School Employee Says Boss Bullied Her to Be Buddhist

A Compton Unified School District employee was hospitalized last month with emotional stress allegedly caused when a supervisor threatened to either fire or never promote her unless she practiced Buddhism.

Vergie E. Seymore, a senior secretary in instructional support services, claims that Assistant Supt. Elizabeth S. Norwood harassed and intimidated her into attending Buddhist meetings, chanting a mantra and nailing a shrine to her living room wall.

“She won’t even go near that,” said Linda Ruffin, Seymore’s sister. “She won’t even go in the living room.”

Earlier this week, Seymore was feeling too ill to come to the phone when a reporter called, her sister said, although she consented to pose by the Buddhist shrine for a photograph. “She (is) taking so much medication,” said Ruffin, “the doctors seem to think she’s developed an ulcer. . . . She has these terrific headaches. . . . She doesn’t even want to talk about it.”

Union Plans Damage Claim

But Seymore’s attorney confirmed that she filed a workers compensation claim in May, citing “stress and harassment” and seeking medical benefits. This week, the California School Employees Assn.--representing 1,200 workers in the Compton system--is preparing to serve the district with a $2-million damage claim on her behalf, according to senior field representative Leonard Bonilla.

“I’ve been involved in representing classified school employees for 22 years,” Bonilla said, “and it’s the first time I’ve ever run across this. As a matter of fact, the whole thing is incomprehensible in this day and age.”

For more than two years “I have been harassed by Mrs. Norwood because I would not become a practicing Buddhist,” Seymore charged in a letter written June 23 from her hospital bed at Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Center in Los Angeles.

“On April 26, she (Norwood) called me in and said, ‘Look Vergie, if you don’t practice the way you should you will remain a senior secretary forever,’ ” Seymore wrote. “ ‘I am in the position to either upgrade your desk or create a new certificated position for you,’ ” Norwood allegedly said, “ ‘but you just will not be consistent with the practice’.”

Norwood declined to comment this week, saying that she doesn’t believe it is proper to publicly respond to charges still in litigation. For the past three years, she has managed the district’s instructional services, ranging from coordinating teaching resources to developing curriculum.

But Supt. Ted D. Kimbrough came to his assistant’s defense, stating that “as far as I know, there’s no truth to (Seymore’s charge) at all.” He confirmed that Norwood is Buddhist. But he said he has never received any complaint that she was proselytizing or pressuring any school employee. Norwood’s record as an administrator, Kimbrough added, is “impeccable.”

Kimbrough was critical of the employees union for also sending school trustees what he described as “a character assassination letter” on June 30 recounting the allegations.

The union letter complained that district officials were wrongly denying Seymore some of her sick pay as a result of the dispute and claimed that “Mrs. Seymore’s illness is due to the direct actions of (Norwood).” The letter also claimed that “the type of action alleged . . . is not only detrimental to the Compton Unified School District as a whole, but is also a violation of employees Civil Rights. CSEA has substantiated that the allegations made by Mrs. Seymore are not (an) isolated situation.” And the letter claimed that Norwood has made “the same or similar” approaches to other school employees “who can be identified”--but the letter doesn’t name them.

‘Out-and-Out Attack’

“It seems to me to be an out-and-out attack on an individual,” Kimbrough said. “I’m very upset and concerned that people would write such a letter” instead of allowing Seymore’s allegations to be confidentially handled within the district’s personnel system.

For weeks, the dispute had been quietly unfolding without public attention.

Stephen Belgum, a workers compensation lawyer representing Seymore, said he took a sworn statement from Norwood in July that tended to shed “some credibility” on his client’s allegations. “I frankly was very skeptical, although frankly I’ve learned to believe anything out of Compton.” (Only a few weeks ago, one of the district’s trustees filed a workers compensation claim seeking lifetime medical care for stress created by her dealings with Kimbrough.)

Belgum said Norwood admitted that she “encouraged” Seymore “to use some of the beneficial portions of Buddhism, at least. And Norwood explains it by saying, ‘Seymore comes to me and says how can I cope,’ and she says, ‘I’m a Buddhist, here’s what I do.’ She does admit taking her to some kind of Buddhist convention.”

But Norwood denied putting any job pressure on Seymore, Belgum said.

‘Tremendous . . . Pressure’

Nevertheless, “Mrs. Norwood has the ability, whether it’s Buddhism or something else, to put tremendous amounts of pressure on people,” said Belgum.

Seymore’s troubles with the school district date back to 1984, when she filed a workers compensation claim citing stress related to another supervisor. That claim has not been settled yet. “When Mrs. Norwood learned that problems existed in our department . . . she told me that she wanted to take me to a meeting with her,” Seymore said in her June 25 letter, addressed simply “To Whom It May Concern.”

Seymore wrote that she accompanied Norwood “to this meeting” where she was told to take off her shoes and sit on the floor. “There were at least 25-30 other people who were without their shoes sitting on the floor, chanting.” After the meeting, she said, she was asked to become a Buddhist.

“Being a product of two generations of Baptist ministers, I was not about to give up what I believe in to join something I knew nothing about,” she said. But “while surrounded by three others, Mrs. Norwood joined us and insisted that I sign up. . . . I signed up.”

Seymore, single with two daughters, said she believed that “if I resisted Mrs. Norwood, she would find a way to make things hard for me on the job.”

The following week, she said, she returned to work “in fear, wondering how I was going to tell my boss that I had strong religious convictions toward the Baptist religion . . . When Mrs. Norwood walked into the office, I began to sweat. Perspiration soaked my silk blouse. As she passed my desk she directed me to her office.

‘Bring Some People’

“Behind closed doors, she told me that it was very important that I practice and attend the meetings on a regular basis. ‘In order for you to get the full benefits, you must bring some people into the practice as well.’ Then she wanted to know who my friends were. She wanted to call some of them and encourage them to come.”

On another occasion, Seymore said, Norwood took her to a Buddhist meeting and “as we pulled into the parking lot I could hear these strange words being repeated over and over. ‘Num-Yo-Ho-Ren-Ga-Quo’ through speakers on the lot.” Seymore said Norwood encouraged her to purchase candles, some incense and a small shoe-box-shaped shrine called “a Gohonzon” that was later nailed to her living room wall.

Once, when Seymore’s mother was visiting from Louisiana, Norwood came to the secretary’s house in Carson and “insisted on having me chant.”

“My mother knew that I was afraid so she agreed to sit, watch and listen to see if she could figure out ‘What this chanting s--- was all about.’ . . . When it was all over she told me it was devil worship and I may keep my job by going along with this woman but I would lose my soul.”

In the months that followed, Seymore said, she eventually tried to avoid Norwood, at one point attaching an answering machine to her home telephone so she wouldn’t have to speak directly to the administrator. Seymore said Norwood frequently chastised her for not chanting often enough. “Day after day . . . I was harassed by Mrs. Norwood because she wanted to convert me.”

‘Make That Commitment’

On April 26, Seymore alleged, Norwood confronted her and again said that she should practice Buddhism in order to get ahead at work. “I said, ‘But I have a master’s degree.’ She said ‘It doesn’t matter--until you make that commitment and start going to more meetings you will just be the senior secretary with a MA degree.’ ”

Drafted Resignation

Seymore said she immediately returned to her desk and drafted a resignation letter to Norwood, making no mention of any alleged harassment over the Buddhist meetings. In fact, Seymore wrote that she would always respect and admire Norwood.

“I was so upset when I got home I called my doctor” and ended up taking four days of sick leave. When Seymore returned to work, she found a memo from Norwood stating that she had been reassigned until the effective date of her resignation could be worked out, a matter that remains pending.

On June 23, Seymore allegedly suffered an anxiety attack and was rushed by paramedics to the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Harbor City. She was transfered to the mental hospital that same day and remained there until being released on July 21.