Behavior May Not Be What School District Was Targeting

By now, you’ve probably forgotten all about Richard Donoghue. He was left for dead, professionally, 19 months ago by the Orange Unified School District. The Board of Education’s rap on Donoghue: He fostered, by word and deed, an atmosphere of sexual harassment in school district offices. Then a deputy superintendent, Donoghue was suspended without pay in January of 1994. He hasn’t worked since.

I’ve just pored through a disturbing 160-page report that should bring Donoghue back to life, but I wonder. It is the work of a Bay Area attorney acting as the hearing officer in the case, and it stops just short of saying Donoghue was politically assassinated.

It would be more palatable to think that those who led the campaign against Donoghue actually believed he was harassing employees. Because if you don’t believe that, you’re forced to conclude that this was a setup of vile intent.

The heart of the harassment allegations was that Donoghue leered at, and in one case, groped female employees, used and tolerated both profane and sexually offensive language and permitted sexually oriented gags and cards to be distributed among district offices.

Hearing officer Geraldine M. Randall took 32 days’ worth of depositions and testimony over a seven-month period last year. She concluded that Donoghue had, at times, acted inappropriately regarding language and the permitting of sexually oriented jokes. She found no evidence of physical harassment. Moreover, she found that Donoghue’s constitutional rights were violated when the board suspended him without pay.

It’s what she said beyond that, however, that should give us all pause. Randall’s findings go to the heart of presumed innocence and the potential use of inflammatory charges as a weapon.

“Much of the testimony against [Donoghue] was not credible,” she wrote. “Key witnesses had personal motives to discredit him and in some instances testimony was clearly shown to be false. Interim Superintendent Marilyn Corey displayed a conspicuous bias against [him].”

Citing Corey and former board member Barry Resnick, Randall wrote: “Ms. Corey, Dr. Resnick and others in the district wanted to rid themselves of [Donoghue] for reasons unrelated to his use of profanity and his sexually oriented sense of humor. [His] unfortunate blind spot in this area provided them with ammunition.”

Randall went on to cite the “glaring discrepancy” in the district’s treatment of Donoghue and two of his “lieutenants” compared with other administrators not in his camp. “Despite the widespread involvement of other district employees in the [same] types of behavior . . . these three alone were served with charges of misconduct,” Randall wrote.

With that in mind, Randall concluded “that the district would not have dismissed [Donoghue] in the absence of an ulterior motive.”

Referring to allegations levied (but dropped months later) against financial officer and Donoghue confidante Joyce Capelle, Randall noted that another administrator, Jack Elsner, had conceded to doing much the same things but wasn’t targeted.

Randall concluded: “Only one explanation can be gleaned from the record: Mr. Elsner was not one of the individuals targeted by Barry Resnick. It may be inferred that the charges [against] Capelle were a pretense to strip her of her authority and were levied because of her alliance with [Donoghue].”

Randall noted, without apparent irony, that Elsner was then the district’s chief enforcer of sexual harassment policy.

What’s the motive for all this? The Orange school district verged on bankruptcy when Donoghue was hired in mid-1990 to oversee business and finance. Randall concluded that the campaign against Donoghue was rooted in school district politics.

Randall noted that Resnick, for a time while on the board, was also writing a newspaper column for the Orange Independent. Writing under the pen name “Ben Olivas,” Resnick’s column was “frequently and harshly critical of [Donoghue],” Randall noted. In a column written nearly five months before the actions were initiated against Donoghue, “Ben Olivas” wrote that, “I can comfortably predict that we can say good-bye to the Donoghue regime on Jan. 15, 1994.”

“Olivas” attributed that to an expected change in board membership, but also added: “In the case of Donoghue, the new board will work out a deal with him. The board will accept his resignation in return for not pursuing other matters that I will present to you at a later time.”

In her report, Randall also singled out the former employee who was the source for most of the allegations against Donoghue. “There is convincing evidence that [she] has one or more motives to falsely accuse Donoghue,” Randall wrote. “First, she blames him for the loss of her job [with the district] . . . “

The woman claimed to be offended by Donoghue’s behavior, but other employees contradicted her testimony, Randall wrote. The woman was the source for the only allegation involving physical contact--namely that Donoghue once grabbed her buttocks--but Randall concluded that the incident “did not occur.”

In concluding that some Donoghue conduct was unprofessional, Randall said it warranted a “disciplinary warning”--not suspension and dismissal without pay. Donoghue’s “greatest shortcoming,” Randall found, “was his failure to realize that some employees would not express their discomfort and that the activities he condoned could bring discredit to himself and to the district. However, there is no reason to think [he] would not have conformed his behavior to acceptable standards had he been directed to do so.”

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The allegations have kept Donoghue, now 50, sidelined for 19 months. He is reportedly out of town this week and unavailable for comment, but his attorney, Neil Barker, told me Tuesday: “He didn’t deserve any of this. His life in many respects has been ruined by this whole thing. The tragedy of this is that he’s been vindicated, but they can’t give him back that time that he’s lost. They can’t give him his job back. They took his job away from him, they didn’t renew his contract, and they essentially made it impossible for him to get another job. Anyone who’s accused of the kinds of things he’s accused of, until it’s resolved, is unemployable.”

The period without income, Barker said, “was devastating for him.” As for the charges, Barker said, “You can always accuse someone of anything. Just because you do doesn’t mean there’s any truth to it. This was a case of some people who had an agenda, and [Randall] analyzed that pretty well. . . . There were some people who didn’t like the way Donoghue managed the district. It was a management-style issue, pure and simple.”

The school board has accepted Randall’s findings, Barker said, and has sent him a check for approximately $160,000 in back pay. He said Donoghue is feeling good and is looking for work.

Meanwhile, unsettling questions remain. For starters, taxpayers might want to ask why the school board spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on what appears to have been a vendetta.

I reached Resnick and Corey this week--Resnick at Rancho Santiago College, where he is a counselor, and Corey in Arroyo Grande, where she is retired.

Neither had seen Randall’s report. I read sections to them in which Randall characterized their actions. Both declined comment.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.