Earlier this year, two whistleblowers who triggered a state investigation into Cornerstone Cottage, an Idaho youth facility where they once worked, still believed at least one state agency would take their side.
They made their case to the Idaho Human Rights Commission, arguing that when Cornerstone Cottage fired them both in 2021, it was in direct retaliation for the complaint they sent to state regulators. That 84-page complaint detailed concerns regarding the safety of both the staff and the girls there, including allegations that children had been sexually assaulted, beaten, harassed and frequently hospitalized due to neglect.
But in June, more than two years later, the Human Rights Commission ruled against the two whistleblowers, Emily Carter and Kieria Krieger. With that decision, Carter and Krieger had exhausted any options that could have forced the state to hold Cornerstone accountable for, in their view, trying to silence whistleblowers highlighting sexual assault, sexual harassment and child abuse. (Cornerstone’s owner, Jim Smidt, maintains that they were fired for poor job performance, not in retaliation.)
“It’s a really scary thing to not enforce anti-retaliation regulations,” Carter said.
Last month, InvestigateWest revealed how the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare allowed the facility to stay in business despite substantiating many of the claims detailed by...
Congress leaders Harshwardhan Sapkal and Nana Patole, Nationalist Congress Party (SP) legislator Rohit Pawar, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi said PM Modi's sp...