Feb 19 (Reuters) – U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s husband has been barred from the department’s headquarters after allegations by at least two female staff members that he had sexually assaulted them, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the decision and a police report.
The women told department officials that Chavez-DeRemer’s husband Shawn DeRemer, an anesthesiologist, had touched them inappropriately at the department’s building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, according to the Times.
Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department on January 24 filed a police report that said a complainant reported a sexual contact against her will at the Labor Department’s Constitution Avenue building on December 18, a copy of the police report seen by Reuters showed.
Asked by Reuters about the report, a police spokesman said the department’s sexual assault unit was investigating the incident but did not confirm whether it was the same incident involving DeRemer. The spokesman said the police report was the only one associated with the Labor Department’s address from the last three months.
The Labor Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. DeRemer could not be reached for a comment.
The New York Times said one of the incidents occurred on the morning of December 18 and was recorded on office security cameras. The video showed DeRemer giving one of the women an extended embrace. It was reviewed as part of a criminal investigation, the paper said.
DeRemer was barred from entering the department premises after women described the incidents to investigators, the newspaper said.
The women’s concerns about DeRemer were raised in January as part of an internal probe by the department’s inspector general into alleged misconduct by Chavez-DeRemer and her senior staff, the Times said.
The New York Post was first to report about the investigation at the Labor Department that had forced several members in Chavez-DeRemer’s inner circle onto administrative and investigative leave.
A Labor Department spokesperson told the NY Post on January 9 that “unsubstantiated allegations” against Chavez-DeRemer are “categorically false.” A spokesperson for the department’s inspector general’s office told the NY Post then it was its policy not to confirm or deny the existence of any investigation or complaint beyond what had been published on its website.
(Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Toronto; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Lincoln Feast.)
