VERO BEACH — The City of Vero Beach has filed its response to a lawsuit brought against it from a former employee who claims that she was sexually harassed over an extended period of time.
In the city’s response, filed by an Orlando law firm in November, the city claims then-employee Janet Bickford met informally with City Clerk Tammy Vock to discuss the sexual harassment. But other than that one point, the city denies just about everything else Bickford has alleged. Bickford has claimed that a member of the Code Enforcement Committee on at least two occasions approached Bickford from behind, called her name and then forcibly kissed her on the lips when she turned to respond, according to her suit against the city.
Bickford is asking the court to order the City of Vero Beach to pay at least $15,000 to cover back pay and benefits, compensatory and punitive damages, and costs and attorney fees.
The city, however, is asking the court to dismiss the case and that the city be awarded its costs in defending the suit.
As part of its defense, the city claims Bickford has no right to back pay or benefits.
“Indeed, (Bickford) failed to return to work after the expiration of her leave and abandoned her job,” the city says in its response.
Bickford said in her complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that she was wrongfully terminated. The EEOC later found no basis to Bickford’s complaint.
The city refutes Bickford’s claim, noting in its response to the lawsuit that it made an “unconditional offer of reinstatement/reemployment to (Bickford), which she unreasonably declined.”
Bickford, who worked at City Hall for eight years, said in her complaint that she had been the subject of unwanted sexual advances and exposed to harassment from Nov. 15, 2007, through Feb. 22, 2008. During that time, she said in the complaint, she reported the incidents to City Clerk Tammy Vock, other management officials and the Human Resources Department.
In the complaint, Bickford wrote that she was subjected to sexual harassment by a “citizen who talked about pornography to me. Later, I was touched inappropriately and kissed on the lips by the President of the Code Enforcement Committee” and wrote that she reported the incident to Vock and others.
On Feb. 25, 2008, Bickford went on leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act, and when she returned – at an unknown date – she was transferred to work in the Human Resources Department, according to the complaint.
Within a couple days of returning, Bickford was called into the director’s officer, Robert Anderson, where HR manager Lynn George also was. While there, Bickford maintains in the EEOC complaint, she was told: “that I was a dumb blond, was accused of being a sexual predator of male employees and I was asked if I knew that 50 percent of male employees wanted to have sex with me.”
Bickford again took time off from work under the Family and Medical Leave Act “because of the stress and humiliation and retaliation I was subjected to,” she wrote in the complaint.
She went on to say that she began to see a therapist, noting the city was aware she was seeing a psychologist.
“They even asked a co-worker of mine if ‘I had gone crazy,'” Bickford wrote in her EEOC complaint.
On June 27, 2008, Bickford was fired.
Circuit Judge Paul Kanarek has been assigned to the case. When he might consider the case in court remains unclear.