A top tanking Personnel employee for FEMA was given the option to quit his job, in lieu of termination, after other top leadership discovered he was hiring women he met on social media apps to set up with his friends at work.
Daily Mail UK reports that Corey Coleman, the former head of the FEMA personnel office, left the agency after a seven-month investigation revealed that he had been sexually harassing female staff members and assigning women he met on dating apps to work in certain offices so his male colleagues could try and sleep with them.
According to the summary, after Coleman had a sexual relationship with one subordinate in 2015, he continued to pressure her for dates. When she refused, she was denied a promotion.
He had a second inappropriate relationship two years later with another subordinate, according to the report.
Coleman granted preferential treatment to fraternity brothers, according to the report, in part because he said he could ‘trust them.’
It said he intimidated staff and created a management structure in which he was the foremost hiring and firing authority, in part to circumvent subordinates who might question him. Investigators interviewed 73 witnesses and took 98 statements.
FEMA administrator Brock Long issued this statement following Coleman’s termination.
Anyone who disagrees with this zero tolerance approach will not be welcome at FEMA,’ Long said. ‘Employees at FEMA devote their careers to caring for disaster survivors in their time of greatest need. We must care for our own with the same respect, compassion and advocacy that we bring to our external operations.’
Long goes on to say the case would be referred to Homeland Security and victims of Coleman would have to contact police in order to pursue charges.