STUART — It was “bizarre” for Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder to repeatedly pat the short, spiky haircut of Detective Jennifer Heard, her lawyer said, and he expects Heard’s sexual harassment complaint to lead to a federal discrimination suit.

“We fully expect to file a lawsuit and just litigate the matter,” said Justus Reid, a lawyer representing Heard. “The overall theme will be gender discrimination and, in effect, sexual harassment that went on in the department.”

Heard filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in May alleging the sexual harassment against her began shortly after she was hired in September 1996 and continued for the next 12 years in the form of sexual advances, catcalls and a suggestive nickname. She also accused Crowder of belittling her by patting her on the head.

After the EEOC issues a “right to sue” notice, which can be requested six months after a complaint is lodged, Heard would have 90 days to file a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office.

But Crowder said he is not worried about losing a lawsuit because interviews with the 18 law enforcement officers named in Heard’s complaint led him to believe there is no basis for Heard’s sexual harassment allegations. And Crowder said the head pats were purely friendly.

“To go through litigation is going to be time consuming, expensive and a nuisance, but I’m not concerned as far as losing anything other than those things,” Crowder said. “Personally, my feeling is there is no basis here, nothing valid.

“It may create a circumstance where there will be some grounds for counter litigation, which I would feel compelled to certainly try to pursue,” Crowder said.

The grounds could be “defamation,” Crowder said.

The sheriff said he does not tolerate sexual harassment in his office and encourages people who believe they were victimized to file a complaint with the office’s Professional Standards Unit, or other people in the Sheriff’s Office.

“I regret that for 13 years we were deprived of the opportunity to handle this situation, if in fact these claims are true,” Crowder said. “Any member of this organization has the opportunity to make a sexual harassment complaint through their supervisor, through the chaplain, through the victims’ assistant, through any supervisor they felt comfortable taking it to, or even going through their union representative, personal minister or our professional standards unit and have no fear of retaliation.”

In the past five years, Internal Affairs investigations have sustained three sexual harassment complaints, resulting in two deputies being suspended for 10 days and another deputy receiving a written reprimand, sheriff’s records show.

“Every time we’ve had a complaint made, the complaint has been followed up and there has been action taken,” said Terence Nolan, the sheriff’s legal advisor. “People have been disciplined. We investigate complaints made against our personnel.”

Heard never filed a formal sexual harassment complaint with the Sheriff’s Office, Nolan and Crowder said.

But Heard said she reported many of the incidents informally to her supervisors and also consulted with a female supervisor, but the harassment continued.

“There is a component of retaliation in her case,” Reid said. “She wouldn’t go along with the ‘good old boy’ network and as a result of it, she’s been kind of discriminated against in my opinion.”

Reid said he believes Heard has enough evidence to back up at least some of her allegations.

“There are some pieces of evidence that I can’t discuss now that will clearly show that there have been some violations,” Reid said. “I feel confident that they know that it’s obvious that there have been some serious violations. If they don’t, they sure as heck should.”

In addition to allegations that 18 deputies, detectives, sergeants and lieutenants sexually harassed her at some point during the past 13 years, Heard claimed Crowder belittled her by patting her on the head repeatedly after she got a short haircut in 2003.

“You see the sheriff come down there and pat somebody on the head, you’d think, ‘What is this his child, or his little daughter, or girl,’” Reid said. “I thought it was extremely bizarre. When you do that, it’s clearly it’s somebody operating who doesn’t even realize that that’s discriminatory,”

But Crowder said the head pats were done in “friendly jest.”

“On several occasions in friendly jest with her about the spikes, I would come up and go ‘boing, boing, boing,’ and she would laugh,” Crowder said. “And that’s all there was to it. It’s nothing that would have any demeaning or sexual connotation to it. But obviously it is being misconstrued and being misused for whatever purpose.

“I probably did the same thing to people such as our (former) chaplain, L.C. Campbell, when he was here because he had a flat top haircut and he would have it waxed up,” Crowder said. “It’s just something you do when people have a spiky haircut. You kid with them.”

EEOC of Sexual Harassment

• Sexual harassment is a form of sexual discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

• Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

• It is helpful for the victim to inform the harasser directly that the conduct is unwelcome and must stop. The victim should use any employer complaint mechanism or grievance system available.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

http://www.eeoc.gov/types/sexual_harassment.html

By George Andreassi

Tags: boy, child, court, deputies, deputy, detective, employment, environment, federal, girl, informant, investigation, kids, lawsuit, name, Opinion, organization, retaliation, sheriff, Stuart, violations, violators

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 at 11:40 am and is filed under Courts, Martin County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.