A career investigator in the Seattle office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sexually exploited a disabled veteran who lodged a complaint against his former employers, threatening the complainant with rape and demanding he masturbate during their private consultations.
A career agency official named William Spencer Benedict handled the veteran’s claims against his former employers, Starbucks Corporation and Siemens Company. Benedict groomed the complainant for sexual abuse while pursuing the case, according to a newly released inspector general (IG) report.
“If you call me ‘sir’ one more time, I will bend you over a chair and rape you with no fucking lube, do you want that?” he allegedly said during one conversation.
Government Attic, a private website that publishes government documents released under public records laws, obtained and published the report. Lawyers for Benedict and the complainant did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s inquiries.
The records are heavily redacted and do not name the EEOC investigator or the complainant. TheDCNF identified Benedict through a civil case the complainant filed against him in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the federal trial court in Seattle.
Benedict denied all allegations in his response to the lawsuit.
The IG report relates the sequence of events in detail. The complainant first brought his case to the agency in Feb. 2012. The complainant, who TheDCNF has chosen not to identify given privacy concerns, was a veteran of the Iraq War suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
Benedict conducted a preliminary interview with the complainant to discuss his workplace discrimination claims, and successfully lobbied his superiors to lead the ensuing case, according to the report’s findings. The report states that between May and Aug. 2012, Benedict “manipulated [the complainant] into performing numerous sexual acts of self-stimulation while on the phone,” submitted the complainant to a torrent of abusive language, and repeatedly professed his love for the complainant.
The report includes an excerpt from an email Benedict sent on Feb. 23, in which he berates the complainant for sharing case documents with the Department of Labor. The email reads:
I swear to gawd that I am going to break you down like a shot gun … dude … the last vestige of your virginity belongs to me … if you HAVE NOT sent the documents to DOL DO NOT … ARGUUH … how did sending stuff to DOL get into the equation??????? … oh dude, your voice mail is full, how the hell is anyone suppose to call you, eh? ARGUUH
The IG interviewed the complainant on Jan. 21, 2015, in the presence of his attorney, Donna Mack, who currently practices at the Emerald Law Group in Seattle. During the interview, the complainant said Benedict threatened to rape him and commanded his sexual fealty.
“You and I are going to do things that you’ve probably never done with a man, well a man my age,” Benedict said during one call, according to the complainant. “I need you to trust me with everything, that includes the cock between your legs, do you understand?”
Benedict also allegedly professed his love for the complainant on a regular basis, in vivid, absolutist terms.
“The hardest thing, and the best thing I do every day is love you,” he often said, according to the report.
Court filings detail similar allegations. The filings assert Benedict instructed the complainant to purchase sex toys and masturbate during their conversations, and claimed to possess pictures of the complainant being molested under the influence of drugs as a child. It is not clear that any such pictures exist.
The report concluded that the complainant’s statements during the interview were credible and that Benedict’s conduct violated a provision of the Code of Federal Regulations requiring government employees to avoid “criminal, infamous, dishonest, immoral, or notoriously disgraceful conduct.”
“His credibility can be established through the consistency of his statements provided in affidavits and sworn testimony, and supported through email and phone records,” the report says of the complainant. The IG found the pair spoke by email 72 times and by phone 91 times between May and August. The duration of the calls ran from just one minute to a maximum of 35 minutes.
“His actions related to the charging party are outside any acceptable ethical standard for a federal employee and the treatment is especially troubling given the fact they involved a disabled veteran who served this country,” the report adds.
Benedict refused to cooperate with the IG’s investigation.
The civil case against Benedict was settled in March 2016, though details are not publicly available.
Court filings indicate Benedict was not an employee of the agency by the time the lawsuit was brought against him. The EEOC declined to tell TheDCNF whether Benedict left the agency of his own volition, or if he was fired. The IG report does not suggest he was dismissed.
The EEOC provided no comment to TheDCNF, despite multiple inquiries.
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