.
Despite a 2011 inspector general review that recommended the State Department include human trafficking policies in its employee code of conduct, the agency still doesn’t have the trafficking policies in its Foreign Affairs Manual, the inspector general wrote.
“As a result, the Department is not well-positioned to hold employees accountable for violations” of human trafficking policies, the report said.
In March, 18 members of Congress wrote to Kerry and the inspector general to voice their concerns that the State Department may be too lenient on employees who solicit prostitution, which contributes to the global demand for human trafficking.
The lawmakers cited several cases in which internal investigations into State Department officials who allegedly solicited prostitutes were suppressed.
At least one of those cases involved former aides to Hillary Clinton, who have been accused by whistleblowers of covering up an ambassador’s solicitation of prostitutes in at least one instance.
The fact that some agency officials who have allegedly engaged in prostitution-related sexual misconduct remain at the agency is evidence that the State Department doesn’t have a “zero-tolerance” policy against sex trafficking, the lawmakers argued.
