In the process of investigating charges of sexual harassment at Grand Canyon National Park, authorities discovered that a park employee who resigned after "being disciplined for repeated acts of sexual harassment and misconduct during river trips" landed a job at the National Park Service's Submerged Resources Center in New Mexico.

And after working at the Santa Fe office, the unnamed employee returned to Grand Canyon as a volunteer and was allowed on another river trip, according to the report from Interior Department's Office of Inspector General.

The discovery was made as the OIG was investigating claims from 13 women that they were subjected to sexual harassment while working for Grand Canyon's River District operation. That investigation generated a tawdry list of inappropriate behavior, from male employees taking photographs up under a female co-worker's dress and groping female workers to women dancing provocatively and bringing a drinking straw "shaped like a penis and testicles" to river parties. The incidents, the September 2014 letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell charged, "demonstrated evidence of 'discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment.'”

According to a memorandum from the OIG to National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, released this past Tuesday by the OIG staff, after the unnamed male employee resigned his Grand Canyon job he went to the Submergeed Resources Center and was hired as a scuba diver in December 2007 and January 2008 and had gross pay of $5,162.13. Staff there told OIG investigators that they knew he had worked at Grand Canyon, but never contacted the park for a reference and did not know he had been disciplined for sexual harassment.

The man later returned to Grand Canyon in 2010 and was able to go on a river trip as a volunteer, the OIG investigation learned. Park supervisors eventually learned that he had returned and told staff that he could no longer be used because of his history.

While OIG said there was no prohibition against rehiring former employees or allowing them to volunteer, "in this case NPS officials failed to perfonn their due diligence and unknowingly brought a previously disciplined former employee back into the NPS workforce."

The OIG's office recommended to Director Jarvis that going forward the agency:

* ensure reference checks are conducted on former Government employees before they are rehired;

* increase management oversight over selecting former NPS employees as volunteers; and

* prohibit former employees who have been disciplined for misconduct from returning as volunteers to the same environment in which they had been disciplined.