5 Women Allege Sexual Harassment In Ocean County Corrections Dept

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Five female corrections officers have filed a federal lawsuit against the Ocean County Corrections Department, accusing the department of a pattern of sexual harassment and gender discrimination that has kept women from advancing and of punishing those who have spoken out.

The five women — Capt. Theresa Wallace, Sgts. Sarah Prioli, Elizabeth Clarke and Nicole Horan and Officer Jody Neilson — allege female corrections officers are subjected to "a continuous pattern of intentionally demeaning and derogatory conduct" that has included sexually explicit remarks, derogatory graffiti calling female officers "bacon fat back," "pig vomit" and "everyone gets a turn," and false accusations of wrongdoing.

Named as defendants in the lawsuit are Warden Sandra Mueller, Deputy Warden Joseph Valenti, Capt. John Haberbush and Lt. Joshua Dickinson as well as Ocean County.

The lawsuit alleges violation of federal laws on gender discrimination, harassment and whistleblower protections, saying the five women have been subjected to retaliation in the wake of filing discrimination charges with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2016.

The suit, filed earlier this year, came to light amid a series of Open Public Records Act requests by a local watchdog group.

Mueller, Valenti, Haberbush and Dickinson have rejected the suit's claims in responses filed in federal court.

The lawsuit alleges there has been pervasive sexual harassment that has been going on for years. Among the allegations:

• Graffiti within the jail that bears the badge numbers of female corrections officers and comments such as "pig vomit," "bacon fat back" and "everyone gets a turn."
• A corrections academy training instructor asking Horan sexually explicit questions and repeatedly trying to force her to talk to him outside of training. She alleges he forced her to partner with him for a training exercise, which is a direct violation of the corrections academy's policies (female officers are to be paired together). On one occasion, she drove with a flat tire onto the Garden State Parkway and then called for assistance because he was hanging around her car and she did not want to change the tire with him hanging around.
• Co-workers sending sexually explicit and vulgar emails to Neilson on a regular basis, so much that she was uncomfortable opening email.
• An officer accusing Prioli of carrying a cellphone on duty, saying he could see the outline of it because he was staring at her breasts. The item was actually a pack of chewing gum.
• A co-worker giving details of Horan's personal life to an inmate.
• An officer telling Prioli was told she was passed over for a promotion despite the fact that she had a higher score on the civil service exam than the person who was promoted.

Wallace alleges a senior officer repeatedly harassed her, tasking her with unrealistic project deadlines, changing requirements at the last minute to negate hours worth of work and mocking her in front of law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions. That officer also falsely accused of Wallace of leaving the door open to armory — where weapons are stored — threatening that she could lose her job as a result and ordering her to conduct an inventory of the armory to ensure everything was accounted for.

The accusing officer later laughed and said he left the door open, which was confirmed on a review of security footage. Wallace alleges the stress of the incident, which happened as she was preparing to leave for her wedding, caused her to suffer a miscarriage (she was pregnant at the time). The officer who left the door open was never penalized and did not apologize for the false accusation.

Clarke, who has worked in the corrections department since 1994, alleges female officers have been continuously harassed and endured it because of concerns about retaliation. Clarke said was forced to work mandatory overtime and threatened with loss of her position as a training officer after she complained to upper management about a lieutenant embarrassing her in front of outside agencies. The harassment she endured led her to seek therapy that continues even now, she said.

The lawsuit alleges female officers have been who have filed complaints in the past have been targeted for retaliation and that male officers were disciplined less harshly or sometimes not at all.

Wallace alleges she was punished after incorrectly releasing an inmate but alleges Haberbush was not penalized for the same infraction. She additionally alleges she was passed over for a promotion in 2011 after filing a harassment complaint against the officer in the armory incident. Then-Warden Theodore Hutler rejected her complaint and left her under the supervision of the officer. Wallace said she was passed over for a promotion immediately afterward, and then repeatedly thwarted and delayed in her efforts to seek promotions.

The lawsuit alleges female sergeants who had complained about harassment were forced to conduct strip searches of female inmates. Female sergeants who did not complain received preferential treatment, Clarke alleges, and male sergeants were not forced to perform strip searches of male inmates at all. That role is the responsibility of non-supervisory officers, the suit says.

The women allege that in the wake of the EEOC complaint, the corrections department "has retaliated against plaintiffs by intentinally manipulating the work shifts and days off such that plaintiffs are denied appropriate days based on seniority." That has included deliberate scheduling of mandatory overtime that kept them from their families. Male sergeants are not subjected to that scheduling, the lawsuit alleges.

It seeks unspecified damages.

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