$100,000 Award Settles Sex-Harassment Claim

The county Claims Board settled a sexual harassment claim by awarding $100,000 to a female worker Monday, four years after the Civil Service Commission dismissed her allegations and reinstated the male co-worker she had accused.

Probation Department clerk Cynthia Juarez, working at the Challenger Memorial Youth Facility in Lancaster, alleged that probation officer Samuel A. Jones groped her and set off a department dispute that cost her a promotion.

Jones was fired from the department in October 1993 but appealed to the Civil Service Commission, which found Juarez did not have enough evidence to support her charges. Jones was reinstated and later transferred to another juvenile camp.

“I won hands down, and they’re gonna pay her $100,000? That doesn’t make sense. If anyone, I’m the one who suffered,” Jones said.

But lawyers for the county said if the case had gone to trial, a jury would probably find Juarez was sexually harassed and forced to work in a hostile environment, and might award her $520,000.

“We’re pleased with the certainty a settlement provides,” said Juarez’s lawyer, David J. Duchrow. “We’re hopeful there won’t be a recurrence. This may have some marginal effect in getting them to clean up their own house.”

Probation Department officials said that since the allegations first surfaced, they have required more than 900 juvenile camp employees to undergo training to understand what constitutes sexual harassment.

“These are grown people,” said Virginia Snapp, chief of residential treatment. “They need to be performing at a professional level.”

Juarez, a county employee since 1979 with a base salary of $25,128, said she also was the victim of racial discrimination at the Lancaster juvenile camp before the alleged incident involving Jones. On May 21, 1993, she was walking on the camp grounds when Jones and his supervisor rode by in a motorized cart. As the cart passed, she said, Jones reached out and placed his hands between her legs.

Juarez filed an internal grievance against Jones. While it was pending, Jones and a number of his friends called Juarez at home to pressure her to drop the complaint, according to county documents.

In an October 1993 letter, Chief Probation Officer Barry J. Nidorf told Jones: “Your conduct was unworthy of your position and we can no longer trust you. Therefore, I am left with no choice but to discharge you.”

Meanwhile, Juarez said, she was being forced to work in an environment where sexually suggestive cartoons and unwelcome physical contact were tolerated--conditions she said dated back to the start of her employment in the county.

In July 1993, she said, she believed her superiors in the department retaliated against her by denying her a transfer to another juvenile camp. And in October 1993, she said, another probation officer made unwanted advances, caressing her back and buttocks. Juarez could not be reached for comment.

Jones had appealed the department’s decision to fire him. In May 1994, after Jones and Juarez presented sharply conflicting accounts of their run-in, the Civil Service Commission found she had not proved her case and ordered Jones reinstated, without imposing discipline.

Jones’ representative had not reviewed the settlement.

“This is simply a case of the county buying their peace,” said Fred Williams, a labor consultant who represented Jones before the Civil Service Commission.

Williams said the settlement leaves the county at odds with the interests of justice.

Because county officials had put Jones back to work, “either they’re supporting a man they know is guilty of sexual harassment or they’re paying off a woman when they know the evidence didn’t support her. You can’t have it both ways.”