(PNN) $250,000 SETTLEMENT IN “DOE V COK” EEOC CASE BEGAN WITH ALLEGED ‘02 ASSAULT BY COUNTY CLERK NAKAMURA UPON COUNCIL’S DEPUTY COUNTY ATTORNEY

$250,000 SETTLEMENT IN “DOE V COK” EEOC CASE BEGAN WITH ALLEGED ‘02 ASSAULT BY COUNTY CLERK NAKAMURA UPON COUNCIL’S DEPUTY COUNTY ATTORNEY

“DOE” ILLEGALLY IDED AS HANSON-SUEOKA BY CA CASTILLO, WHO FIRED HER IN ‘08

by Andy Parx

(PNN) -- The $250,000 settlement of a “hostile/violent work environment” Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint identified only as “Jane Doe vs. County of Kaua`i” was actually a complaint filed by former Deputy County Attorney Margaret Hanson-Sueoka according to records illegally revealed by County Attorney Al Castillo.

The case apparently goes back to early 2002 during the waning days of Mayor Maryanne Kusaka’s administration but the precipitating incident occurred, not in administration offices where the county attorney’s offices are housed but in the “workplace” of council services.

According to numerous council services employees, past reporters and “regulars” at council meetings at the time, then and present County Clerk Peter Nakamura allegedly “beat up” Hanson-Sueoka, who was at the time his “girlfriend”, causing Hanson to seek a restraining order against Nakamura.

Though some alleged that at the time Nakamura was actually arrested others claim that he was not, with some of those saying that this was due to his position and Hanson-Sueoka’s refusal to press charges due to fear of repercussions on her job situation. Almost all however agreed in maintaining that Hanson had obtained a protective restraining order against Nakamura after telling people she was assaulted by him.

Although the county clerk heads the “council services” office and runs every aspect of council doings including hiring and firing of personnel, technically Hanson-Sueoka’s boss was the county attorney although the attorney assigned to the council often works closely and under the supervision of the county clerk.

But EEOC law also covers those that, while technically are not “superiors, but those that act as such.

An examination of county records and newspaper articles indicates Hanson-Sueoka was soon terminated from her plum assignment as attorney for the council and, when the Bryan Baptiste administration took over in December of 2002, she was retained as a deputy in new CA Lani Nakazawa’s office but assigned to attend various long and often boring and routine board and commission meetings to provide attorney advice.

Hanson-Sueoka remained with the office when Nakazawa left and was replaced by CA Matthew Pyun, and was the main county attorney involved in the infamous removal from office of Police Commission Chair Michael Ching- as well as the cover-up of the hearing judge’s full report exonerating Ching- and the resulting politically motivated firing of Police Chief KC Lum.

But when Bernard Carvalho was elected as mayor in 2008 and appointed Castillo, Hanson was fired for no stated reason, although her EEOC case presumably maintains it was retaliatory for whistle-blowing for past the incidents.

The EEOC complaint was filed after Hanson-Sueoka’s firing by Castillo and confirmation of the $250,000 award- along with the confirmation that it was a hostile/violent workplace compliant- came at least week’s council meeting as part of a presentation by Councilpersons Lani Kawahara and Tim Bynum on the pervasive disregard for sexual harassment and hostile work environment laws by the county.

At the meeting the pair cited the “Jane Doe” case and that of Kristan Hirakawa- a case detailed by PNN over the past year- saying cases against the county are rarely if ever even investigated and that harassers are apparently never disciplined much less fired even after judgments against the county.

The incident in 2002 was the talk of the county building at the time including among councilmembers who were called into executive session to discuss personnel issues within council services although none would confirm publicly that the subject was Nakamura who remains on the job today despite the settlement.

Though the incident occurred during the time when then Councilperson Ron Kouchi was the chair of the council after the 2002 election- where he ran and lost in a bid to be mayor- current Chair Kaipo Asing took over and has remained chair ever since okaying, along with the rest of the council, various settlements for harassment of county employees as well as reappointing Nakamura as county clerk every two years.

Though EEOC cases are, by federal law, to be kept confidential, after firing Hanson-Sueoka Castillo twice revealed that indeed she was the EEOC plaintiff, the first time on the council agenda for April 22, 2009 where he requested executive session (ES) 382 which read in part,

the Office of the County Attorney requests an executive session with the Council to provide the Council a briefing on Margaret H. Sueoka v. County of Kaua`i, EEOC Charge No. 486-2009-00268 and/or related matters and/or subsequent legal proceedings resulting in any way from this matter.

Then, even after a rejected request from PNN to examine the EEOC case files- where we were told by the CA’s office that federal law maintains strict confidentiality for EEOC complaints, superseding the state sunshine law- in a local newspaper article on August 28, 2009 about the $3 million that has been spent on outside counsel to defend lawsuits against the county, reporter Michael Levine wrote:

“Since I’ve been here, the only (lawsuit) that is mine is the Sueoka case, and that’s one where we really didn’t have a choice,” Castillo said, in reference to an equal employment opportunity claim filed against the county by former Deputy County Attorney Margaret Sueoka. He said having a staff attorney handle the case could constitute a conflict of interest.

But recently all references on council agendas to the Hanson-Sueoka case were noted as “Jane Doe vs. County of Kaua`i” although both the recent postings and the one for April of 2009 referred to the same “Charge number”, 486-2009-00268.

Talk regarding the original incident when Nakamura was alleged to have “beat up” Hanson- who has since married and changed her name to Sueoka- was pervasive at the county building in 2002 when PNN was actively covering weekly council meetings and, while more than a dozen people repeated the story about Nakamura and Hanson, PNN has not been able to confirm the incidents through documentation.

It should be noted that this report was compiled after speaking to many knowledgeable sources both in 2002 and this week and after a review of our notes from that era. It is the best available rendering of the truth of what has occurred in this case. All undocumented allegation are just that- undocumented allegations.

(PNN) COUNCIL TO SPEND $50,000 TO DEFEND SUEOKA EEOC CHARGE

Former long time Deputy County Attorney Margaret Sueoka has filed an EEOC complaint that has resulted in a case against the county that is apparently serious enough that the county attorney’s office is asking the council for 50,000 to defend the charge.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has substantiated the claim to the extent that they have filed a “charge” and given the case a number (486-2009-00268) but any detailed information is “not available to anyone except to parties” of the case according to an EEOC intake representative and, at least preliminarily, the state according to Amy Esaki current First Deputy CA for the county.

Esaki said after briefly checking with the state Office of Information Practices (OIP) the county’s position is that any further information is, at least for now, protected at the state level by HRS section 92F-14, claiming that the privacy issues involved outweigh the public interest in releasing the charges made by Sueoka.

PNN was unable to contact Sueoka and there is no number listed for her name.

Sueoka was apparently fired sometime during the change of administration and resultant change in county attorneys presumably by either Esaki, who was interim CA, or by current CA Al Castillo. Sueoka was sworn in on December 1 with the rest of the deputy CA’s.

Esaki said she couldn’t comment or provide any details surrounding the firing. even the fact that Sueoka was terminated, although the EEOC charge apparently verifies that.

It is unknown what the basis of the charge is although usually the EEOC deals with cases of discrimination against a “protected class” such as in race, gender or age bias.

Though no information on the specifics exist, some political insiders have speculated that Sueoka was fired due to the various controversial opinions she wrote, advice she gave and cases she pursued when she worked for former CA’s Lani Nakazawa and Matthew Pyun.

Nakazawa and Pyun initiated a widely criticized and unprecedented era of secrecy in the CA’s office as PNN has detailed in past reports, claiming that the CA’s only function was to serve the administration and council and that all official opinions rendered were the sole possession of those to whom they were issued and that only those so advised could release them to the public.

Previously, although county law is silent on the matter, most CA written opinions were considered public record, as state law requires of attorneys general’s opinions.

It has been revealed in various public session of boards and commissions including those of the council, that Sueoka, along with Nakazawa, had written the opinion that bans public release by the CA’s office and removed any public component to the CA office’s duties.

In addition, it has been revealed at meetings that she penned many of the advisory opinions that seemed to fly in the face of exiting laws and regulations. But since they were secret, no one could challenge them on the particulars.

Sueoka was instrumental in the apparent railroading of former police chief KC Lum by the Board of Ethics (BOE)- at the council and mayor’s behest- serving as the long time legal advisor of the beleaguered BOE. She also apparently wrote the still-secret opinion that allowed violations of the prohibitions in section 20.02(D) of the county charter that PNN’s investigatory three part series detailed this and last week.

Based on some of Castillo’s words and actions at various meetings over the past month or so he has been in office it is thought – or at least hoped- by many county government observers that he will be reversing many of Sueoka’s, Pyun’s and Nakazawa’s opinions.

Castillo has been observed with shocked expressions, eye rolling and head shaking upon observing the consequences of the apparent misconceptions of law, as stated by members of the various bodies (including the county council and BOE), based on Sueoka’s legal advice.

He has also given verbal indications that a potential change in policy is in the works at some of those meetings.

Both Esaki and Castillo are new to the CA’s office, Castillo coming from private practice after a stint in the prosecutor’s office in the 90’s and Esaki coming from council services where she served as a legal analyst for many years.

Both are considered to be “straight shooters” by various sources who have worked with them over the years although it cannot be verified if any of this was in any way behind the firing of Sueoka.

According to sources both are primed to clean up the CA’s office and repair its severely tarnished reputation, built through the years by issuing opinions that served the reported paternalistic and secretive efforts of Kaua`i County Council Chair Kaipo Asing and the administration of former Mayor Bryan Baptiste.

The CA’s office has also been under fire for the inordinate number of cases referred to “special counsel”- a small cabal of outside Honolulu attorneys who seem to most political observers and government watchdogs almost incapable of winning a case

That has cost the county millions in attorneys’ fees and more in settlements, much to councilmembers’ vocal chagrin.

Though the particulars of the Sueoka case are confidential to non-parties according to the EEOC itself, the public interest vs. private concerns may be less inviolable if it can be shown that there is a great public interest in releasing the details of the case.

Esaki said she presented the specific case to the OIP- the body that administrates the Uniform Information Practices Act or UIPA (HRS 92F) and the Sunshine Law (HRS 92 Section 1)- but attorney Linden Joesting of OIP, who spoke to Esaki, said that her counsel was just “advice over the phone” based on “preliminary information” and was not to be taken as a formal ruling as to whether the public interest in this case might outweigh Sueoka’s privacy interest of.

Joesting said she had not seen anything in writing but said that if we made a formal written request for the record of the case from the county and were denied she would be able to make, if not a formal ruling at least more than a preliminary one.

PNN will be filing that request tomorrow with the CA’s office and has been promised the denial will be expedited.

Joesting also indicated that it all might depend on EEOC rules on releasing the case file about which she didn’t have enough information to determine if there were strict or situational-dependent prohibitions against public release of the documents regarding the case.

This is not the first recent case of an EEOC charge. As PNN reported in December Kaua`i Bus driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin has filed suit against the Kaua`i Department of Transportation- specifically Executive on Transportation Janine Rapozo- for gender discrimination after the county refused to answer or even, according to her suit, investigate an EEOC complaint. The council also appropriated $50,000 at the time to defend that case.

Rapozo, a holdover from the Baptiste administration, is the wife of now Parks and Recreation Department head Lenny Rapozo who served as current Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s campaign manager in the fall 2008 campaign for mayor.

NOTHIN’ TO SEE HERE

NOTHIN’ TO SEE HERE: Kaua`i Coffee’s “complaint for declaratory relief” related to 17 EEOC complaints that amount to charges of slavery- as we wrote about Tuesday and the local newspaper was finally embarrassed into covering in small part today with a promise of more to come- is one of the strangest court filings we’ve ever seen since apparently no authority has actually charged them with anything and they aren’t charging anyone with anything either.

Filed in US District Court, it essentially claims that Global Horizons Manpower Inc - the company whose head, Mordechai Orian, is being held on a million dollars bail for various charges related to “exploiting 400 workers from Thailand and forcing them to work on U.S. farms” – indemnified them against anything and everything related to the EEOC complaints.

But of course it’s hard to imagine how they could have been anything but fully aware of the circumstances supporting the conditions since they occurred right under their noses.

Strangely enough- and possible illegally- the compliant reveals the names of those making the EEOC complaints. which are considered confidential according to federal law.

The charges- at least Kaua`i Coffee’s characterization of them, according to the complaint, are supposedly uniform, saying

According to the suit:

The EEOC Charges uniformly contain the following allegations:

I. Since [2004/2005/2006], 1 I have been harassed, subjected to different terms and conditions of employment, and intimidated in all aspects of employment with Global Horizons, due to my national origin (Thailand).

The year in which the discrimination complained of allegedly began differs depending on the individual EEOC Charge.

II. On many occasions, I objected [sic] the terms and conditions of employment but was ignored.

III. I believe I have been harassed, subjected to different terms and conditions of employment, and intimidated because of my national origin (Thailand) and retaliated against for engaging in a protected activity, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.

IV. Further, since [200312004/2005], 2 I believe that employees as a class have been discriminated against due to their national origin (Thailand) and retaliated against for engaging in a protected activity, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.

Though the complaint details and provides exhibits as to why Kaua`i Coffee thinks Global Horizons fully indemnified them, after detailing a back and forth between attorneys over the last two years, the compliant admits

an actual and genuine controversy exists between Kauai Coffee and Global Horizons concerning the latter's obligation to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Kauai Coffee against the EEOC Charges.

Kaua`i Coffee’s case for indemnification refers to the agreements to provide the labor saying.

The Agreements state that the contract workers furnished by Global Horizons to Kauai Coffee "will be employees of [Global Horizons] and will at all times be subject to the sole and direct supervision and control of [Global Horizons]." Exs. "1" and "2" at 9[ 3(a).

Pursuant to the Agreements, Global Horizons furnished Kauai Coffee with contract farm workers from Thailand (the "Workers") at various times during the period of approximately November 2004 ("Fall '04") through approximately June 2006 ("Summer '06").

But then they admit that

Per the Agreements, Kauai Coffee provided housing and transportation to the Workers. Exs. "1" and "2" atl 8(a).

It’s hard to see how if, as with the cases against Orian and Global Horizons, workers were held against their will that Kaua`i Coffee was fully unaware of what was going on and therefore were not accessory to the crime regardless of any indemnification.

As to the case for indemnification itself the complaint says

Paragraph 11(j) of the Agreements (the "Indemnity Provision") provides as follows:

[Global Horizons] hereby agrees to indemnify, defend and hold harmless [Kauai Coffee] and its affiliates and their directors, officers, agents and employees against any claim, obligation, liability, demand or cause of action, including without limit, costs of defense, settlement, and reasonable attorneys' fees, that results directly or indirectly from any acts or omissions of [Global Horizons] in providing services hereunder.

The complaint says Kauai` Coffee is asking

A. For a declaration that Global Horizons is required under the Agreements to indemnify, defend and hold harmless Kauai Coffee as to the EEOC Charges;

B. For an award of attorneys' fees and costs incurred by Kauai Coffee in maintaining this suit; and

C. For such other legal and/or equitable relief as the Court may deem just and proper.

As we said, since the EEOC complaints were made against Global Horizons and, as yet, no one has actually accused Kaua`i Coffee of anything the complaint itself seems like a case where the alleged perpetrator screams “I didn’t do it” before anyone tells them what it is they supposedly did.

A Honolulu Star Advertiser story on September 3 did say that:

More than a dozen farms in Hawaii were involved in what the FBI is calling the largest human trafficking case ever prosecuted in the U.S., according to a sweeping federal indictment unsealed yesterday

About 400 workers from Thailand circulated through island farms -- some were sent to the mainland -- through Global Horizons from May 2004 through September 2005. The workers were threatened with deportation and economic stress if they did not work, the indictment said...

"The FBI is attempting to learn the extent that these farms were aware of the forced labor conditions of its workers," Simon said. "With few exceptions, the farms have been cooperating with our investigation."...

The indictment also said Global Horizon confined workers to the property of the now-defunct Maui Pineapple Farm, posting guards to prevent the workers from running away.

Two of the defendants strung yellow tape around the Maui Pineapple housing area and installed bells on string lines in the woods to alert guards of escape attempts, according to the indictment.

If Kaua`i Coffee’s involvement was anything like that of Maui Pineapple it’s easy to see why they are seeking what amounts to a CYA (cover your ass) complaint seeking to separate themselves from any wrongdoing.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The “old boys club” on Kaua`i is certainly not the province of a single gender anymore. The phrase is merely an anachronistic remnant of he days when only boys would and could be boys.

Today, regardless of gender, any jerkwad who has the self-initiative to step forward and “wrestle with the pigs” for a few years- developing a reputation for being willing to do and say just about anything to defend the privilege of the higher-ups by deflecting and absorbing the not-so-outrageous slings and arrows of public outrage at their future cronies' corruption- can live the dream of a becoming a “made man”- or woman... a mid-level “untouchable” as activist Ray Chuan used to call them.

But that doesn’t mean that they or their benefactors don’t still live in the dark ages when it comes to the on-the-job treatment of women- especially those that don’t respect the system that protects the protected and spits out dissidence.

A year ago this week we reported on the lawsuit of “Kaua`i Bus” driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin who has sued the Kaua`i Transpiration Agency- specifically, Executive on Transportation Janine Rapozo- for what appears to be a pervasive hostile atmosphere toward women at the agency.

As we wrote at the time:

Just as appalling as the actual discrimination is the fact the lawsuit was filed only because a year went by after Ah Quin’s filing of Hawai`i Civil Rights Commission (HCRC) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints without any attempt by the county to respond or even attempt to investigate the charges.

Then in April we reported on the case of former long time Deputy County Attorney Margaret (Hanson) Sueoka who has filed an EEOC complaint that has so far has resulted in the county attorney’s securing of $50,000 from the council to defend the charge. Her case remains under seal with the county apparently having responded to the EEOC case, unlike when Ah Quin’s case was ignored.

But the county still apparently hasn’t learned to respond to EEOC cases before they become lawsuits- where the specific details are publicly made available- and they apparently still haven’t learned much about responding to on-the-job sexual harassment claims or doing anything to stop them before they begin... much less disciplining the harassers.

These cases and others over the years however pale in comparison to the case of Kristan C. Hirakawa who, in a lawsuit filed in US District Court, alleges that even though she had won her 2001 EEOC case against the county while working for, surprise-surprise the Kaua`i Police Department (KPD), when the county, as required by the settlement, “reassigned” her to the Liquor Commission, she was further harassed at her new job.

The original filing had apparently never seen the light of reporting because EEOC complaints are considered confidential under federal law and are therefore exempt from the state’s sunshine and open records laws. The EEOC does however issue “Right to Sue” letters giving “permission” for a suit to arise from the complaint if the defendant doesn’t “settle” during the EEOC phase as it appears happened in Hirakawa’s current case.

According to the lawsuit filed through her attorneys, former state Attorney General Margery S. Bronster and local attorney Daniel G. Hempey:

(p)reviously, in approximately 2001, Plaintiff was employed as a dispatcher for the Kauai Police Department when she was sexually harassed by a co-worker. Plaintiff filed a Charge of Discrimination with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). As a result of the previous case, Plaintiff suffered serious physiological injury due to the sexual harassment, improper response to her legitimate complaint and loss of privacy that was inflicted on her while working in the Kauai Police Department. The matter settled without admitting fault.

Defendant County of Kauai agreed to identify and assist Plaintiff with obtaining another County job as a result of settlement negotiations in the previous case. Ultimately, Plaintiff obtained employment at the Kauai County Liquor Commission.

But that didn’t stop her new supervisor, Dexter Shimatsu, from continuing the typical cycle of sexual harassment followed by retaliation for whistle-blowing or the county’s, not just indifference but, apparently active aiding and abetting of Shimatsu’s actions

According to the suit,

(Hirakawa’s) situation within the Kauai County Liquor Commission remained relentless as the discrimination and harassment increased to the point of disabling her with severe emotional distress. Per doctor's orders, she has stopped working as a result, and remains unable to work in her County job due to the Defendant's failure and/or refusal to properly address the discrimination, harassment and retaliation she has suffered in the workplace.

We could characterize or pick and edit only the highlights of the sordid details but, with no space limitation and the fact that the allegations in the suit paint such a good portrait of Shimatsu and the county’s specific alleged actions- including the county attorney’s office’s alleged failure to investigate the EEOC claim and their decisions to rather fight it without any inquiry- we will print the pertinent section of the “Predicate Facts” contained in the suit.

--------

Predicate Facts 9-36

The County of Kauai, obviously aware of Plaintiffs previous case and emotional condition, placed her in a workplace with a known sexual harasser as a co-worker and a supervisor with no prior training in sexual harassment law. On information and belief, the County of Kauai has consistently failed to meet its legal obligations to identify and prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

Upon relocation to the Kauai County Liquor Commission, Plaintiff was immediately subject to offensive conduct on the basis of her sex. Her supervisor, Dexter Shimatsu, made sarcastic comments about sexual harassment to Plaintiff, often alluding to her history of having made a sexual harassment complaint. Shimatsu complained to Plaintiff that he had to order all of the posters [of scantily clad women] removed from the workplace because the "County made me hire you."'

During the course of her employment Plaintiff was often the subject of ridicule, sexual innuendo, sexual emails and insults from her supervisor. Shimatsu called her holistic medical practitioner a "witch doctor", and wrote an email to her saying: Use your common sense...I think you'll stay healthy...Oh yeah, and sleep with your clothes on. You could catch a cold, the flu and get pregnant without your clothes on...all bad ailments.

Shimatsu's demeaning conduct continued. After Plaintiff entered her baby into a contest (which she did not win), Shimatsu left a newspaper clipping of the winning baby in her mail bin where all her co-workers could see it. Above the picture of the winning mother and baby Shimatsu wrote a note saying: I really think the baby won because the mother was cute. With that in mind, you really need to do something about yourself...so your baby can win. Your baby did her part by being cute... it's now up to you.

In May 2007, Shimatsu called Plaintiff into his office to tell her he heard from someone that her boyfriend was getting deployed to the Middle East. He stated, "You should buy your boyfriend a lot of condoms because there are a lot of prostitutes where he'll be stationed." He followed up in an email saying he doesn't think there are really prostitutes there.

At work the sexual harassment was incessant. Shimatsu continued degrading Plaintiff calling her such names as "tonta," meaning slow, dumb or stupid, and "shibai." Shimatsu made insolent comments about Plaintiff when she made a mistake but did not treat her co-workers rudely.

When she requested vacation time to care for her four month-old baby, Shimatsu responded in a memo stating: Your request for Vac/ Ct...was approved after much discussion...Lady, you give me a headache... always asking for special treatment as a female. I kind of feel its sexual harassment and should look into it. I think that's the only way I'm going to get rid of this nasty headache...what you think?

Plaintiff noted that other employees were not subject to insolent comments when asking for time off.

On another occasion, Shimatsu emailed to Plaintiff a photo of an attractive female dressed only in a tiny, diamond studded bikini. Shimatsu typed "You Wish" on the email before sending the email to Plaintiff from his work computer.

Plaintiff was unable to be in such a virulent environment where working meant being in constant dialogue with the perpetrator. She took leave on a disability claim. She sought medical help and counseling because of the harassment and discrimination at the Kauai County Liquor Commission. Under direction of Plaintiffs medical providers, she was not allowed to resume working while the harasser remained there or until the situation had been corrected.

In June of 2007, Plaintiff reported the sexual harassment to the County and sought disability leave from work.

The County did not pay on Plaintiffs disabilities claim and did not separate her from Shimatsu.

The County has failed to properly respond to or address the alleged sexual harassment complaint raised by Plaintiff.

The County broke its own County policy on sexual harassment as promised to Plaintiff and other County employees in a number of respects. First, the County promises that complaints of sexual harassment will be investigated within two weeks time. No timely investigation was done in Plaintiff's case. Secondly, County policy promises that the findings and results of an investigation into a complaint of sexual harassment will be made available to the complainant. The results of any investigation into sexual harassment have still not been made available to Plaintiff. And thirdly, County policy promises that corrective action will be taken when a County employee suffers from sexual harassment. On information and belief, no such corrective action has been taken.

Upon information and belief, the County's policy on sexual harassment in the workplace was intended to comply with applicable law.

Furthermore, the County ignored State and Federal law regarding the matter being pursued. The County instead protected the accused, her supervisor Shimatsu, offering no remedial action to Plaintiff and failing to conduct even a basic investigation for several months.

In many cases, County policy directs employees to report allegations of sexual harassment to the Office of the County Attorney to ensure, among other things, that the County acts in compliance with State and Federal law. However, in this case, the Office of the County Attorney chose to arbitrarily dispute Plaintiff's claim without adequate investigation and contrary to State and Federal law.

Upon information and belief, the County used a woman with no prior training or experience in sexual harassment investigations to perform the investigation of Plaintiffs complaint of sexual harassment.

A few months later, Plaintiff, through counsel, asked the Office of the County Attorney if she could have the results of its investigation(s) in Plaintiff's report of sexual harassment. The request was made pursuant to Haw. Rev. Stat. Ch. 92F et seq. (The Hawaii Public Records Act), but the Office of the County Attorney failed and/or refused to provide the results of the investigation to Plaintiff's attorney.

In August 2007, the County contacted Plaintiff and informed her that an interview was forthcoming, but it wasn't until September 14, 2007 when Ann Wooten, the chosen investigator, interviewed Plaintiff.

On information and belief, the County never asked Shimatsu if the Plaintiffs allegations against him were true.

The investigation was only performed after Plaintiff's disability pay had expired. The County left Plaintiff, a single mother of two, in a precarious financial position because of the delay in investigating her complaint and the lack of corrective action taken.

Plaintiff remains unable to resume working in direct contact with the same supervisor. Her accumulated losses approximate $50,000.00 even after mitigating wages lost by securing lower-paying employment. Her new position pays significantly less than her employment with the County.

The aforesaid events have changed the course of Plaintiff's life and career.

Plaintiff has complied with the administrative procedural requirements for maintaining a civil action for discrimination on the basis of sex and for retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. Plaintiff filed the aforesaid charges with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, and the EEOC has made a determination of cause to believe that the alleged sexual harassment occurred.

On November 13, 2008 the EEOC found that "The Commission's investigation determined that there is reasonable cause to believe that Charging Party was subjected to sexual harassment because of her sex, female."

Thereafter the EEOC issued a "Right to Sue" letter and Plaintiff, and timely filed this action with 90 days of issuance of her Right to Sue letter, issued on March 3, 2009.

At all relevant times herein, the acts of the County were undertaken within the course and scope of Plaintiff's employment.

(PNN) COUNTY SECRETLY SETTLES HIRAKAWA SEX DISCRIMINATION SUIT FOR $450,000

COUNTY SECRETLY SETTLES HIRAKAWA SEX DISCRIMINATION SUIT FOR $450,000

(PNN) -- PNN has learned that the County of Kaua`i has settled the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Kristan C. Hirakawa and has paid her $450,000.

According to a reliable source who asked not to be identified, the check has been cut yet there has been no announcement and there is no record of the settlement which was apparently approved by the county council in an executive session at their July 27 meeting.

Hirakawa sued the county for a second time after winning her first suit against the Kaua`i Police Department and being reassigned to the liquor department where she was once again a victim of gender discrimination resulting in the current settlement, as PNN has exclusively reported.

Although settlements are public records according to the Office of Information Practices (OIP) the “recap memo” for the July 27 council meeting shows no settlement vote was taken in open session.

The agenda item, Executive Session (ES) 458, says it was held “for the purposes of deliberating, deciding, and authorizing a proposed settlement in the case of Kristan C. Hirakawa v. County of Kaua`i”.

According to OIP Opinion 89-10 regarding settlement agreements “(o)nce the litigation is concluded...all the settlement agreements must be publicly available.”

However OIP Opinion 03-07 regarding voting in executive meetings says that

Votes taken in executive meetings need not be disclosed to the public because the Sunshine Law allows minutes of executive meetings to be withheld so long as their publication would defeat the lawful purpose of the executive meeting, but no longer. Once disclosure of votes taken in executive meetings does not defeat the lawful purpose of holding an executive meeting, the votes should be disclosed.

A request for clarification was sent yesterday to OIP asking whether a lawsuit settlement vote must be taken in open session with the terms disclosed and, if not, how the public is supposed to know about the settlement. No answer was received by press time.

Also on the July 27 agenda was ES 256 which was held “for the purposes of deliberating, deciding, and authorizing a proposed settlement in the case of Jane Doe v. County of Kaua`i, EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) Charge No. 37-B-2009-00620 and FEPA NO. K-15516”.

There is no record of any settlement of this case although as PNN reported there are multiple EEOC complaints against the county including one by former deputy county attorney Margaret Hanson Sueoka was mistakenly revealed by the county in June of 2009.

EEOC complaints are confidential according to federal law which supersedes the state sunshine law.

Although a source close to council services has told PNN that the Sueoka case has been settled there is no record of the settlement.

According to law, the EEOC must give the go-ahead in order for an employment discrimination suit to be brought in circuit court.

Also outstanding is the case of Kathleen Ah Quin against the county transportation agency which the council apparently voted to fight with an appropriation of money for outside council on June 9.

Follow the links above for details of these lawsuits and complaints.

BIG TIME

BIG TIME: It's not often that these year's "best of " and "worst of" lists reach down deep to select local dignitaries but you might have seen this one coming.

Coming in at #39 on eBossWatch.com's 2012 list of America’s Worst Bosses is none other than defeated and disgraced Kaua`i Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho. In bestowing the "honor," they cited deputy prosecutor Shannon Weigel's $120,000 EEOC award for racial discrimination although they failed to mention the many other infamous abuses Iseri heaped upon her employees.

eBossWatch described it this way:

Hawaii’s Kauai County has agreed to pay $120,000 to settle an EEOC racial harassment lawsuit.

Shannon Weigel, who is white, claims that she was subjected to a racially hostile work environment by the prosecuting attorney, Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho.

According to the EEOC, Iseri-Carvalho made numerous derogatory comments to Weigel on an ongoing basis. Iseri-Carvalho allegedly told Weigel that she needed to assimilate more into the local Hawaiian culture and break up with her boyfriend at the time, who is also white, in favor of a local man.

Timothy Riera, director of the EEOC’s Honolulu Office, said, “The workplace is no place for derogatory remarks pertaining to race or any other protected basis, and it is important for an employer to take immediate corrective action when faced with illegal harassment. We commend the County of Kauai for expeditiously resolving this matter and agreeing to measures which will prevent and deal with both harassment and discrimination on the job.”

According to the site, eBossWatch was founded in 2007 and "is a popular career resource that helps

people evaluate potential employers and avoid hostile workplaces."

The 2012 top 50 list:

include(s) a college dean, four restaurant owners, a fire department chief, five doctors, a judge, three county prosecuting attorneys, and a state attorney general.

To date, the 2012 America’s Worst Bosses have cost their employers over $41 million in monetary damages and lawsuit settlement payments. Of this amount, the 2012 worst bosses in the public sector have cost their respective taxpayers over $21 million.

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE MONTHS

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE MONTHS: It not something we'd often admit to but occasionally watching a good political fight can be almost as stimulating as illicit sex.

The emotions behind the charges and counter charges of two combatants and the laughingly-obvious concerted half-truths and outright lies all leading up to an orgasmic first Tuesday in November, then, when it's over we clean it up and go back to our normal boring life.

Most of the time.

When the arguably all-time most entertaining of local campaigns- this year's often indecipherable machination of former Kaua`i Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri Carvalho's reelection campaign- came to an end we thought all we'd have were the sweet memories.

Even when an executive session item on last week's council agenda referred to a settlement of one of those on the long list of harassment complaints against Iseri- this time the one by now-rehired deputy prosecutor Rebecca Vogt- we didn't expect a "for old time's sake" post-coital, spittle-filled rant from the Queen of Xanadu (ask around).

Yet there she was on our screen (7 hours 25 minutes in), doing her best Captain Queeg impression... all that was missing were the steel balls and the claim of "that's where I had them.. with the strawberries."

Yes it's all a conspiracy folks- County Attorney Al Castillo, her opponent and now Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar, Hizzonnah Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr, the council, Vogt herself and a cast of dozens- they wanted her out and would do anything to achieve their goal of stopping Iseri from protecting Kaua`i... presumably from the likes of them.

For those who missed some of the details of the federal suit revealed when veteran Kaua`i reporter Joan Conrow described them in her KauaiEclectic blog, last September 20, she wrote:

The complaint, filed Tuesday in Kauai Circuit Court on behalf of deputy Rebecca Vogt, raises concerns about equal pay, gender discrimination, free speech rights and county ethics violations. It names both the county and Iseri-Carvalho, who was sued by Councilman Tim Bynum yesterday.

Vogt alleges she was pressured to support Iseri-Carvalho, who rewarded employees she considered loyal. When Vogt did not actively campaign, she claims she was passed over for a raise, while five less-experienced male deputies who supported the prosecutor got hefty pay hikes ...

She says Iseri-Carvalho handed out the pay raises even though in March — following “sparse attendance at her major fundraiser” — she had told staff that she would be cutting salaries due to “budget cuts.”

When Vogt complained about the arbitrary nature of the raises, and their apparent unethical link to campaign support, she says Iseri-Carvalho retaliated against her, giving her more work, denying her comp time and stripping her of the authority to independently approve plea offers.

Vogt maintains Iseri-Carvalho violated the county Code of Ethics, which prohibits county employees from using their positions to secure unwarranted privileges, advantages and treatment for themselves or others. She also says her right to free speech was violated when the prosecutor punished her for speaking up.

The complaint alleges Iseri-Carvalho's actions were “willful, wanton, outrageous and oppressive,” and that Vogt suffered job insecurity, income loss, humiliation, and emotional and physical anguish as a result. The extent of the retaliation forced her to take a medical leave of absence, she alleges.

Vogt, who began working for the Office of Prosecuting Attorney in August 2010, says she had always received favorable work reviews.

Iseri claims that, as part of this vast conspiracy, the mastermind, mousey little CA Castillo- with whom Iseri had been feuding ever since she stopped answering the council's budget-time questions regarding her home-made sentencing diversion program- went off and arbitrarily decided all on his own to settle Vogt's suit without any other input, especially from Iseri herself.

So is it true? Could it possibly be true? Well, not exactly.

Because in cases of employment discrimination and wrongful terminations, you are not allowed to just go to circuit court and sue.

You are first required to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC then does its own investigation of the complaint, including requesting that the alleged offender's employer respond to the complaint... something, by the way, the county has a long history of not doing. Then, if, and only if, the EEOC finds that there is reason to believe an offense occurred, it gives permission to the complainant to sue in circuit court.

That means that it would have been impossible for Castillo to act totally on his own to settle the suit just to make Iseri look bad and insure Kollar's election because the fact that a suit was filed in 5th Circuit Court meant that the EEOC- which refuses to discuss cases, which are all "confidential" by law- had already found that there was reason to believe the complaint was valid.

This of course is just one factor. In this week's tirade before the council (which she submitted in writing to the council so it is public record now) Iseri kept repeating that no one asked her about "the settlement." But it was hard not to notice that she kept referring to "the settlement" rather than the facts in the case which presumably she has had the opportunity to refute- something she hasn't done publicly.

But admittedly we don't know, which of course is the point here.

What we do know is that Iseri was- and still is as far as we know- not talking to anyone about anything because early in 2012 she "lawyered up" and got the county to hire her an attorney rather than answer questions from the council when it asked her for the same kind of "due diligence" budgetary information it seeks every year from all department heads.

So is it over? Was Wednesday's testimony simply one last hopped-up harangue from our dear "long time comin', long time gone," Miss Loodacris Lilly?.. a final "say it don't spray it" moment from one of the most entertainingly delusional public figures Kaua`i has ever seen- and most likely will ever see again?

Guess we should just light up a cigarette knowing we'll always have POHAKU.

DON’T YOU WORRY YOUR PRETTY LITTLE HEAD ABOUT IT

DON’T YOU WORRY YOUR PRETTY LITTLE HEAD ABOUT IT: The cesspool of sexual harassment in Kaua`i county government is nothing new to our readers.

But worse than the harassment itself and the retaliation, has been the utter lack of attention to the pervasive problem and indeed active attempts to make the growing list of complainants just go away.

Today the county council will, most likely, compound the problem by going into executive session to hear about the cases and then give the okay to the county attorney’s office to fight two of the more prominent lawsuits, those of “Kaua`i Bus” driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin and former Kaua`i Police Department dispatcher and then Liquor Department employee Kristan C. Hirakawa who now is known as Kristan C Suniga.

Also outstanding is the case of Margaret Hanson Sueoka who has filed a case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as we exclusively detailed in June of 2009.

Ah Quin’s case, which we reported in December of 2008 remains the same but Suniga case- which we exhaustively detailed in December of 2009- originally filed in federal district court, has now moved to state circuit court.

And while the original case alleged one of the more nauseating tales of harassment and retaliation – in two different jobs no less- and told of a distinct lack of interest on the part of the county, the new case is, if possible, even more unsettling with details of harassment by the county attorney’s office front and center.

Suniga’s story of harassment began in KPD where she won a different suit and as a result she was moved to the Liquor Department where it didn’t just continue but escalated under her boss Dexter Shimatsu.

Yet that was only the beginning.

According to the suit:

Instead of investigating and remedying Plaintiffs sexual harassment claim, the County instead protected the accused supervisor, Shimatsu, by offering no remedial action to Plaintiff and. failing to conduct even a basic investigation for several months. The County failed to conduct an unbiased investigation to this day.

That’s where the much maligned county attorney’s office came into the picture and, the suit alleges, it compounded the already outrageous treatment of Suniga.

The suit goes on to say:

In many cases, County policy directs employees to report allegations of sexual harassment to the Office of the County Attorney, which is charged with allegedly overseeing an unbiased investigation of the matter. Thus, the Office of the County Attorney is responsible both for the Human Resource function of ensuring independent investigations of complaints of sexual harassment for the protection of county employees, while at the same time the Office of the County Attorney must defend the County against claims of improper sexual harassment in the workplace. In Plaintiff's case, the Office of the County Attorney did not make good on the County's promise of a fair investigation and appropriate corrective action, but instead the Office of the County Attorney, in 2007, used its position of trust and responsibility to investigate Plaintiffs complaint of sexual harassment in an adversarial manner, designed to minimize liability to the County by casting doubt on Plaintiff's character and allegations. 28. In August of 2007, the County contacted Plaintiff and informed her that the County Would conduct a sex) harassment/hostile work place investigation based on Plaintiff's allegations. The County offered Plaintiff the choice of one of three investigators, without disclosing their relative training and experience investigating sexual harassment claims.

Given no information as to each proposed investigator's background, Plaintiff chose Ann Wooton ("Wooton") based on the fact that Wooton was the only female investigator offered by the County.

Wooton is a county-employed grant writer/social worker, with no prior training or experience in sexual harassment investigations. The Office of the County Attorney oversaw an investigation into Plaintiff's complaints that was so biased that the investigator did not even ask Shimatsu the most basic questions such as if he had sent the sexually harassing emails and memoranda Based on this sham of an investigation, Wooton then concluded the investigation by finding, among other things, that Plaintiff's allegations could not be substantiated due to a lack of evidence.

The suit alleges that it took two months for Wooton to even interview Suniga and that even though she was entitled to the results of the investigation under the state’s open records law, “the Office of the County Attorney remarkably responded that the investigation would not be produced because, inter alia, it was prepared in anticipation of litigation”.

As if that wasn’t enough the next episode described in the suit was truly frightening

In the fall of 2008, an unknown individual or individuals hacked into Plaintiffs financial accounts, social networking accounts and various retail merchant accounts. The hacker made unauthorized purchases on Plaintiff's credit cards, and created and posted documents and web-pages online that falsely suggested that Plaintiff was not unable to work for Defendant, but that she was instead making significant money by moonlighting or working for the private sector while she claimed to be suffering from a hostile workplace at the Liquor Department. The hacker(s) took various actions with regard to Plaintiff's accounts, which appear to be designed so as to discredit Plaintiffs claims against the County.

Plaintiff reported the series of unauthorized hacks into her accounts and expenditures on her credit cards to the Kauai Police Department However, on information and belief, the Kauai Police Department (the defendant in Plaintiff's former case) took a report, but otherwise has done nothing to investigate or solve Plaintiff's reports of identity theft. Thereafter, the County sought to use the fabricated documents manufactured by the hacker(s) against Plaintiff.

The suit’s narrative sums up Suniga’s situation by saying:

The County, through the actions of supervisor Shimatsu, the Office of the County Attorney in managing the response to Plaintiffs complaints, and the Kauai Police Department in refusing to respond to her police report, has left Plaintiff, a single mother of two, in a precarious financial position. Plaintiff's mental and physical health has suffered due to the County's action and inactions.

Plaintiff remains unable to resume working in direct contact with Shimatsu.

The aforesaid events have changed the course of Plaintiff's life and career.

Plaintiff has complied with the administrative procedural requirements for maintaining a civil action for discrimination on the basis of sex for retaliation under Haw. Rev. Stat. § 378 et. seq. Plaintiff dual filed the aforesaid charges with the United States EEOC and the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission ("HCRC"). The EEOC made a determination of cause to believe that the alleged sexual harassment occurred. On March 17, 2010 the HCRC issued Plaintiff the notice of right to sue.

On November 13, 2008, the EEOC found that "The Commission's investigation determined that there is reasonable cause to believe that Charging Party was subjected to sexual harassment because of her sex, female."

Plaintiff timely filed this action within 90 days of issuance of her right to sue letter from the HCRC issued on March 17, 2010.

The County retaliated against Plaintiff by: 1) having the Office of the County Attorney direct an incomplete and inadequate investigation into Plaintiff's complaint of sexual harassment; 2) the Kauai Police Department's failure to investigate Plaintiff's complaint that someone hacked into Plaintiffs financial accounts and misappropriated her image and personal accounts; and 3) failing to timely promote Plaintiff from Trainee to Investigator I despite Plaintiff receiving "More Than Satisfactory" ratings from Shimatsu.

Tomorrow, in granting the county attorney’s request for more money to fight rather than settle the two suits, the council will no doubt be adding another misdeed to the list.

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We’re taking tomorrow off and possibly taking a long weekend although we may get to post something Friday. If not we’ll be back Monday.

THE TITANIC DECK CHAIRS NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD

THE TITANIC DECK CHAIRS NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD: The swirling cesspool of sexual harassment that is the government of County of Kaua`i has made filing lawsuits into a cottage industry. The state Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) probably has it's own little Kaua`i County corner office that's been kept busy for years.

But one little turd has resurfaced once again after many though it had permanently sunk to the bottom years ago.

There it is on this week's council agenda- a request for $15,000 to fight the case of Kathleen M. Ah Quin vs. County of Kaua’i, Department of Transportation, et al., (Civil No. CVO8-00507 JMS BMK, U.S. District Court).

What seemed at the time to be just another sexual harassment suit has turned into a case of protecting one of the most infamous of the "protected" cronies in Kaua`i government- former Transportation Agency head and current human resources honcho, Janine Rapozo.

For those who missed our still-for-some-reason exclusive December 2008 report on the details of Ah Quin's suit, Rapozo was accused of maintaining a pervasive hostile atmosphere in the agency toward female bus drivers.

In the interim, of course Rapozo was- and still is as far as the county auditor's report is concerned- at the center of the alleged gas theft scandal, having been arrested late last October by now disgraced and departed Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, who herself has cost the county a pretty penny in settlements of EEOC charges of racial and sexual harassment along with other hostile workplace violations.

Although the real culprit in the gas theft case seems to have been Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. according to the auditors report, Rapozo was selected for indictment but was released from the pokey after it became apparent the number of grand jury votes to indict her were somehow miscounted.

How could that have happened?

In going back over our 2008 piece on Ah Quin's suit against Rapozo, what caught out eye before the details were presented was what happened when the council was asked for $50,000 that November to fight the suit. At the time, Iseri had just completed a couple of terms on the council and was Prosecutor-elect, having won the election after running unopposed.

On December 8 2008 we wrote:

Bus driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin is suing the Kaua`i Department of Transpiration- specifically Executive on Transportation Janine Rapozo- for what appears to be a pervasive hostile atmosphere in the agency toward women.

Just as appalling as the actual discrimination is the fact the lawsuit was filed only because a year went by after Ah Quin’s filing of Hawai`i Civil Rights Commission (HCRC) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints without any attempt by the county to respond or even attempt to investigate the charges.

At a special council meeting called at the end of November the County Attorney at the time Matthew Pyun asked the council for $50,000 to hire an outside attorney to respond to the suit.

And outgoing councilpersons Shaylene Iseri Carvalho and Mel Rapozo (no relation) were livid.

“You’ve got to read this” shrieked Iseri waving a copy of the suit over her head. “The County Attorney’s office has not engaged in any investigation (for a year) and now wants to hire an investigator” when there’s only 20 days to respond.

She told the council that she would not use taxpayer money without a commitment to investigate complaints when they are filed, saying she was “disgusted” and how the situation was “typical of the wasteful spending” of the administration and specifically the county attorney’s office.

She also questioned why it would cost $50,000 to respond since the first 20 day response is really a pro-forma type of thing that should rightfully be done “in-house” before hiring an outside attorney if it becomes necessary to defend the suit.

Councilmember Rapozo- who with Iseri voted against the approval of the funds even after the request was amended to $20,000- described how no one with the county ever spoke to any of the employees names in the suit or investigated any of the incidents.

Apparently Iseri- predictably?- wasn’t particularly concerned about the content of the suit itself. But silly us, we thought the public ought to know what was being alleged against Janine Rapozo- who by the way is the wife of Mayor Carvalho's current Parks and Recreation Department Director Lenny Rapozo. L. Rapozo stepped into his job with no experience at all after his stint as Carvalho's campaign manager.

The actual content of the suit, which the county is apparently still contesting despite rumors it had been dismissed, was pretty disgusting when we presented them in 2008. But the fact that Janine Rapozo was not only not fired or even reprimanded but rather promoted to her current Personnel Department post- or actually "Human Resources" Department after the name was changed recently without any apparent change in the way the department is run- in unfathomably repugnant... except of course in the Minotaur’s labyrinth of Kaua`i County government where it's just standard operating procedure.

Add to that what the auditor alleges was her part in the gas "theft" and it's a case study of corruption in Kaua`i County government.

Back to our 2008 piece for the full story. As Ah Quin tells it:

The complaint itself depicts a transportation agency where females were routinely passed over for full time jobs because, as Ah Quin was told by another named female employee, Janine Rapozo “doesn’t like females” after Rapozo had ordered the employee to “keep her door closed” when she was working as a dispatcher because male drivers would stop by to talk to her.

That employee wasn’t the only one to warn Ah Quin. According to the suit another named female bus driver also told her to watch out for Rapozo because “likes her males, she does not like females”.

There are only three female employees in the agency and 17 males according to the suit.

Despite 11 years of experience and her more than adequate licensing it seems Ah Quin couldn’t get promoted to a full time position while men were given the jobs when they opened up.

The suit describes many incidents where despite the fact that her qualification surpassed theirs, Rapozo hired or promoted men to full time positions passing up Ah Quin and other women.

It also tells how on occasion drivers were brought in from outside the department and even county government itself to fill the full time positions in violation of standard county personnel department policy.

Ah Quin goes on to list eight males who were promoted over her as well as other incidents and examples of Rapozo’s gender bias.

When Ah Quin began to question why, despite a gleaming job performance evaluation she was passed up for promotion Rapozo started to engage in a program of retaliation, according to the suit by cutting Ah Quin’s hours.

Incidents described include one where passenger complaints was treated differently when filed against male drivers and another of a reprimand of Ah Quin for wearing her uniform shirt from another part time driving job while male employees similarly attired went unchallenged.

Ah Quin says she finally asked Rapozo “why don’t you like me. You never did like me. You keep ignoring me. You ignore me in the office. I keep asking myself what did I do to you? I know you don’t like me”.

Rapozo allegedly replied “because I have had problems with every female driver that has been hired.”

The suit also lists incidents where other named female drivers were harassed in a similar manner as well as misrepresentations by Rapozo as the fact that there was "no money in the budget” for expanding hours – a statement followed immediately by ads in the newspaper soliciting new drivers.

In another, Rapozo scolded Ah Quin for not picking up a person who was sitting in a wheelchair in front of the gift shop at Wilcox hospital which was not a designated bus stop, telling her she should have stopped the bus, gotten out and asked the person if they wanted to board the bus.

Ah Quin responded that there are persons in wheel chairs all over the place all the time around the hospital and that she was never told to stop, get out and ask each one if they needed the bus.

Rapozo has been a long-time, loyal, appointed crony in the past two administrations and has been shifted around various jobs before landing in the transportation agency overseeing the Kaua`i Bus.

To no one’s surprise she was retained in her position by Mayor Bernard Carvalho when he took office this month without any investigation of the complaints or lawsuit.

The council has scheduled an executive session Thursday to discuss the matter and they are required by law to reveal whether they okayed the expenditure in open session.

DON’T WORRY YOUR PRETTY LITTLE HEAD

DON’T WORRY YOUR PRETTY LITTLE HEAD: Will wonders never cease?

The local newspaper’s police beat reporter Paul Curtis actually dared to name Dexter Shimatsu as the harasser of Kristan (Hirakawa) Suniga- a case we detailed last December and have written about many times this year- in today’s paper.

But- and didn’t you know there’d be a but?- instead of finally detailing all the horrors of the case, Curtis spent the bulk of the article concentrating on a minor aspect - the fact that one of the incidents detailed in Hirakawa’s suit happened via email- and trying to therefore crusade for getting the county to stick Shimatsu with the $450,000 settlement (which we first reported earlier this month) due to some on-line county policy Shimatsu signed.

But of course Curtis and his newspaper of record still haven’t reported on harassment suit by “Kaua`i Bus” driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin to go with the short shrift given the Hirakawa suit.

Gee let’s take a guess at why. Could it be because the alleged harasser in that case- which apparently remains unsettled- happens to be Executive on Transportation Janine Rapozo, wife of Lenny Rapozo, head of Department of Parks and Recreation and former campaign manager for Mayor Bernard Carvalho, and whom, we’ve heard over and over from county employees, “runs” the county politically?

That may also explain why the case remains unsettled. It also might explain what we reported in December of 2008.

Just as appalling as the actual discrimination is the fact (Ah Quin’s) lawsuit was filed only because a year went by after Ah Quin’s filing of Hawai`i Civil Rights Commission (HCRC) and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints without any attempt by the county to respond or even attempt to investigate the charges.

At a special council meeting called at the end of November the County Attorney at the time Matthew Pyun asked the council for $50,000 to hire an outside attorney to respond to the suit.

And outgoing councilpersons Shaylene Iseri Carvalho and Mel Rapozo (no relation) were livid.

“You’ve got to read this” shrieked Iseri waving a copy of the suit over her head. “The County Attorney’s office has not engaged in any investigation (for a year) and now wants to hire an investigator” when there’s only 20 days to respond.

She told the council that she would not use taxpayer money without a commitment to investigate complaints when they are filed, saying she was “disgusted” and how the situation was “typical of the wasteful spending” of the administration and specifically the county attorney’s office.

She also questioned why it would cost $50,000 to respond since the first 20 day response is really a pro-forma type of thing that should rightfully be done “in-house” before hiring an outside attorney if it becomes necessary to defend the suit.

Councilmember Rapozo- who with Iseri voted against the approval of the funds even after the request was amended to $20,000- described how no one with the county ever spoke to any of the employees names in the suit or investigated any of the incidents.

You’ve got to read all the disgusting details of Ah Quin’s harassment to get the flavor of J. Rapozo’s county-protected treatment of women on the job on which she remains.

But getting back to the Hirakawa suit. For those who have forgotten or never read the facts surrounding the suit, the local paper fails to mention a previous settlement received by Hirakawa when she was working for Cutis’ beloved, can-do-no-wrong Kaua`i Police Department.

As Hirakawa’s suit stated

(p)reviously, in approximately 2001, Plaintiff was employed as a dispatcher for the Kauai Police Department when she was sexually harassed by a co-worker. Plaintiff filed a Charge of Discrimination with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). As a result of the previous case, Plaintiff suffered serious physiological injury due to the sexual harassment, improper response to her legitimate complaint and loss of privacy that was inflicted on her while working in the Kauai Police Department. The matter settled without admitting fault.

Defendant County of Kauai agreed to identify and assist Plaintiff with obtaining another County job as a result of settlement negotiations in the previous case. Ultimately, Plaintiff obtained employment at the Kauai County Liquor Commission.

We’ll end by re-running the full story- the predicate facts as they call them- of Shimatsu’s harassment of Hirakawa according to her suit.

The County of Kauai, obviously aware of Plaintiffs previous case and emotional condition, placed her in a workplace with a known sexual harasser as a co-worker and a supervisor with no prior training in sexual harassment law. On information and belief, the County of Kauai has consistently failed to meet its legal obligations to identify and prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

Upon relocation to the Kauai County Liquor Commission, Plaintiff was immediately subject to offensive conduct on the basis of her sex. Her supervisor, Dexter Shimatsu, made sarcastic comments about sexual harassment to Plaintiff, often alluding to her history of having made a sexual harassment complaint. Shimatsu complained to Plaintiff that he had to order all of the posters [of scantily clad women] removed from the workplace because the "County made me hire you."'

During the course of her employment Plaintiff was often the subject of ridicule, sexual innuendo, sexual emails and insults from her supervisor. Shimatsu called her holistic medical practitioner a "witch doctor", and wrote an email to her saying: Use your common sense...I think you'll stay healthy...Oh yeah, and sleep with your clothes on. You could catch a cold, the flu and get pregnant without your clothes on...all bad ailments.

Shimatsu's demeaning conduct continued. After Plaintiff entered her baby into a contest (which she did not win), Shimatsu left a newspaper clipping of the winning baby in her mail bin where all her co-workers could see it. Above the picture of the winning mother and baby Shimatsu wrote a note saying: I really think the baby won because the mother was cute. With that in mind, you really need to do something about yourself...so your baby can win. Your baby did her part by being cute... it's now up to you.

In May 2007, Shimatsu called Plaintiff into his office to tell her he heard from someone that her boyfriend was getting deployed to the Middle East. He stated, "You should buy your boyfriend a lot of condoms because there are a lot of prostitutes where he'll be stationed." He followed up in an email saying he doesn't think there are really prostitutes there.

At work the sexual harassment was incessant. Shimatsu continued degrading Plaintiff calling her such names as "tonta," meaning slow, dumb or stupid, and "shibai." Shimatsu made insolent comments about Plaintiff when she made a mistake but did not treat her co-workers rudely.

When she requested vacation time to care for her four month-old baby, Shimatsu responded in a memo stating: Your request for Vac/ Ct...was approved after much discussion...Lady, you give me a headache... always asking for special treatment as a female. I kind of feel its sexual harassment and should look into it. I think that's the only way I'm going to get rid of this nasty headache...what you think?

Plaintiff noted that other employees were not subject to insolent comments when asking for time off.

On another occasion, Shimatsu emailed to Plaintiff a photo of an attractive female dressed only in a tiny, diamond studded bikini. Shimatsu typed "You Wish" on the email before sending the email to Plaintiff from his work computer.

Plaintiff was unable to be in such a virulent environment where working meant being in constant dialogue with the perpetrator. She took leave on a disability claim. She sought medical help and counseling because of the harassment and discrimination at the Kauai County Liquor Commission. Under direction of Plaintiffs medical providers, she was not allowed to resume working while the harasser remained there or until the situation had been corrected.

In June of 2007, Plaintiff reported the sexual harassment to the County and sought disability leave from work.

The County did not pay on Plaintiffs disabilities claim and did not separate her from Shimatsu.

The County has failed to properly respond to or address the alleged sexual harassment complaint raised by Plaintiff.

The County broke its own County policy on sexual harassment as promised to Plaintiff and other County employees in a number of respects. First, the County promises that complaints of sexual harassment will be investigated within two weeks time. No timely investigation was done in Plaintiff's case. Secondly, County policy promises that the findings and results of an investigation into a complaint of sexual harassment will be made available to the complainant. The results of any investigation into sexual harassment have still not been made available to Plaintiff. And thirdly, County policy promises that corrective action will be taken when a County employee suffers from sexual harassment. On information and belief, no such corrective action has been taken.

Upon information and belief, the County's policy on sexual harassment in the workplace was intended to comply with applicable law.

Furthermore, the County ignored State and Federal law regarding the matter being pursued. The County instead protected the accused, her supervisor Shimatsu, offering no remedial action to Plaintiff and failing to conduct even a basic investigation for several months.

In many cases, County policy directs employees to report allegations of sexual harassment to the Office of the County Attorney to ensure, among other things, that the County acts in compliance with State and Federal law. However, in this case, the Office of the County Attorney chose to arbitrarily dispute Plaintiff's claim without adequate investigation and contrary to State and Federal law.

Upon information and belief, the County used a woman with no prior training or experience in sexual harassment investigations to perform the investigation of Plaintiffs complaint of sexual harassment.

A few months later, Plaintiff, through counsel, asked the Office of the County Attorney if she could have the results of its investigation(s) in Plaintiff's report of sexual harassment. The request was made pursuant to Haw. Rev. Stat. Ch. 92F et seq. (The Hawaii Public Records Act), but the Office of the County Attorney failed and/or refused to provide the results of the investigation to Plaintiff's attorney.

In August 2007, the County contacted Plaintiff and informed her that an interview was forthcoming, but it wasn't until September 14, 2007 when Ann Wooten, the chosen investigator, interviewed Plaintiff.

On information and belief, the County never asked Shimatsu if the Plaintiffs allegations against him were true.

The investigation was only performed after Plaintiff's disability pay had expired. The County left Plaintiff, a single mother of two, in a precarious financial position because of the delay in investigating her complaint and the lack of corrective action taken.

Plaintiff remains unable to resume working in direct contact with the same supervisor. Her accumulated losses approximate $50,000.00 even after mitigating wages lost by securing lower-paying employment. Her new position pays significantly less than her employment with the County.

The aforesaid events have changed the course of Plaintiff's life and career.

Plaintiff has complied with the administrative procedural requirements for maintaining a civil action for discrimination on the basis of sex and for retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. Plaintiff filed the aforesaid charges with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions, and the EEOC has made a determination of cause to believe that the alleged sexual harassment occurred.

On November 13, 2008 the EEOC found that "The Commission's investigation determined that there is reasonable cause to believe that Charging Party was subjected to sexual harassment because of her sex, female."

Thereafter the EEOC issued a "Right to Sue" letter and Plaintiff, and timely filed this action with 90 days of issuance of her Right to Sue letter, issued on March 3, 2009.

At all relevant times herein, the acts of the County were undertaken within the course and scope of Plaintiff's employment.

Wow- you made it this far without vomiting on your keyboard.

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We’ll be taking a long weekend. See ya Monday.

ON AND ON, ON AND ON, ON AND ON

ON AND ON, ON AND ON, ON AND ON: On average we field at least half a dozen or more calls and emails a week from readers that are either flummoxed or flabbergasted at the total lack of ability and professionalism at the local newspaper these days-perhaps the worst it’s ever been and that’s says volumes in and of itself.

The latest sh*tstorm is over an October 3rd article finally covering the Kristan C. Hirakawa-Suniga sexual harassment lawsuit against the county, a matter we started covering in December of 2009- with more revelations in June, culminating in a August report on the $450,000 settlement.

You might think that the calls and letters we got on this matter were about the many other outstanding EEOC complaints and sexual harassment suits that went unnamed in the article which instead had an interview with our half-assed County Attorney Al Castillo who claimed the age of harassment of women is in the past despite current outstanding suits that were exacerbated and even initiated by the actions and inaction of his office after he was appointed.

One of those EEOC complaints was filed by former Deputy County Attorney Margaret Hanson over her firing by Castillo himself when he came into office although the type of discrimination has not been revealed... and neither has any settlement.

There’s also the outstanding case of “Kaua`i Bus” driver Kathleen M. Ah Quin which may or may not have been settled during a recent executive session as we reported in June.

In all of these cases, rather than settling when he came into office Castillo requested money from the county council to fight these suits.

So much for his attempt to turn around the way the county treats sexual harassment, as the article contends.

But no they weren’t about that. All of the callers and emailers wanted to talk about the impression given in the article that Hirakawa’s harasser was her new husband Sonny Suniga whom she recently married and with whom she recently had a child.

Nothing of course could be farther from the truth. The name of her harasser- which was conveniently (and typically) left out of the article is Dexter Shimatsu as we also reported in the original article on Hirakawa-Suniga.

But after describing the suit and settlement- all on the basis of an interview with Suniga’s attorney Daniel Hempey and obviously without reading the suit or it’s second filing, the two- count ‘em, two- writers of the story (yes it took two people to write this mess) Paul Curtis and Leo Azambuja first described some of the story.

Hirakawa was paid $100,000 in county funds in 2003 in a worker’s-compensation settlement while she was a dispatcher, a civilian position within the Kaua`i Police Department.

She filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in January 2002 that accused former KPD Lt. Alvin Seto of coercing her into filing a harassment complaint against fellow dispatcher Nelson Gabriel.

Gabriel is now a uniformed KPD officer.

Gabriel was charged with six counts of harassment, one count of harassment by stalking, in 2001 after he was reassigned to dispatch after being accused of sexually assaulting his stepdaughter. He was found not guilty of the sex-assault charges.

Part of the settlement in the dispatch case mandated county officials to identify other county jobs Hirakawa might be qualified to fill, and she was hired at the Department of Liquor Control, said Hempey.

But then, out of the blue and appropriate of nothing but seemingly explanatory of something, they wrote:

Hirakawa in November 2009 was granted a temporary restraining order against Sonny Suniga, for a period of six months wherein Suniga also agreed to attend a domestic-violence workshop, state court records show.

Less than a month later, Hirakawa asked for the TRO to be dissolved, and Fifth Circuit Family Court Judge Calvin Murashige granted that request.

On Sept. 8, Mr. and Mrs. Sonny Suniga greeted their first child, a girl, Tianny Brandi Namiko Suniga, weighing 7 pounds, 1.7 ounces, at Kaua`i Veterans Memorial Hospital in Waimea.

Of course people thought Suniga was the harasser- why else would they mention it?

Comments on the article in the on-line version certainly thought so.

Here’s some examples:

truthislaw said on: October 3, 2010, 7:41 am

Am reading this right?

Hirakawa makes claims against Suniga for harassment, sues the county, wins the suit, then marries her harasser and has a baby?


John_Brown said on: October 3, 2010, 10:39 am

Woah... The first settlement appeared to be totally legit but the second one where she ended up marrying the guy and having his kid? That's harassment? That appears to be COURTSHIP. It appears she realized there was money to be made in this harassment thing... And why settle for $100K? Get a better lawyer and go for the big money! And at some point they were unwanted advances and that all changed once the litigation began? Something seems very fishy about this entire situation and what's sad is that the county still paid. Lastly, 'waiting' at home for the settlements must have been tough duty. I guess with all that free time... BABY from the 'abuser'. LOL

payback said on: October 3, 2010, 3:39 pm
As a taxpayer I would not object to spending the money to prosecute thus Bonnie and Clyde to deter others from this scheme. When the “advances” were no longer “unwanted” (assuming they ever were) a stop should be put on her check.

As a rule in journalism and libel law if you are going to bring up a fact about the subject of an article- especially someone who is not a public figure- it’s supposed to be “germane” to the article and. of course, the context that makes it germane should be made apparent.

In addition to the obvious journalistic reason of not showing bias or even malice, the “rule” is made for exactly this circumstance- so that people do not relate the unrelated fact to what is being reported and get the wrong impression.

Doing this kind of thing can lead to a libel suit. Hirakawa, despite the lawsuit, is not a public figure so there is no “absence of malice” standard, only a preponderance of the evidence is needed to show she was harmed by the publication of false material even if it was unintentional.

So far, despite the comments and outrage in the community cause by their false and unethical reporting, there has been no correction forthcoming from the newspaper.

It’s about time someone sued this rag. Maybe then they would wake up to all the angst and wild false rumors that they create across the island and about which we field these calls and letter.

If we were the Suniga’s we’d be calling Hempey right about now.

COURTING DISASTER

COURTING DISASTER: Another day another charge of sexual harassment in government offices on Kaua`i this time at the state judiciary as reported in today’s local newspaper.

While the county has racked up at least three current sexual harassment suits- those of Kristan C. Hirakawa, Kathleen M. Ah Quin and Margaret (Hanson) Sueoka- as well as at least two thus far confidential Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cases, every time we’ve reported on them we’ve heard from judiciary employees that the county’s penchant for hiring and protecting harassers is nothing compared to that of the state court system on Kaua`i.

So the suit against former Deputy Chief Court Administrator Ernest Barreira, comes as no surprise. The fact that he’s a “former” deputy and was, according to the suit, fired for his actions against Leanne Rosa speaks volumes as to the veracity of her claims as does the presence of a lawsuit which means that she has been granted “a right to sue” by the EEOC and the Hawai`i Civil Rights Commission (HCRC).

But, we thought, at least it’s not the county this time.

Until, that is, we read the penultimate paragraph in the newspaper story:

Barreira said in a brief telephone interview Monday that he is soon to begin a new job with the County of Kaua`i Department of Finance, as a procurement officer.

Are you freakin’ kidding? How many ways is that wrong?

First of all is the obvious liability given the guys history as a serial harasser as the suit alleges, which is exacerbated by the repeated failure of the county to do anything about it’s own complaints as we reported last December. The council has already appropriated untold dollars to fight the current suits and complaints and will probably be on the hook for huge settlements in some if not all of them.

But the question of how this guy got a civil service job in the finance department with a record of being fired and sued for harassment just further confirms the corrupt hiring practices of Malcolm “Mel” Fernandez’s Personnel Services Division as we’ve detailed here, here and here.

Looks like we’ll probably be paying for this too. Aren’t ya glad to be a Kaua`i taxpayer?