By Karlyn Barker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
The former chief of facility maintenance at the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation allegedly kissed, fondled and demanded sexual favors from three women under his supervision, according to the women, who say the alleged harassment continued even after they told several supervisors at the agency.
The women are single mothers who were hired initially for maintenance jobs at $6.15 an hour under the District's welfare-to-work program. One former employee said she complained in person more than three years ago to Neil O. Albert, a former deputy mayor who was then the department's director.
The maintenance chief, Darnell Thompson Sr., 50, left his $66,000 position at the agency last summer after a current employee, Garrina Byrd, 28, filed a sexual harassment complaint against him with the city's Office of Human Rights.
"The Chief would grab my breasts or my behind and, if I had on a skirt, he would try to put his hand up my skirt," Byrd alleges in her complaint, filed in April. "I began to consent to the Chief's requests for sex because I was afraid that I would lose my employment."
Byrd, who was hired in 2001 and said Thompson's sexual harassment began in 2002, repeated her allegation last month at a D.C. Council committee's oversight hearing on the recreation department.
"Each time, he threatened to fire me if I didn't agree to his demands," Byrd testified. She told the panel that young women struggling to improve their lives should not be "forced to choose between their dignity and the need to make a living."
The District government has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace and requires any supervisor who receives a complaint to make sure an investigation is conducted. Byrd's complaint has triggered mandatory training for the recreation department's 750 employees on what constitutes sexual harassment -- and what managers should do about it, said Kimberley Flowers, the department's new director.
The city has been criticized previously for failing to quickly address problems in the workplace. Five female deputies at the D.C. medical examiner's office filed complaints in 2003, alleging sexual harassment and racial discrimination, and later collected a settlement that totaled $250,000.
The allegations against Thompson are drawn from Byrd's complaint and from interviews with her and two former recreation department employees. The women alleged a range of sexual harassment incidents, most of which they said took place in Thompson's office at the facilities maintenance bureau at 1515 Half St. SW.
One woman, Annette Burns, said that Thompson tried to sexually assault her in 2002 when she was eight months pregnant -- and that she reported him to Albert. Demera Gaskins said Thompson came to recreation centers where she worked last year and pressured her for sex.
Thompson, hired in 1986, according to city records, declined to comment on the allegations when contacted by telephone at his home.
"I don't have any response," he said.
A spokeswoman for the District's Attorney General's Office, which is representing the Parks and Recreation Department, also would not comment.
Flowers and other city officials declined to discuss the allegations or say why Thompson left the agency, citing possible litigation and the confidentiality of personnel matters.
Allegations about Thompson were raised in April with the council's Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation. Deborrah E. Jackson, an officer with the union representing non-management employees, said in an interview that she started hearing concerns about Thompson in 2001 and 2002 after the agency began hiring former welfare recipients, mostly women, for jobs that offered temporary work experience or "term" employment that could be renewed every 13 months.
In a memorandum to council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), chairwoman of the panel, Jackson said there had been at least three sexual harassment allegations against Thompson. She wrote that Albert and another official, Neil Stanley, failed to heed the women's complaints.
"Neither of these administrators conducted in-house investigations," Jackson, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, Local 2741, told Patterson.
Albert and Stanley, however, said they took the allegations very seriously and investigated them.
"If the findings warranted it, the matter was referred to the Office of Human Rights," said Albert, who couldn't recall the specifics of any case. Albert left the agency in 2004 after three years to become a deputy mayor. He recently quit to run an education management company.
"Maybe someone didn't like the results, but it's not correct to say we didn't do anything about it," said Stanley, the agency's former general counsel who took over as interim director when Albert left. He is now a deputy director at the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.
Since January 2001, according to the Office of Human Rights, only one sexual harassment complaint -- Byrd's -- has been filed against the Department of Parks and Recreation. In the past three years, the office has received a total of 20 sexual harassment complaints from all District agencies.
Patterson said she called the Parks and Recreation Department twice about the sexual harassment allegations and about separate allegations that Thompson had brought a gun to work and threatened employees. She said that by the second call, Thompson was on administrative leave. He was dropped from the city payroll Aug. 19.
Byrd, Burns and Gaskins said they were thrilled to be hired as maintenance workers, assigned to pick up trash, rake leaves and clean recreation centers. The job paid only $6.15 to start. But it was their first steady employment, and the hours, 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., gave them time with their children.
Byrd alleged that her problems with Thompson began in 2002, when Thompson ordered her to pull up her shirt if she wanted to keep her job. She complied, she said, and was transferred that day from field work to the Half Street office. She answered phones, made calls -- and endured what she said in her council committee testimony was nearly three years of escalating sexual demands.
In her complaint, Byrd says she initially reported Thompson to a female supervisor, who told her to just tell him to stop.
"The touching progressed to the point where the Chief began asking for sex and when I refused, he threatened me by saying he would not extend my 13-month employment for another term," Byrd said in her complaint.
In an interview, Byrd alleged that Thompson called her into his office and showed her a termination letter.
"He asked me what was I willing to do to stay," and they then had intercourse on his desk, Byrd alleged, crying as she related the story. "I thought it would be one time and that I'd have a job and that would be the end of it."
Thompson, she alleged, began to demand a variety of sexual favors. He promoted her to a job as a clerical assistant, with a salary of $33,500 a year, even though she had no secretarial training. On Thompson's orders, she said, she spent more and more time in his office, fueling rumors that she was his girlfriend. That impression spread among co-workers when word got around that he had given Byrd $3,000 to buy a car.
She said that she did not ask for the money and that Thompson said nothing when he handed her the cash in an envelope outside the Half Street building. Thompson, she alleged, had been accused of sexually harassing another woman at work. Byrd said she regarded the cash as "hush money" so that she would not report him.
By last spring, Byrd said in an interview, she had begun refusing Thompson's sexual demands, and he showed her another termination letter. She said she discussed her problems with another supervisor, Julie Banks.
"She told me he had been threatening to fire her if she didn't have sex with him," said Banks, who urged Byrd to report Thompson.
On April 5, Byrd went to the department's headquarters on 16th Street NW and filed a complaint. That day, she was handed a letter that said she had received her "first and final" interview on her complaint, with no indication that anything would be done about it. The next day, she filed a complaint with the Office of Human Rights.
"You come into the workplace to get training and instead you get abused," said Gary T. Brown, an attorney for Byrd who also represents Burns. He said as welfare-to-work women, both were particularly vulnerable.
Burns, now 28, started at the agency in 2000. She said she began having problems with Thompson in 2002 after she became pregnant and he transferred her to clerical duties in his office. She said she complained to a male supervisor that Thompson was touching her inappropriately, but the behavior continued.
On April 30, 2002, Burns said, Thompson cornered her in his office, grabbed her left breast and tried to kiss her. She said she fled in tears. The next day, she said, she went to headquarters and met with Albert and Stanley. She was placed on administrative leave, then transferred to an office away from Thompson. She said she heard nothing more about her complaint.
Burns, who had been hoping for a permanent job, was let go after her term employment ended.
"When I got terminated," she said, "I called Mr. Albert. He never called me back."
Albert recalled getting "one or two complaints" about Thompson. "We followed up on it immediately," he said.
Thompson was still the maintenance chief in 2004 when Gaskins, who was hired in 2003, alleges that he started making sexual demands. By then, she was a term employee with a salary of $12.95 an hour, and she said she agreed to his demands after he threatened to fire her.
"He was my boss," said Gaskins, now 25. "I pretty much had to do what he said."
But a few months later, when she began refusing, she said, Thompson handed her a termination letter, effective March 31 last year.
Johnnie Richardson, a work leader, said she heard complaints about Thompson from Gaskins and Byrd but didn't report him because she didn't believe the allegations.
Byrd returned to the Half Street office after Thompson was gone. Co-workers, she said, "have been horrible to me," and last month she was reassigned to another office with less convenient hours. She said she hopes her complaint will result in job training, a financial settlement and "someone taking responsibility."
Recently, Byrd said, she was among the employees summoned to a training session on how to recognize and prevent sexual harassment. The instructions, she said, "are four years too late."
Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
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