The Peace Corps has apologized to the parents of a Forsyth County woman who was killed, her throat slit, while working for the volunteer agency in 2009.
Kate Puzey was a teacher in the West African nation of Benin when she was brutally murdered. A fired Peace Corps worker, Constant Bio, was charged in her death. Police say Bio targeted the 24-year-old Puzey after she made allegations to Peace Corps officials that he was pressuring students for sex and perhaps raping some of them.
The rare apology from Peace Corps, issued last Thursday on the organization's website, focused on how the agency delivered the news to Kate Puzey's family and handled its aftermath. The agency said it also has adopted some of the family's suggestions for how it responds when a volunteer reports problems, is attacked or killed.
That's all Puzey's parents wanted.
“Kate loved the Peace Corps. We didn’t want to destroy the Peace Corps,” Lois Puzey told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week. “We want it to be what she believed it to be. They [the Peace Corps] need to be there when things go wrong and they haven’t been. [But] they’re trying to change all that right now.”
Kate Puzey was found dead on the walled porch of her house on March 11, 2009. She was just two months short of completing her two-year commitment to the Peace Corps, and planned to return to her parents' home in Cumming, north of Atlanta, before going on to graduate school.
Lois Puzey talked to her daughter a few days before she was killed and noticed that she seemed distracted. When asked why she was preoccupied, Kate Puzey said she was dealing with a colleague, Lois Puzey recalled. The mother remembered her daughter saying, "It's just this craziness with Constant [Bio]. She said ‘It's OK mom. I'm handling it.' Then she changed the subject."
A few days later Bio, a contract teacher in the same village, was fired because of a complaint Kate Puzey had filed with the country director. In a carefully worded email, Kate Puzey wrote of her love for the Peace Corps and her fear that Bio was harming it by pressuring students, some of them in the seventh grade, and other teachers for sex.
The spirited English teacher had asked to remain anonymous because she knew Bio's brother worked in the office where she sent her e-mail.
Lois and Harry Puzey believe their daughter's request for anonymity was not honored by the Peace Corps, and a leak cost Kate Puzey her life. She was killed on March 11, 2009, the day after Bio was fired.
“They didn’t mean to but … they put her in harm’s way and we lost our daughter. We lost our beautiful daughter,” Lois Puzey said . “The people in the Benin country office didn’t do what they were supposed to do to protect her.”
Bio is in a Benin jail awaiting trial, and maintains he didn't kill Puzey .
In the meanwhile, Lois Puzey says, she and her husband are "Kate’s voice" and they are pushing for reforms in how the Peace Corps looks for danger signs in host countries and how it responds when volunteers are victimized.
"We felt like they [the Peace Corps] abandoned us and these girls too," Lois Puzey said.
The Puzeys want people to light candles in their daughter's memory on March 11, the second anniversary of her death.
"Kate represented the best America has to offer the world with her dedication to her community and commitment to public service," Peace Corps director Aaron Williams said in a statement posted on the agency’s website last week.
"Kate's death was a tragic loss for the Peace Corps. We continue to grieve with the Puzey family and Kate's friends. It is my sincere hope that justice is served both for Kate and her family. I would like to offer my apologies to the Puzey family if either the former leadership or the agency under my direction could have been more compassionate. Personally, it is heartbreaking to learn that they ever felt abandoned by the Peace Corps. This has never been our intent."
A spokeswoman said the Peace Corps was adopting new policies based on the issues the Puzeys raised, especially concerning how relatives are notified of a death and guarantees of anonymity when complaints are filed. The agency's website includes a 2010 report on volunteer safety but almost all of it is statistics that show the demographics of various crimes on Peace Corps staff.
The timing of the apology coincided with ABC News' 20/20 reports that hundreds of female volunteers have been sexually assaulted. According to the Peace Corps' Office of the Inspector General's most recent report, there were 76 reported sexual assaults on volunteers just in 2009.
Lois Puzey said her daughter had reported similar cases to the Peace Corps, but her concerns were for the safety of her students and other teachers at her school and not for herself.
There was no electricity in her village, so Kate Puzey drove 2 1/2 hours to a place where she had access to the Internet and could send her e-mail. In her message she wrote Bio was "harassing/ sleeping with students" and she feared retaliation if Bio's brother, who worked in the office of the Peace Corps' director in Benin, knew she was reporting Bio.
The director in that office has since resigned from the Peace Corps, according to 20/20. There was no information about Bio's brother, however.
An inspector general's report referenced Kate Puzey's death without naming her or including that someone was killed. The report said there was "a direct link between the leaked information and a local criminal investigation."
Last week, Peace Corps officials appeared in a congressional hearing to talk about the allegations and to detail how they might respond.
They also have set up a fund, Kate Puzey Memorial Fund, that will help girls in that village with their education.
And U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson has proposed a law that provides protections for Peace Corps whistle blowers.
“We finally got their attention,” Lois Puzey said.
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