Whenever someone calls the hotline, they will be able to confidentially report incidents of sexual assault or harassment that occur at VA facilities. The call center will be ready to answer the phones 24/7, and follow-up health care and support will also be made available to those in need.

This new capability is part of VA’s “no wrong door” reporting policy for sexual assault or sexual harassment. Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors are also encouraged to report incidents of sexual harassment or sexual assault as soon as they occur, including while they are still at the VA facility. These incidents can be reported directly to VA police, VA staff, or local law enforcement, and now also by calling 1-800-MyVA411.

“Maintaining a safe and welcoming environment at all VA facilities for Veterans, their caregivers, volunteers, visitors, and employees is a key priority for the Department,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough. “By creating multiple avenues for persons to report sexual harassment or sexual assault incidents, the VA removes barriers to reporting and creates a quicker path for VA to investigate and take appropriate action.”

VA has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault and sexual harassment, which means VA expects and actively works to create a culture free of such incidents. VA believes that reacting to sexual harassment and assault is not enough; instead, VA must achieve and sustain a proactively inclusive culture — supported by Veteran and employee-centered policy, operations, engagement, training, and technology — such that VA prevents sexual harassment and sexual assault and ensures an excellent experience for each person VA serves and employs.

In addition to implementing this hotline, VA has taken many steps in recent years to prevent and address sexual harassment and sexual assault at VA facilities, and to support survivors. These steps include designating points of contact at VA facilities to accept reports of harassment from Veterans and visitors; implementing Veteran safety surveys; providing bystander intervention training for staff and Veterans; encouraging employees and Veterans to take the White Ribbon VA Pledge to never commit, excuse, or stay silent about sexual harassment, sexual assault, or domestic violence; and requiring facility remediation plans for those that obtain five or more founded sexual assault or sexual harassment incidents during a fiscal year.

VA also has an active Secretary’s Working Group on Sexual Assault and Harassment Prevention — a group of Veterans Service Organization representatives, advocates, State Directors of Veterans Affairs, Tribal representatives, VA employees serving in a personal capacity, and survivors of sexual assault and harassment. The input of this group, in addition to VA’s ongoing Veteran engagement and outreach efforts, is informing VA’s way forward.

MyVA411 was launched in 2019 and served more than 1.5 million Veterans in fiscal year 2022. Customer Service Representatives answer inquiries, provide directory assistance, document concerns about VA care, benefits, and services, and expedite the referral and resolution of those concerns in addition to processing sexual harassment and sexual assault reports.

To learn more about reporting incidents of sexual harassment or sexual assault, visit VHA’s Assault and Harassment Prevention Office Website. For more information about the MyVA411 contact line, visit 1-800-MyVA411: One phone number to reach VA.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation Tuesday over a barrage of sexual harassment allegations in a fall from grace a year after he was widely hailed nationally for his detailed daily briefings and leadership during some of the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

By turns defiant and chastened, the 63-year-old Democrat emphatically denied intentionally mistreating women and called the pressure for his ouster politically motivated. But he said that fighting back in this “too hot” political climate would subject the state to months of turmoil.

“The best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing,” Cuomo said in a televised address.

The third-term governor’s resignation, which will take effect in two weeks, was announced as momentum built in the Legislature to remove him by impeachment and after nearly the entire Democratic establishment had turned against him, with President Joe Biden joining those calling on him to resign.

The decision came a week after New York’s attorney general released the results of an investigation that found Cuomo sexually harassed at least 11 women.

Investigators said he subjected women to unwanted kisses; groped their breasts or buttocks or otherwise touched them inappropriately; made insinuating remarks about their looks and their sex lives; and created a work environment “rife with fear and intimidation.”

At the same time, Cuomo was under fire over the discovery that his administration had concealed thousands of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home patients.

Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a 62-year-old Democrat and former member of Congress from the Buffalo area, will become the state’s 57th governor and the first woman to hold the post. She said Cuomo’s resignation was “the right thing to do and in the best interest of New Yorkers.”

The #MeToo-era scandal cut short not just a career but a dynasty: Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was governor in the 1980s and ’90s, and the younger Cuomo was often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. Even as the scandal mushroomed, he was planning to run for reelection in 2022.

Republicans exulted in Cuomo’s departure but still urged impeachment, which could prevent him from running for office again. “This resignation is simply an attempt to avoid real accountability,” state GOP chair Nick Langworthy said.

At the White House, Biden said: “I respect the governor’s decision.” At the same time, he said Cuomo had “done a helluva job” on infrastructure and voting rights, and “that’s why it’s so sad.”

“From the beginning, I simply asked that the governor stop his abusive behavior,” Lindsey Boylan, the first woman to accuse Cuomo publicly of harassment, tweeted Tuesday. “It became abundantly clear he was unable to do that, instead attacking and blaming victims until the end.”

Cuomo still faces the possibility of criminal charges, with a number of prosecutors around the state continuing to investigate him. At least one of his accusers has filed a criminal complaint.

The governor prefaced his resignation with a 45-minute defense from his lawyer and his own insistence that his behavior — while sometimes insensitive, off-putting or “too familiar” — had been used against him as a weapon in a political environment where “rashness has replaced reasonableness.”

“I am a fighter, and my instinct is to fight through this controversy because I truly believe it is politically motivated. I believe it is unfair and it is untruthful,” he said, but added that he didn’t want “distractions” to consume the state government as it grapples with the pandemic and other problems.

The string of accusations began in news reports last December and went on for months. Cuomo called some of the allegations fabricated and denied he touched anyone inappropriately. But he acknowledged making some aides uncomfortable with comments he said he intended as playful, and he apologized for some of his behavior.

He portrayed some encounters as misunderstandings attributable to “generational or cultural” differences, invoking his upbringing in an affectionate Italian American family.

The attorney general’s investigation backed up the women’s accounts and added lurid new ones, turning up the pressure on Cuomo. Investigators also said that the governor’s staff retaliated against Boylan by leaking confidential personnel files about her.

As governor, Cuomo proclaimed himself a “progressive Democrat” who gets things done: Since taking office in 2011, he helped push through legislation that legalized gay marriage, began lifting the minimum wage to $15 and expanded paid family leave benefits. He also backed big infrastructure projects, including a new Hudson River bridge that he named after his father.

At the same time he was engaging in the behavior that got him into trouble, he was publicly championing the #MeToo movement and surrounding himself with women’s rights activists. He signed into law sweeping new protections against sexual harassment and lengthened the statute of limitations in rape cases.

His resignation is “a testament to the growing power of women’s voices since the beginning of the #MeToo movement,” said Debra Katz, a lawyer for one of his accusers, Charlotte Bennett.

Cuomo’s national popularity soared during the harrowing spring of 2020, when New York was the lethal epicenter of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak and he became President Donald Trump’s chief antagonist in the minds of many Americans.

Cuomo’s tough-minded but compassionate rhetoric made for riveting television well beyond New York, as he sternly warned people to stay home and wear masks while Trump often brushed off the virus. Cuomo’s briefings won an international Emmy Award, and he went on to write a book on leadership in a crisis.

But those accomplishments were soon tainted when it emerged that the state’s official count of nursing home deaths had excluded many victims who had been transferred to hospitals before they succumbed. A Cuomo aide acknowledged the administration feared the true numbers would be “used against us” by the Trump White House.

Also, Cuomo’s administration was fiercely criticized for forcing nursing homes to accept patients recovering from the virus.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the state’s handling of data on nursing home deaths. In addition, the state attorney general is looking into whether Cuomo broke the law in using members of his staff to help write and promote his book, from which he stood to make more than $5 million.

The governor also faced increasing criticism over his rough and sometimes vindictive treatment of fellow politicians and his own staff, with former aides telling stories of a brutal work environment.

Cuomo has been divorced since 2005 from author and activist Kerry Kennedy, a member of the Kennedy family, and was romantically involved up until 2019 with TV lifestyle personality Sandra Lee. He has three adult daughters and appealed to them as he stepped down.

“I want them to know, from the bottom of my heart: I never did, and I never would, intentionally disrespect a woman or treat any woman differently than I would want them treated,” he said. “Your dad made mistakes. And he apologized. And he learned from it. And that’s what life is all about.”

Cuomo got his start in politics as his father’s hard-nosed and often ruthless campaign manager, then was New York attorney general and U.S. housing secretary under President Bill Clinton before getting elected governor in 2010.

New York has seen a string of high-level politicians brought down in disgrace in recent years.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in 2008 in a prostitution scandal. Rep. Anthony Weiner went to prison for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman stepped down in 2018 after four women accused him of abuse. And the Legislature’s top two leaders were convicted of corruption.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The leader of Time’s Up, the #MeToo-era organization founded by Hollywood women to fight sexual harassment, resigned under fire Monday for advising Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration behind the scenes in its effort to discredit one of Cuomo’s accusers.

Time’s Up said in a tweet that it agreed with Roberta Kaplan that stepping down as chair of the group’s board of directors was “the right and appropriate thing to do.”

A report issued last week by New York’s attorney general concluded that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women. The allegations have thrown the Democrat’s career into extreme peril, threatening him with the possibility of both impeachment and criminal charges.

Kaplan, a women’s rights advocate who has a law practice of her own, counseled the administration last winter when Cuomo was hit with the first of the harassment allegations, leveled by a former economic development adviser, Lindsey Boylan.

Both Kaplan and Alphonso David, leader of the Human Rights Campaign, were consulted over a letter the Cuomo administration had drafted attacking Boylan’s credibility. Kaplan and David agreed to review the letter.

According to the attorney general’s report, Kaplan told the administration that with some adjustments, the letter would be fine to send out. David, a former counsel to Cuomo, declined to sign the letter but agreed to contact other people to see if they would. Other advisers, though, said it was a bad idea, and the letter was never widely disseminated.

Kaplan’s role in advising the Cuomo administration stunned sexual assault victims and others. Several past backers of Time’s Up sent an open letter Monday demanding an investigation, charging that the organization’s leaders “align themselves with abusers at the expense of survivors.”

“TIME’S UP should be ashamed,” the letter said.

Activist Alison Turkos, who organized the letter, said sexual assault victims feel they have been abandoned by purported advocates who were secretly working for the other side.

“How are you telling survivors, ‘We’re a safe space for you, come to us,’ but behind closed doors you are handing abusers a playbook of how to cover up and retaliate against your victims?” asked Turkos, whose letter was signed by dozens of self-described victims, including Cuomo accuser Charlotte Bennett.

In her resignation letter, Kaplan said she had “reluctantly come to the conclusion that an active law practice is no longer compatible” with serving on the Time’s Up board.

She added: “Unfortunately, recent events have made it clear that even our apparent allies in the fight to advance women can turn out to be abusers” — a reference to Cuomo’s public support of the #MeToo movement, which included his signing of sweeping new protections in 2019 against sexual harassment.

In addition to advising the Cuomo administration, Kaplan had more recently done legal work representing Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to Cuomo who resigned Sunday after the attorney general’s report portrayed her as playing a central role in the effort to retaliate against Boylan.

Meanwhile, the Human Rights Campaign said it is launching an investigation of the “appropriateness” of David’s actions.

David, in a statement Monday, said he welcomed that review amid what he called “multiple inaccuracies (that) have been circulating.” He said he only learned of the governor’s alleged misconduct from the Attorney General’s report, and said he neither signed nor circulated the letter. He did acknowledge turning over ’an electric copy of a counseling memo regarding a state employee” after he left government, but said he was legally obligated to do so.

“I have called for his resignation and reiterate that call today,” he said of Cuomo.

Kaplan in 2018 co-founded Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which helps women who have been subjected to sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace.

She successfully represented Edith Windsor before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, winning the case that struck down laws against gay marriage across the U.S. She later published a book about the case, “Then Comes Marriage.”

Kaplan also represents writer E. Jean Carroll, who filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump in 2019 related to her claim that the former president raped her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump has denied Carroll’s allegations.

Carroll supported Kaplan in a tweet Monday.

“Robbie Kaplan is my attorney and will always be my attorney. She over-turned DOMA which ushered in Gay Rights. She’s fighting the Nazi’s in Charlottesville. She is leading the battle for gender equality in women’s sports. She is the best lawyer in America!!” she wrote.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Southern California man was sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in federal prison for carrying out an online harassment campaign against two teenage girls who rejected his sexual advances, prosecutors said.

Carl De Vera Bennington, 34, pleaded guilty last year to two federal cyberstalking charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee described Bennington’s messages to his victims as “repeated, cruel” and “sadistic.”

Bennington admitted that from 2016 to 2020 he repeatedly used various social media accounts to harass the victims, sending hundreds of messages threatening to commit acts of physical and sexual violence against them if they did not submit to his advances.

Neither teen ever met Bennington in person, according to federal prosecutors.

When one of the girls demanded that Bennington stop harassing her, Bennington replied that he was going to kill her and her family, court papers showed.

Bennington suffers from mental health issues, which prompted prosecutors to seek enhanced supervision and treatment following his release, officials said.

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