photo by: Journal-World

A sign at the entrance to Haskell Indian Nations University is shown Friday, Aug. 5, 2016.

The Bureau of Indian Education has remained silent on a federal investigation that found an athletic trainer sexually harassed student-athletes on the women’s basketball team at Haskell Indian Nations University.

According to the Office of the Inspector General in the U.S. Department of the Interior, the OIG report found that the trainer made crude jokes and comments of a sexual nature to students and engaged in unwelcome physical contact with at least one student — behavior that deterred some student-athletes from going to the athletic training room to receive treatment.

The OIG indicated that its report had been sent to both the director of the BIE, which oversees Haskell, and to the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, which is the licensing and regulatory agency for health care providers in Kansas, including athletic trainers.

While the BIE did not respond to requests for comment, he Kansas State Board of Healing Arts said it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of any pending investigation.

“Per statute, the subject or source of information relating to a complaint is to remain confidential, and the Board is prohibited from identifying the subject or source of the information being investigated,” said Scott Henricks, the board’s operations manager, in an email Wednesday to the Journal-World. “Additionally, information received, obtained, or maintained by the Board shall be confidential and cannot be disclosed by the Board or its employees. We can confirm that athletic trainers in Kansas are required to be licensed by the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts.

Though the report date is listed as May 5, a notification regarding it apparently did not go out until Monday, more than a month later, and only a summary of the report is so far publicly available, as the Journal-World reported Tuesday. The name of the BIE employee is not listed in the summary; neither is the person’s current employment status, nor the name of his supervisor.

According to a source close to the situation, however, the athletic trainer was still at work as of Tuesday afternoon. A trainer contacted by the Journal-World said that because he was a federal employee he could not “discuss anything.”

The OIG also found that the employee’s supervisor and other staff were aware of the harassing conduct but failed to report the behavior as required by both the Department of the Interior and Haskell.