Seattle Fire Dept. Records Detail Employee's Harassment Ordeal

SEATTLE, WA — A civilian Seattle Fire Department employee was harassed for a long period by a fire captain, internal documents show. But the department responded by hiring an outside investigator whose report downplayed the woman's concerns about ongoing harassment.

The woman at the center of the Seattle Fire Department matter has not sued, and is still employed with the department. But her experience resembles that of other city employees.

On Sept. 12, the city of Seattle settled a lawsuit brought by former Seattle City Light worker Beth Rocha over sexual harassment. As part of that settlement, the city agreed to retract a third-party report on sexual harassment that was published on the Seattle City Light blog last November. That report concluded that there wasn't widespread sexism at SCL — at the time Rocha told the Seattle Times the report was "biased."

Rocha was a founding member of the Seattle Silence Breakers group, which has pushed the city to make internal reforms to better handle harassment. Denise Krownbell, a Silence Breakers co-chair, said that Seattle has taken good steps to ending harassment, but compared the process to turning around an enormous ship. The group now has over 100 members — but none from the fire department, Krownbell said.

Patch learned of the SFD employee's ordeal through a public records request. The woman, Molly Jordan, declined a request for comment about the investigation. The captain implicated in the investigation did not answer a request for comment, so we are not naming him here.

The main incident happened on Feb. 9, 2018, when the now-retired captain confronted Jordan in her office over an email that he thought was "inappropriate, disrespectful, and out of line," documents say. During the discussion, Jordan asked to take the matter to the captain's supervisor, but he blocked her from leaving her office. She repeatedly asked him to move, but he didn't listen, documents say.

"When [the captain] did not immediately open the door, [Jordan] yelled at him, 'Open the door!!' around three to four times, as her voice got louder and louder each time. [He]stood there not moving. After [her] third or fourth request to the captain to open the door, he opened the door, and they walked to Chief Woodbury’s office. This incident lasted approximately three minutes from the time he entered her office to the time they left to go to the Chief’s office," say documents.

An internal SFD human resources investigation completed on March 22, 2018, found that the captain did violate the city's workplace violence policy. But that wasn't the end of the matter. The door-blocking incident came in the middle of a series of incidents that caused Jordan to write a letter to Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins on Feb. 22, 2018, about the "ongoing abusive environment" in the fire prevention unit where she worked.

After the door-blocking incident, the captain's supervisor ordered him to only interact with Jordan through email. But three times in March 2018 he went to her office in person. In April 2018, she told higher-ups that he stared at her during a meeting. Jordan went back to HR and the captain's supervisor, prompting a second warning for him to stop contacting her, according to documents.

Jordan began working for the department in August 2016 as a temp. In April 2017, she was transferred to the special hazards unit at SFD to work for the captain from the door-blocking incident. She worked for him for two months before she got a promotion to be an administrative staff assistant in the fire prevention office.

During the two months she worked for the captain, according to documents, Jordan experienced many uncomfortable moments. Multiple times a day, the captain would sit close to her on the edge of her desk, would ask her out to lunch, and once sent her a vase of roses as an apology for an email misunderstanding — although he told an investigator he has "no memory" of doing that. He also stared at Jordan's chest during conversations, behavior that other women in the department also experienced.

When she was promoted in June 2017 to the fire prevention office, the captain commented that Jordan "left" him, which she interpreted as possessive.

"I wasn’t a prize he won," she once told an investigator.

On the day in June she got the new job, Jordan learned that someone had filed a complaint about her promotion, and that the department would investigate. The news shocked her, preventing her from feeling comfortable in her new job. The investigation exposed her to ridicule, she said, and dragged on for months without a resolution.

"I endured continuous jokes, harassment, serious allegations against my character, snide comments, being called a liar, being told I was handed my job," she wrote to Scoggins in February 2018, according to a letter obtained through a public records request.

Scoggins declined a Patch interview request about the letter, but did send a statement about harassment investigations in general.

"The Seattle Fire Department takes complaints of harassment in the workplace very seriously. In this instance, an independent investigator was brought in to conduct a comprehensive investigation," the statement said.

After the door-blocking incident, the city hired Poulsbo attorney Russ Perisho to investigate Jordan's other claims about the captain. In August 2018, Perisho completed his investigation, which included interviews with 11 SFD employees.

(Perisho's report did not address the harassment Jordan endured during the investigation of her promotion.)

Similar to Rocha's case, the independent report didn't find evidence of sexual harassment, and seemed to fault Jordan for not reporting other incidents sooner. Except for the chest-staring, Perisho concluded that Jordan was not sexually harassed when the captain blocked her door or at any other point. The report did chastise the captain for staring at women's chests, but pondered that it might've been "unintentional."

"It may be that [the captain] has unintentional problems maintaining normal eye contact with women in discussions," the report says. "[Jordan] never complained or took any other timely action to stop the conduct, suggesting that it was not viewed by [her] as serious enough to create an offensive work environment."

Perisho notes that the door-blocking incident had a serious impact on Jordan, affecting her ability to even walk down the hallway out of fear of meeting the captain. But he would go on to question if her reaction was "proportionate to the incident."

"Yet, while the city’s investigation found that [the captain's] February 9 actions were violations of the professionalism policy and workplace violence policy, there was no finding that the events occurred because of Jordan’s sex. Such a finding would not be supported by the facts," the report says.

Perisho's report does say that the captain acted unprofessionally by staring at women's chests, and committed insubordination when he visited Jordan's office after being told not to.

One of the main problems with harassment in city government, Krownbell says, is that victims sometimes get re-traumatized. In Jordan's case, that meant having to continue working alongside the captain, and having to endure a second investigation where her motives were questioned.

"There's no perfect solution. But our main thing is to stop the person from encountering further harm while there's an investigation. Just stop the harm from continuing," Krownbell, a City Light employee, said.

In her letter to Scoggins, Jordan asked to be moved out of fire prevention "based on the ever-increasing hostile environment" — but she was never offered that step.

Durkan's internal reforms are beginning to take shape. Krownbell called the Office of the Employee Ombud a "huge step forward" for employees facing harassment. Eventually, the Ombud will report findings to the City Council and Durkan. In July, Durkan hired Bobby Humes to take over the city HR department, an office known for having a "toxic" culture.

Jordan's story is the first Krownbell had heard out of SFD. But it's possible there are plenty of similar incidents yet to be made public. Silence Breakers held its first meeting in 2017 in the week between Christmas and New Year's. Krownbell didn't expect anyone to show up, but 40 city workers did.

"That's when we were like 'holy-moly, this is a big deal.' It's way more than we thought," she said.