A sexual harassment lawsuit against University of North Carolina women's soccer coach Anson Dorrance has been settled, with the university agreeing to pay former player Melissa Jennings $385,000 and Dorrance issuing an apology to all of his players for inappropriate discussions about sex.
The deal also requires the university to conduct a comprehensive review of its sexual harassment policies and procedures, according to a copy of the settlement obtained by The News & Observer. The settlement was approved by members of the UNC Board of Governors last week.
It was the second and final monetary settlement in the protracted lawsuit, which has been an embarrassing and expensive chapter for the university and its star soccer coach. In 2004, the other plaintiff, Debbie Keller -- a two-time national player of the year -- settled out of court for $70,000 and a requirement that Dorrance attend sensitivity training for eight years.
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Dorrance's apology letter, contained in the settlement, said between August 1996 and June 1998, he participated with his players in group discussions of team members' sexual activities and relationships with men.
"I understand that my participation in those discussions was inappropriate and unacceptable," his letter said. "I apologize to Ms. Jennings and her family, as well as all other members of the soccer team."
Dorrance and the university had long argued that the sexual discussions were merely locker room banter. But last year Judge M. Blane Michael wrote in the 4th Circuit Court majority opinion that Dorrance's conduct "went far behind simple teasing and qualified as sexual harassment."
The settlement provides for a full review and revision of UNC's sexual harassment policies by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a former Olympic swimmer who is now a Florida Coastal School of Law assistant professor specializing in women's equity in sports.
“I want to say it as loud as I possibly can. I am innocent. I’m very innocent. I did not do the things that she accused me in the courtroom of doing. I am extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case. I will appeal this.”
This heightened public profile has become its own trial for Browne Sanders, a fiercely private woman who is used to blending into the back row of a basketball team picture or a corporate group photograph.
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In conversations with others who have been thrust by circumstance into the public eye, Browne Sanders has sought answers to one of the few questions left unanswered during her three-week trial: How can she be a symbol without sacrificing her personal life?
“You wonder what the reason is that you were identified as the person to go through this,” she said last month in Midtown Manhattan at a lunch interview conducted in the presence of one of her lawyers, Karen Cacace.
Her conclusion? Perhaps, she ventured, it was to validate the substance of her life while slightly altering the course of it toward public advocacy.
“I was talking to Coach Stringer,” Browne Sanders said, referring to C. Vivian Stringer, whose Rutgers women’s basketball players were the subject of racist and sexist remarks by the radio host Don Imus. “She was saying how much work remains to be done. She kept driving home the point that there is so much unfinished business.”
Some elements of the case were made public at the time. An individual with direct knowledge of the case provided additional details to the AP.
The individual said Bloomberg admitted in a deposition, which never was made public, that he had said the words "I'd do her" about Garrison and other women.
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The public got a glimpse of this in 2003, when he told a pair of disc jockeys on a radio program that he would "really want to have" actress-singer Jennifer Lopez. A day later, Bloomberg backpedaled a bit and told reporters, as his face reddened, that he would want to "have dinner" with her.
"I like theater, dining and chasing women," he once told a reporter. "Let me put it this way: I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. What do you think? It's a wet dream."
In his 1997 autobiography, he boasted of keeping "a girlfriend in every city" during his years as a young Wall Street up-and-comer in the 1960s and 1970s.
Comments attributed in the suit to Bloomberg include: "I'd f--- that in a second," "I'd like to do that," and "That's a great piece of a--."
Once, according to the suit, Bloomberg pointed out a young female employee and told Garrison, "If you looked like that, I would do you in a second."
The suit also accused Bloomberg of referring to Mexican clients as "jumping beans" and saying of another female colleague who was having trouble finding a nanny that "all you need is some black who doesn't even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building."
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A less-restrained Bloomberg was also portrayed in a book of quips, quotes and anecdotes attributed to him and put together by employees for a birthday present in 1990. It contains such statements as: "If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they'd go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale's."
Or, as he is quoted as saying about his invention, the Bloomberg computer terminal that made him rich, "It will do everything, including give you (oral sex). I guess that puts a lot of you girls out of business."
The sordid allegations include:
* Thomas allegedly urged Knicks cheerleader Petra Pope to cozy up to the refs before a game against the Nets in 2004.
"What she told me was that Isiah asked her to go into the referees' locker room and make them happy," Browne Sanders testified. "I asked her to tell me what that meant and she said, 'Well, he wanted me to flirt with the referees.'"
She said Pope told her she reluctantly did as she was asked.* In November 2005 a member of Browne Sanders' staff told her and another female Garden executive that she had sex with Marbury in a car after a boozed-filled night at a "gentleman's club."
The woman said Marbury textmessaged her a few day later saying, "I want some more of that," according to court documents.
The woman told her bosses the sex was consensual. But she also said "she did not believe she could say no because of who Marbury is," according to the court documents.* Browne Sanders claims Marbury called her a "black b----" after she complained that the star guard's cousin - who also was employed by the Knicks - had been making graphic sexual comments to her staff.
But Knicks brass said in a statement that the suit filed by the team's former senior vice president for marketing and business operations was "riddled with fabrications."
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At one point the Garden was ready to make the case go away with cash, according to court papers. But when Browne Sanders' lawyers asked for $6million in 2005, Garden Chairman Jim Dolan called it "ridiculous" and nixed the payout, the papers said.
Earlier that year, Browne Sanders was given a $75,000 raise and her annual salary jumped to $250,000. She said she was told she was doing a terrific job and, with the Garden's backing, was named to the Sports Business Journal's list of top professionals.
In a statement, an MSG spokesman said, "This lawsuit, just like Anucha's four years of phony tax returns, is riddled with fabrications from a fired and disgruntled former employee who was let go for poor performance and manipulating subordinates for personal gain."
"The public should know and the jury will learn that Anucha will make up stories and twist facts to pursue her real goal: money," the spokesman said.
A lawyer for Sanders called MSG's statement "a desperate attempt to mislead the public."
The documents released yesterday also show that Sanders, whose salary reached $300,000, had cashed in on nearly $80,000 in bogus tax deductions while she was on the team.
She scurried to cover her tracks last year by filing new tax returns for 2003 and 2004 - but only after a federal judge in her sex-harassment suit ordered her to share copies with MSG.
In her original tax forms, Sanders claimed she ran a "direct marketing" business out of her home from 2001 to 2004 - an unauthorized moonlighting gig that would have violated her contract with the Knicks.
Sanders wrote off nearly $20,000 in annual travel, meals and other expenses for a business she now claims she never operated - blaming her former tax preparer for the alleged fraud, which also involved padding her contributions to charity by tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Sanders has accused the married coach Isiah Thomas of repeatedly propositioning her for sex, then calling her a "bitch" and "ho" when she rejected his advances.
Scarborough asks Crawford, "Have you seen Fred Thompson's wife?" Crawford: "Oh yeah." Scarborough: "You think she works the pole?"
Legal sources predict the trial to last two weeks, allowing Thomas to be ready for Knicks' training camp Oct. 1 in Charleston, S.C. Sources deny settlement talks took place recently.
"There's going to be a trial," one legal source said. Browne-Sanders declined comment.
One source familiar with the messages described them as “filthy. They were very sexual in nature.”
A 2005 profile of Mutch in the BC publication “The Heights” said he was fond of singing Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” to his players.
The commission’s investigation supported Browne Sanders’s contention that she had been a victim of more than one incident of harassment and that “she was subjected to a hostile work environment including, but not limited to, severe and pervasive verbal sexual harassment.”
The determination, by Spencer H. Lewis Jr., the district director of the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]’s New York office, said the Garden had failed to take “reasonable care to prevent or correct discrimination and harassment in the workplace.”
Lewis made his determination last Friday, and it was released yesterday. His two-page letter did not describe the scope of the commission’s investigation or name witnesses.
Lewis found that the commission’s inquiry supported Browne Sanders’s contention that the Garden had fired her in retaliation for reporting her claims to her supervisors. Lewis also wrote that there was probable cause to believe the Garden violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Garden, but not Thomas, was the subject named in the commission’s investigation.
Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley and the Caritas Christi Health Care System board had voted to fire the Caritas president for serial sexual harassment, but left him the choice of resigning with 10 months' severance pay, about $830,000, and agreeing not to sue the archdiocese.
If Robert Haddad gets a near-million-dollar payout from the Boston Archdiocese after being a serial harasser and unmitigated boor, how much more might he have earned for being an exhibitionist or something worse?
If he committed an actual felony, would he have gotten the full $3 million he initially sought from the Caritas board?
You could just about fill an airplane hangar with all his female subordinates who say that Haddad, ousted president of the Catholic healthcare system, groped them, kissed them on the mouth, called them at home to ask inappropriate questions. And that's his big sanction: 10 months of his already bloated pay, more money than most normal people will make in 20 years of work.
Where, it might be time to ask, is the sense in that?
The lawyers, of course, give their stock lawyerly replies. They say these cases are complicated, that sexual harassment allegations inevitably end up as he-said, she-said kind of deals, that hours of depositions would have to be taken, that victims are made to feel uncomfortable, that court time adds up, that the outcome is always at risk.
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But just imagine if someone in this case, anyone, had a scintilla of spine.
Imagine if Cardinal Sean O'Malley stood at a bank of microphones yesterday and acknowledged his own mistake in failing to grasp the gravity of the situation from the start. Imagine if he announced that, on second thought, he decided to fire Haddad without giving him the chance to resign.
He could have said he doesn't negotiate with such demeaning cads as Haddad. He could have said he listened to the advice from his battery of lawyers, but ultimately decided that he had to take a larger stand. He could have said that if the Catholic Church can't put morality before convenience, then what institution in this city would or can?
In response to the inevitable question over what he'll do if Haddad sues, O'Malley could have simply replied, ``Let him."
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O'Malley wouldn't even have to point out that it was his own $400-an-hour lawyers at Ropes & Gray who didn't think Haddad's behavior was a dismissible offense and that one Ropes & Gray lawyer, Stephen B. Perlman, even likened Haddad's behavior to ``effusive, friendly warmth that is nonetheless unwelcome."
Thank you, Ropes & Gray. Where does the line form to get more of your advice?
BOSTON -- For victims of clergy sexual abuse, the Boston Archdiocese's initial handling of sexual harassment allegations against its top health care executive had a familiar ring: multiple allegations, minimal consequence and secrecy.
"There are extraordinary and painful parallels," said David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
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The initial decision to reprimand rather than fire Haddad was criticized by some clergy sex abuse victims, who said they felt O'Malley sought to protect Haddad just as church officials for decades protected priests who sexually abused children.
O'Malley was installed as Boston's archbishop in July 2003, seven months after Cardinal Bernard Law resigned amid intense criticism of his role in moving priests who had been accused of abuse from parish to parish instead of removing them.
"The fact that this man was not immediately terminated makes me wonder ... whether they've learned anything over the last four years?" said Gary Bergeron, who was molested by a priest in the 1970s in Lowell.
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O'Malley sought the advice of three outside lawyers who are experts in employment and sexual harassment law. One lawyer found that although Haddad's conduct was illegal and improper, it "was not of an exceptionally egregious nature," according to the archdiocese. [The only male of the three lawyers thought it was nothing. O'Malley credited the one male lawyer's opinion over the opinions of the two female lawyers. Surprised?]
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Employment attorneys, however, said it's not always clear-cut how to discipline an employee accused of sexual harassment.
"What constitutes what we call hostile environment? Is a hug sexually harassing? How many hugs does it have to be?" said Nancy Shilepsky, a Boston employment lawyer not involved in the Haddad case. "There are gradations. Some activities are clearly on one side or the other, but there may be some that may be more in the middle." [Nancy Shilepsky started out as an employee's lawyer, but now she's with a big firm and represents employers This comment is meant to influence all her future jury pools. I'm sure it makes all her corporate clients happy to see it in print. I remember seeing Nancy Shilepsky speaking at employment law seminars fifteen years ago when she didn't think sexual harassment was so .... ambiguous. Sheesh.]
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