Thursday, January 17, 2008
Ex-sheriff loses harassment case
Lespia King said then-Sheriff George McMillan tormented her with his advances. For that, a jury awarded $325,000 in damages.
Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times
Roanoke’s former sheriff, George McMillan, said the allegations against him were politically motivated. He lost re-election in 2005.
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A synopsis of the case against the former Roanoke sheriff
- The complaint: In 2005, former Deputy Lespia King filed a suit claiming then-Roanoke Sheriff George McMillan inappropriately touched and talked to her. The suit includes an assault and battery claim against McMillan and a sexual harassment claim against the sheriff’s office.
- The testimony: King and nine other current and former employees of the sheriff’s office and a jail contractor testified that McMillan made suggestive comments to them and touched them inappropriately, including kissing them and hugging them while touching their buttocks or breasts. McMillan, in turn, testified that the 10 women were making up their claims, and that he never acted inappropriately toward them.
- The verdict: The jury decided in favor of King in both her claim against the sheriff’s office and her claim against McMillan. The jury awarded her $50,000 in compensatory damages from the sheriff’s office, and $175,000 compensatory damages from McMillan, plus $100,000 in punitive damages from him.
Trial coverage
George McMillan insisted to the end that the lawsuit filed a few months before he lost the 2005 sheriff's election was about politics.
But that didn't seem to register amid 10 women's stories of groping, inappropriate comments and sexual advances, all delivered during a three-day federal trial sparked by a former deputy's sexual harassment claims.
On Wednesday, a jury awarded $325,000 to Lespia King, who said her four years as a city deputy were spent in fear of McMillan's forceful hugs and requests that she leave her boyfriend, another deputy, for a relationship with the sheriff.
"He controlled my job, he controlled my boyfriend's job. ... He held my career hostage. ... I felt he was asking me for sexual favors," King testified Tuesday.
On two occasions, she said, McMillan asked her to sit on his lap and kiss him. At a jail association dinner, he held her close, saying he wanted to make her boyfriend jealous, and felt her buttocks as he often did during hugs, King said.
King testified she was reduced to hiding under a desk or locking herself in a bathroom to avoid the sheriff. She said she often kept prisoners around her so she would not be alone with McMillan.
Attorney Elizabeth Dillon, who represented McMillan, argued that because King never told McMillan to stop, she consented to his actions.
"There was nothing stopping her from moving away from his hand," Dillon said of the incident at the jail association dinner.
Throughout the long case, King's attorneys battled to bring in the stories of other women who said McMillan treated them badly. This week nine women, besides King, gave accounts that ranged from offensive comments to inappropriate touching and kisses to requests for sex.
McMillan was on the witness stand three times, saying he had done nothing wrong and that the women were making it up.
But he had to explain that when he told prospective employees he did not tolerate sexual harassment, he always followed with a statement that he was a "touchy-feely" person.
"When I talk to people, I touch them," he said at one point.
And he said that while a supervisor tapping his thigh as if to suggest that a subordinate sit in his lap would be wrong in the office, it might be OK at a department Christmas party.
"There are times when you're joking with folks," he said.
Asked about e-mails he sent to a deputy telling her he loved her and regretted he had to break off contact and wished he could better hide his feelings, McMillan's explanation was that he thought of the deputy "as my own daughter."
But that was followed by his former office manager's testimony that she had walked in on McMillan and the deputy kissing.
On Wednesday, on the stand again after jurors had decided against him and before they set an amount for damages, McMillan was asked to explain a comment he made about King after she had left for a job with the Roanoke County Sheriff's Office.
McMillan said he had just lost the 2005 election when he spoke to Roanoke County Sheriff Gerald Holt about King. "I told him he better watch out -- she's liable to do the same thing to him," McMillan said.
Attorney Terry Grimes, who represented King, called the statement to Holt evidence of malice that justified punitive damages.
McMillan said he had just been talking about the election.
"I believe this whole thing was basically a politically motivated thing," said McMillan, who is now general manager of Roanoke Airport Transportation. "I still do."
Throughout the trial's three days, McMillan shared the defense tables with Sheriff Octavia Johnson, a long-time deputy who ran unsuccessfully against McMillan in 2001 but returned four years later to beat him.
King's lawsuit included a civil assault and battery claim against McMillan and a sexual harassment claim against the sheriff's office. Johnson was named as the sheriff's office's representative, but was not accused of doing anything wrong herself.
It was left completely to the jury to determine how much King was owed.
King, 29, took the stand again to say she still has nightmares in which McMillan's hands touch her, and said the sheriff robbed her of self-esteem.
"I had this image of myself as a tough young woman capable of doing anything, and yet I couldn't even tell him, 'No, don't touch me,' " she said.
Dillon told jurors that McMillan's loss of the 2005 election was punishment enough.
John Gibney, attorney for the sheriff's office, noted that King had presented no medical bills and no lost wages, and that she appeared to have a good job and be in a good relationship.
He told jurors it was a time "for justice and compensation, not enrichment."
But Melvin Williams, who represented King with Grimes, asked jurors to send a message.
"Lessa King is a very brave woman. ... She couldn't say no when it happened, but she finally stood up," Williams said.
With the case concluded, Grimes said the biggest factor in the outcome probably was not the parade of women testifying against the sheriff. Nor was it the jury's makeup of seven women and one man, he said.
Instead, it may have been the former sheriff himself.
"I think George McMillan was his own worst enemy in this case," Grimes said.
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this article.
