Federal investigators found a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) employee had pictures on his computer depicting children in gymnastics poses, along with hundreds of pictures of the employee wearing “girls’ gymnastics leotards.”
Interior Department officials began looking into the USBR employee based on allegations the worker had child pornography on his computer. Investigators found no evidence of child porn, but they did “identify substantial inappropriate activity.”
“We found no evidence of child pornography or other criminal material, but discovered thousands of downloaded photographs depicting children in gymnastics-related poses and clothing, hundreds of photographs of the employee wearing girls’ gymnastics leotards, and an unauthorized anti-forensics tool,” DOI’s inspector general reported Wednesday in a brief report with few details.
The USBR employee was also found to have installed an “unauthorized scrubbing program” — a program designed to destroy specific data from your computer so it can no longer be recovered.
The employee admitted to “misusing” his government computer, and the USBR only suspended the employee for 14 days.
The 14-day suspension likely won’t sit well with federal lawmakers. Republican congressmen have been highlighting federal agencies inability to fire employees accused of sexual crimes.
Most recently, House Republicans brought to late how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) paid an employee convicted of child molestation $55,000 to retire — the agency had actually kept the employee around for years after his conviction.
“A convicted child molester — convicted child molester — was on EPA’s payroll for years, even after EPA learned of his offense,” Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said in a recent hearing.
“What’s so terrible about this situation and just cannot explain or justify is the EPA knows that this person is a convicted child molester, and yet the EPA put him in a position to interact with the public,” Chaffetz said. “He was out there literally interacting with the public.”
In July, Chaffetz held a similar hearing where he blasted EPA officials for not firing an employee who repeatedly sexually assaulted interns.
“This is a predator who was fed a steady diet of interns,” Chaffetz said. “The first time this happened he should have been fired and he should have probably been referred to the authorities for criminal prosecution.”
“It happened 10 times, and you never did that,” he said. “You still haven’t done that on this person.”
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