4 New Victims Allege Sextortion with Housing Authority of Baltimore
BALTIMORE — Four new victims joined seven others in a sextortion federal lawsuit against the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, alleging top officials within the agency were aware of complaints.
On Tuesday, amendments to the lawsuit detail new facts, including an affidavit from a victim who was a Baltimore Public Housing resident and who worked as an administrative assistant for the deputy executive director of the authority.
In her affidavit, she said that in May 2015 she told the deputy executive director about demands from maintenance men for sex in exchange for repairs to her public housing unit. This was in addition to complaints, which are already in the public record, to lower-level housing authority managers and investigators in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.
According to the affidavit, maintenance men in Gilmor Homes left the woman and her daughter without heat for two winters because she refused to have sex with them.
When she told her boss, the deputy executive director of the housing authority, she received a call from a housing authority investigator telling her that the housing authority could not guarantee her safety if she pressed her complaint, the suit alleges.
“That type of threat can’t be tolerated in government,” said Cary J. Hansel, the victims’ lawyer.
The victim’s lawyers allege the “outrageous threat is part of a pattern of Housing Authority attempts to silence the victims of sexual assault and harassment in public housing. In addition to the threat, the young woman’s heat has still not been repaired — five months after she personally complained to HABC top brass.”
“It’s truly heart wrenching, actually, to sit down and speak with these women and hear the emotion come out in their voices and see what they’ve been through and how they’re handling it. You have to appreciate that a lot of these women have been the victims of abuse in their past as children or as young women, and so this is bringing up a lot of those emotions again,” said Annie Hirsch, the victims’ lawyer.
In addition, the amendment adds four new victims to the seven prior plaintiffs, for a total of 11 women who have publicly come forward to date. One of these women said she suffered harassment by a new defendant at Govans Manor, bringing the total number of Housing Authority properties involved to three: Gilmor Homes, Westport and Govans Manor.
“These vulnerable women have had their trust violated. Whether that trust can be rebuilt depends on the response of those in power,” Hirsch said.
The amended complaint also includes affidavits from the president of the maintenance workers’ union and his chief safety officer. The affidavits reveal a union investigation, which substantiated the facts in the amended complaint, and identified more than 10 additional victims. The affidavits reveal that the union called for the removal of the abusers, but the HABC ignored these requests, told the union not to put anything in writing and insisted that the union stop investigating.
“The Housing Authority needs leadership that respects and protects the rights of its residents. The question for Mayor (Stephanie) Rawlings-Blake is whether Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano can prove himself to be that leader in time to regain public confidence,” Hansel said.
A $70 million lawsuit was filed in September against housing authority and two maintenance workers.
The original accusations are against maintenance supervisor Clintone Coleman, and worker Michael Robertson, but attorneys representing the women added another employee to the lawsuit, Doug Hussey, an employee at Govans Manor. The attorneys also say a housing worker who lives at Gilmore Homes told a top housing official about her experience.
In an affidavit a woman living at Govan’s Manor claims Hussey told her he would “Do a Bill Cosby on her.” She asked him to stop disrespecting her. He stopped making repairs and told her “he would not be helping her in any way until she helped him and gave him what he wanted.”
In another affidavit, one woman claims after refusing to give in to Coleman, he ignored her work orders to fix broken doors and a banister unattached to a wall, telling her, “You get what you ask for, you get what you pay for and you get what you put out.”
A week after the suit was filed, the Baltimore Housing Director Paul Graziano sent letters to public housing residents asked potential victims of sexual harassment to contact police. The letter also listed what employees, contractors and vendors are not allowed to do.
