EOJ under fire as senior administrator rapped for sexual harassment
Published:Thursday | October 8, 2020 | 6:16 AM
First, there was a kiss. Then sexually charged words of inducement. Soon, his hands were all over her.
That's the account of a former secretary, whom The Gleaner will call Jane Doe, whose allegations of sexual harassment against a senior administrator have unveiled that the date for national polls wasn't the only thing that sparked intrigue at the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) over the last 12 months.
The case has also raised questions over human-resource breaches at the Glasspole Brown-led organisation and prompted scrutiny over whether administrative sanctions were exercised to silence the accuser over allegations of months of sustained predation.
The dispute climaxed with the conviction and suspension of the senior administrator, who has appealed the ruling conducted by an internal but independent disciplinary body.
Labour expert Danny Roberts, Queen's Counsel Caroline Haye, and Phillip Lewis sat on the three-member panel.
The case offers insight into the complications of sexual harassment claims but is a potential template of how Jamaica's proposed Sexual Harassment Bill could play out as the EOJ fashioned its policy from the yet-to-be-passed legislation.
The panel's ruling indicates that the senior administrator raised suspicion by leapfrogging HR personnel and hiring procedure in calling Jane Doe to enquire whether she was accepting the job.
He had been one of her interviewers, but appeared to have gone beyond his purview in making that overture.
While no evidence was presented that undue influence was exerted to have the woman hired, the senior administrator is accused of making his first pass at her in her first week on the job.
But the judgment also put heat on the EOJ for allowing the senior administrator to conduct an appraisal on his subordinate after sex-harassment claims were laid formally to Brown, the director of elections.
An adverse assessment by the senior administrator, citing conduct after the complaint was made, led to the management of the EOJ terminating her contract.
But legal pushback from Jane Doe put the EOJ on the back foot, forcing it to rescind her firing.
Jane Doe, who says the administrator served as her supervisor from July to November 2019, told The Gleaner that the sexual harassment had begun from the start of her employment on July 8, 2019.
Those alleged actions included salacious comments, groping, and intrusive questions about her sexual past.
“He would tell me how to dress. One time, he told me to jump over the table on him, and if I jumped over the table on him, that he would catch me and give me some hard sex. One time, I was trying to come out of his office and he kept pulling on to me and brought me to the side of the cabinet of his office trying to kiss me,” she told The Gleaner.
Contact was made with the alleged harasser but the call was cut when The Gleaner sought to broach the matter.
Several attempts to call back went unanswered.
Emailed questions to the director of elections were also not answered.
Jane Doe said that she made at least two verbal complaints about the harassment to the human resources director, Juliet Beecher-Chambers, as far back as September 2019 but was advised to issue a formal complaint.
Jane Doe said that as the professional relationship soured, she was criticised by her supervisor for "poor performance" and rudeness.
The official denied, in an email to the director of elections, on November 20, 2019, ever sexually harassing Jane Doe, adding that the allegations were shocking, especially because of his reputed advocacy for the rights of women.
He also claimed having never had a prior sexual misconduct or harassment claim made against him throughout his entire career.
Hearings were held on December 12 and December 17, 2019, as well as on January 7, 13 and 15 in 2020.
Leonard Green and Sheri Jones served as Jane Doe's lawyers, while O'Neil Grant, the president of the Jamaica Civil Service Association, represented the accused EOJ official.
Accused found guilty
The panel found the official guilty on February 11 and recommended that he be suspended for two weeks.
Sensitivity training was also recommended.
The appeal is still pending.
But in the judgment, the secretary was not absolved of fault.
The panel said that it was not persuaded that all incidents between September or October and November 14, 2019, "were entirely unwanted".
The members of the panel said that there were "blurred lines" in the employees' professional and personal relationships and charged that a secret audio recording, made by the secretary of a meeting with the accused, "struck us as an intimate, personal, flirtatious conversation between a man and woman who have at some point been sexually attracted to each other".
However, the panel reserved its harshest criticism for the administrator, who it concluded was not a credible witness and leveraged the dynamic of power imbalance.
"[Name redacted] flatly denied that he had any idea that [Jane Doe] was weak on minutes-taking before she started the job ... . Yet his witness testified to the fullest that two interview documents existed documenting [her] weakness in these very areas ... . Since [the administrator] participated in that interview, ... he must have known that [Jane Doe] was weak," the panel ruled.
"We believe that the acts complained of did, in fact, happen and happened quite frequently."
Brown, the director of elections, was reprimanded in the judgment for allowing the administrator to conduct a performance appraisal that could have compromised the accuser, a breach which would have drawn a penalty if the proposed Sex Harassment Bill were law now.
The EOJ leadership was also rapped for procedural breaches in not advising the accused immediately of the allegations and for not facilitating an informal resolution of the dispute before it proceeded to trial.
The EOJ has also come under scrutiny because Jane Doe was informed, in mid-December while the hearings were under way, that her contract would be terminated based on the results of a performance evaluation.
The termination bid was halted, on the intervention of the claimant's lawyers, who argued that such action was unfair and unjustifiable, and they threatened to take the EOJ to the Supreme Court.
The secretary was then informed that she would be rehired but allowed to work in a different department for the period of January 1-March 31, 2020.
On March 27, 2020, Jane Doe received an email that her contract would once more be terminated on March 31 on the grounds that she was "still unfit" and, therefore, could not be considered for a further contract extension as she had not recovered from injuries she had sustained in a car accident on March 1.