New watchdog report on Chicago Park District misconduct covers 48 allegations, including sexual assault of visitor
The independent watchdog for the Chicago Park District investigated 48 allegations tied to years of sexual abuse and other misconduct within the aquatics department, with more than a dozen employees pushed out as a result, according to a report released Wednesday.
The annual 2021 report of the Park District’s Office of Inspector General detailed investigations into allegations ranging from sexual assault and harassment to failure to report misconduct. At least seven of the cases involved alleged sexual assault or attempted sexual assault, and at least six entailed someone failing to report allegations of wrongdoing.
Ten other cases involved inappropriate language, giving alcohol to minors and hazing, while the inspector general was unable to substantiate another 19 cases.
The Park District’s interim inspector general, Alison Perona, wrote in the report that her office’s findings span several locations with “an environment where bullying, harassing and sexual misconduct flourished.”
“These allegations brought to light not only misconduct, but also of failures in the park district’s reporting and administrative functions,” Perona said.
The fallout of the allegations includes 15 employees being fired, resigning or being asked to resign because of violations uncovered by the investigations of the OIG and an independent probe, whose findings were detailed in a November report.
That independent investigation found top officials failed to act on troubling allegations and came out around the time Park District CEO Mike Kelly resigned in the wake of the sexual misconduct scandal.
That same month, Park District lifeguard supervisor Mauricio Ramirez resigned and was criminally charged with sexual assault and abuse of a 16-year-old girl who worked as a lifeguard for the district last summer, according to public records. In December, additional counts of the same charges were added in connection to allegations involving a separate 16-year-old lifeguard, authorities said.
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Another Park District employee, a natatorium instructor, was found to have tried to force two female lifeguards into sexual activity on separate occasions before he resigned while under investigation, according to the inspector general’s report. A senior lifeguard supervisor, whom several female lifeguards said disparaged them and “threw objects when angry,” boasted about sexually assaulting a “drunk female visitor” in a work trailer, the report says.
The OIG report says several witnesses confirmed the circumstances of the assault of the patron, and the supervisor resigned before the end of the OIG investigation.
Another case stretches back to 1989, when a then-17-year-old girl had sex with her 20-year-old supervisor. She came forward during the OIG investigations last year because she now sees it was inappropriate and that he emotionally manipulated her, the report says.
That supervisor was already placed on the city’s “Do not rehire” list because of a previous investigation, which the OIG did not elaborate on.
Other cases also detail lifeguards or lifeguard supervisors assaulting lifeguards, some underage. Several also threatened their alleged victims, and all of them have since resigned.
