NO NEW MATERIAL HAS BEEN ADDED FOR A LONG TIME
JUST TOO MUCH MATERIAL
The complaints, filed Monday, allege that Anthony Gutierrez, a section chief for Attorney General Marc Dann, sexually harassed the women at work or in the Dublin condo once shared by Gutierrez, Dann and Leo Jennings III, Dann's communication chief.
Vanessa Stout, 26, and Cindy Stankoski, 26, filed the complaints against Gutierrez with the Equal Employment Opportunity office. They were surprised to be approached two days later by Angela Smedlund, the agency's EEO officer, who acknowledged "a problem," the women said.
Smedlund suggested that Gutierrez might be transferred and that agency officials would "do anything you want" to resolve the matter quietly without making it public, they said. Both declined the offer.
Gutierrez did not respond to requests seeking comment about the harassment complaints. Jennings said Gutierrez "has no intention of talking" about the matter. Likewise, he said the attorney general's office will not comment because of the pending investigations.
"We treat these matters, whoever they involve and whenever they occur, incredibly seriously," Jennings said.
Copies of the complaints, obtained by The Dispatch, allege that almost from the beginning of their employment in the attorney general's telecommunication office, the women were confronted by sexual comments and situations, including unwanted touching. Gutierrez, as the $87,500-a-year director of general services, supervises the section.
Both women said in their complaints that Gutierrez pressured them frequently to have sex, often saying "you owe me" in reference to getting them state jobs.
According to the complaint, less than three weeks after Stankoski was hired, Gutierrez pressed her on Sept. 10 to have a drink with him after work. He took her to two Downtown bars before ending up at Mitchell's Steakhouse. There Gutierrez received a call from Dann, urging both of them to come to the condo for pizza.
Though she was becoming intoxicated and increasingly uncomfortable with Gutierrez's sexual comments, Stankoski said she decided to go along.
Dann was at the condo when they arrived. Already there was Dann's scheduler, Jessica Utovich, who, according to the complaint, "walked in w. pj's and laptop" and lay down on the floor to work on her computer.
Stankoski said by that time, she was feeling very tipsy and asked if she could lay down. Gutierrez told her she could use his bedroom. She awoke several hours later, she said, to find three buttons of her pants undone and Gutierrez lying beside her wearing only underwear.
Jennings said that staffers, including Utovich, occasionally visited the condo, but only for work-related purposes: "She was there to deliver schedules."
Utovich, 28, did not respond to multiple attempts to contact her.
Dann moved from the condo on Tuttles View Drive in December, but Gutierrez and Jennings still live there. All three are friends of about 20 years from the Youngstown area, where Gutierrez lived about two doors down from Dann.
Stout went to work for the state Nov. 26 as a $14-an-hour administrative staffer. Stankoski was hired for a similar job Aug. 20.
Dann hired Gutierrez in January 2007, even though Gutierrez's background check uncovered 27 tax liens and civil judgments and a personal bankruptcy. At the beginning of 2007, Gutierrez owed more than $5,000 in unpaid state income taxes, which are collected by the attorney general's office, and more than $10,000 in unpaid federal income taxes. Gutierrez, who ran a construction firm when hired by Dann, has since repaid his debt to the state and is on a repayment plan with the Internal Revenue Service.
Stout said in her complaint that Gutierrez, who is married, began pressuring her to go out with him and have sex with him shortly after she was hired. At one point, when Stout visited his condo with a friend, Gutierrez gave her a sex toy, she said.
Gutierrez called her personal cell phone so much, often at night, that Stout changed her number, she said. She offered dozens of pages of cell-phone records as well as a hand-written journal to support her complaint.
The attorney general's human resources department "advised me that they didn't want them," Stout said in a March 27 e-mail to Smedlund. "Reason being, that all information given would be a public record."
The attorney general's office fielded two formal sexual-harassment complaints in 2006, the year before Dann took office, and three in 2007, Dann's first year, Jennings said. He did not have numbers for 2008.
The state's Equal Employment Opportunity office, part of the Department of Administrative Services, received 106 complaints last year from state employees or job applicants. Of those, 38 were based on race or color, 33 involved sexual harassment, 13 involved disability and 10 were based on age. Some complaints involved more than one category.
The totals do not reflect numbers from the offices of statewide officeholders, which are kept individually.
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