Chris Kirkpatrick, a Department of Veterans Affairs psychologist and whistleblower, committed suicide in 2009 after he was fired from the Tomah VA Medical Center in Tomah, Wis. They are often “humiliated, marginalized, ostracized, given additional bogus assignments,” said Valerie Riviello, a whistleblower retired from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albany, N.Y., as she described her ordeal. At the same time, discipline is “almost unheard of” for the managers who retaliate against whistleblowers, said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project (GAP), an organization that works with whistleblowers. Devine called it “a paradigm shift that may prevent far more retaliation than whistleblowers can stop through lawsuits. “Today we are sending a strong message that federal whistleblowers like Chris deserve protection, and attempts to intimidate or silence whistleblowers are unlawful.”That sounds like good news for the federal whistleblowers who suffer the whip of retribution.

Source: Washington Post October 31, 2017 20:38 UTC