Rape Victim Sues Feminist Lawmaker Who Fired Her : Utah: Seven days after being brutally attacked, a bookkeeper is let go. The case has raised questions of compassion, commerce and political calculations.

Seven days after being brutally raped at knifepoint, a bookkeeper was fired from her job here.

The reason for dismissal, according to a letter signed by her boss: Her work productivity had dropped.

Now, Jacqueline Hedberg is fighting back with a lawsuit alleging wrongful termination by the employer who she says “threw me out with the trash”: Utah state Rep. Sara Eubank, a first-term Democrat who was elected in 1990 as a staunch defender of women’s rights.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in December, one year after the attack, was a piece of bad news for Eubank, who is also president of Employer 1, a staff-leasing firm in Salt Lake City. But the letter attached to it stunned Utah residents, and the incident has snowballed into a public spectacle.

“We found after the trauma Jacquie experienced from the rape incident, she could not continue to maintain the level of productivity required to handle this assignment,” Eubank wrote to the Utah Office of Crime Victims Reparations.

“Unfortunately, all other positions in our organization require similar levels of productivity,” the letter continued. “We were therefore unable to place her in another assignment.”

Democratic leaders in this overwhelmingly conservative state suggest that Hedberg’s case is an attack orchestrated by Republicans trying to claim Eubank’s seat at the ballot box this November. Others--including some of Hedberg’s friends and Eubank’s supporters--fear both women are being manipulated by people with ulterior motives of personal gain or political advantage.

The case raises serious concerns about whether victims of sexual assault can expect compassion in the workplace--even from avowed feminists--when the welfare of a business is on the line, some women’s rights advocates say.

“It’s a tough one for us,” said Janece Vauk, former board member of the National Organization for Women in Utah, which has not taken a stand on the matter.

“Our action committee gave Sara money during her campaign. Now she is the best ally we have in the state House of Representatives,” Vauk said. “On the other hand, we are shocked.”

Lynne Kanaval Whitesides, an outspoken feminist and president of the Mormon Women’s Forum, was more direct.

“Sara made a really big mistake,” Whitesides said. “There is no way, if I was an employer, I’d fire someone after she was raped.”

Eubank’s troubles mount each time she tries to defend the dismissal and discredit Hedberg’s story in news reports and letters to her constituents.

On Dec. 9, Eubank publicly rejected a settlement demand of $100,000 from Hedberg’s lawyer for back-pay and future lost wages, calling it “blackmail.” Hedberg and her lawyer, Chase Kimball, responded by filing separate slander suits against the legislator.

Eubank also said Hedberg was fired not because her performance lagged after the rape but because of longstanding incompetence on the job. The legislator said she had planned to fire the bookkeeper even before the assault.

That statement triggered a state investigation because Hedberg had received $4,000 from the crime victims agency for lost wages and medical bills as a result of the letter Eubank signed.

The Salt Lake County Attorney’s Office ultimately did not bring charges against either woman, in part because the letter was not necessary for approval of the wage claim because a physician stated that Hedberg would be unable to work for three months.

“It’s out of control,” said Dennis Poole, one of three lawyers Eubank hired to beat back the lawsuits and the state investigation. “This is a very emotional and time-consuming matter for Sara and for us as her counsel.”

At the center of the tussle is Hedberg, a bookkeeper who says she’s too shy to pray out loud in church, and Kimball, an aggressive young Salt Lake City attorney--both of whom thought the lawsuit would lead to a quick cash settlement.

“When I saw the rape trauma letter (signed by Eubank), my eyeballs were spinning in their sockets,” Kimball said. “I told Jacquie: ‘I don’t think this will be much trouble.’ ”

Instead, “they’ve never offered (Hedberg) an apology or a penny,” Kimball said. “Their argument is that we blew the statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit.”

Whether the lawsuit was filed in time is a major point of contention. Poole argues that under Utah’s anti-discrimination law, any claims must be filed within 180 days. Kimball claims there is a 300-day deadline.

As the case lumbers toward a final showdown in court, Kimball has tried to drum up support for his client in other ways that are giving some of Hedberg’s closest friends cause for concern.

A week ago, Kimball accepted an offer to write a movie treatment about Hedberg’s story for Hollywood producers. And Hedberg, to the chagrin of those who say she is a fragile and vulnerable individual, is entertaining notions of appearing on television talk shows such as “Donahue” and “Oprah.”

“I’m politically naive about a lot of things,” Hedberg said. “But I do realize that if we look money-hungry, we lose the whole premise--that people should be protected from losing their jobs after being victims of a heinous crime.”

Eubank insisted that Hedberg “was dismissed for one reason: She was incompetent on the job and had been for a long time.” And she said that Employer 1, a financially troubled firm, was not in a position to accept the risk of keeping such a worker in a critical position.

The letter sent to the crime victims agency, Eubank added, was an attempt to secure financial assistance for Hedberg when she needed it most.

Moreover, Eubank said, she had located another, less stressful job for Hedberg--as a caseworker at a county mental health clinic--which was turned down.

“For me to tell all the facts would destroy Ms. Hedberg, and I don’t want to do that,” said Eubank, who claims to have a file brimming with critical evaluations of Hedberg’s work. “But I’m confident I’ll be vindicated in court.”

Hedberg said her former employer’s version of her performance is untrue. “She commended me on my work,” Hedberg said, “and never reprimanded me verbally or in writing.”

Amid the charges and countercharges, the only uncontested fact is that on the night of Dec. 2, 1992, Aaron Gene Mace, then 19, entered Hedberg’s condominium, tied her up with duct tape and then raped and sodomized her.

After that ordeal, Mace forced Hedberg to take him to an automated teller machine and drain her bank account. Along the way, he muttered over and over: “I’m a ‘born-again’ Christian. Now I’m going to burn in hell,” Hedberg said.

Mace, who was later arrested at the nearby condominium he shared with his wife and three children, confessed to the crime. He was sentenced to five years to life in prison.

A few days after the rape, Hedberg returned to work--believing that “it was therapeutic.”

The last day of her first week back on the job, Hedberg said, a manager at Employer 1 handed her a check and said: “We’re going to have to let you go.”

The following day, Hedberg said, she telephoned Eubank and begged to have her job back. Eubank, she said, “was nice but kept saying: ‘You need time off. This is in your best interest.’ ”

“I felt like I was raped twice in one week,” said Hedberg, who added that she numbed her pain with tranquilizers and alcohol for months afterward. “I had nothing left to live for.”

For consolation and advice, Hedberg turned to friends, including Kimball, and an investigator who had handled the rape case, Salt Lake County sheriff’s Detective Glen Perot.

“She told me that she’d gotten a letter saying she was fired by her boss because of the rape,” said Perot, who recommended she share the problem with rape trauma counselors. “I couldn’t believe it. I’d never heard of a rape victim losing their job because of the rape.”

In an interview, Abby Maestas, executive director of the Salt Lake City Rape Crisis Center--a private nonprofit agency funded with public donations and federal money funneled through the state--said Hedberg’s case has nothing to with rape.

“This is not a rape issue,” Maestas said. “It is an employer-employee performance issue. Period.”

Hedberg disagrees. “I didn’t do this on a whim: It took six months for me to decide whether to file the lawsuit,” she said. “I had friends telling me I was wronged and should do something about it.”

Now Eubank is fighting for her political life, according to observers, including David Magleby, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University.

“Sara had a bright political future in front of her,” said Magleby, a consultant to the Democratic Party in Utah. “This story has substantially altered her chances of surviving, let alone running for a state Senate seat or the U.S. House of Representatives.

“We like to think all employers should be patient with an employee in this kind of situation. That’s what voters will consider in the next election.”

Hedberg’s future also is uncertain. She said she fears that Eubank’s assertions about her performance at Employer 1 will harm job prospects. Hedberg claims that she cannot afford therapy needed to deal with lingering rape trauma, but the publicity surrounding the lawsuit has made it all but impossible to put the incident out of her mind.

“If I could have seen the future, I would never have done this--but it’s too late now,” Hedberg said.

“Sara’s a very powerful person, I’m not. She can pull strings, I can’t. And it’s true that people aren’t out there rallying for me,” she said. “But my friends are very supportive. My friends have faith in me.”