A correction to an earlier version of this article has been appended to the end of the article.
OAKLAND — The warning came from the top: A veteran Alameda County prosecutor was not supposed to mingle with student law clerks, let alone supervise them or assign work.
But instead, the senior deputy district attorney that summer became known for lingering around the students’ desks, and for making risque and sexual comments, according to documents obtained through a public records request by this news organization.
He also assigned them work, despite District Attorney Nancy O’Malley saying she requested that he not be allowed to supervise them.
In one allegation, he discussed an upcoming undercover massage parlor sting, telling the unpaid college students he could use a “happy ending.” With a 16-year-old female intern, he discussed in great detail a brutal torture and rape case of a suspect who “sliced off a woman’s nipples.”
O’Malley’s office, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment about the allegations and why the attorney was specifically barred from working with the clerks. The documents do not provide details of previous complaints filed against the attorney.
The prosecutor — whose name was redacted in documents — was put on leave and resigned under threat of termination, after an internal investigation. Although his inappropriate behavior and departure happened in the summer of 2014, it never surfaced publicly until this newspaper asked Bay Area district attorney offices for records involving complaints of workplace sexual harassment over the past five years.
Earlier this month, a request uncovered multiple instances of reported sexual harassment within the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office, unearthing complaints of a district attorney inspector forcefully kissing a female colleague at a holiday party and others using sexually explicit language.
Solano County reported it had no such written complaints. In San Francisco, a crime victim in 2017 accused a district attorney victim coordinator of engaging in a sexual relationship with her, according to documents released. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties as of Friday have not released records, if there are any to disclose.
While Contra Costa’s DA Office had three workplace sexual harassment complaints compared with Alameda’s two, the case of the Alameda prosecutor stands out because it involved volunteer staff and a teenage girl.
His office cited personnel reasons for redacting his name in documents, but they show he was a senior member of the office working in the consumer, environmental and worker protection division.
“From what I know, this is incredibly serious and breaches all sexual harassment laws on which he has been trained several times,” Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley wrote in a June 29, 2014, email to the head of the prosecutor’s division.
The investigation began after deputy district attorneys Kenneth Mifsud, John Mifsud and Bob Hartman notified their supervisor, Larry Blazer, about comments the attorney made in the office. Blazer notified Chief Assistant District Attorney Kevin Dunleavy, who opened an investigation in June 2014.
“It turns out the ‘overheard’ comments were benign compared to what was uncovered,” Dunleavy wrote in an email.
After interviewing law clerks, Dunleavy and District Attorney Inspector Mike Foster found multiple occasions of the attorney making inappropriate sexual remarks to both male and female clerks. One male clerk who asked for a day off to take a trip to Lake Tahoe said the attorney implied he should abstain from sex because it would hurt his job performance.
In another instance, the attorney discussed a massage parlor sting, and asked which clerks “wanted to go undercover,” according to the documents. He also said he could use a “happy ending,” a reference to a sexual act. As it turned out, he was not part of the undercover operation, and investigators believed he made up his involvement for the purpose of making a sexual comment.
One female law clerk, according to the records, broke down crying while discussing how he treated her, which included asking questions about her boyfriend, a football player. According to the clerk, he asked her, “Wow he’s big and you are a small person. How does that work?”
She and a 16-year-old intern, whose mock trial coach works in the DA’s office, also said the attorney discussed the case of Stephen Wolozon, who in the 1970s was found not guilty by reason of insanity of torturing and sexually assaulting multiple women, including one in Berkeley. Both females were alone with the attorney when he described Wolozon “slicing off women’s nipples.”
“It would appear he did this in contrived training situations in order to give these interactions an air of legitimacy,” according to Foster’s report.
After reviewing the final report, Dunleavy wrote that “these students are deemed as guests in our office and the unwanted sexual comments made to someone in a volunteer position puts the office at higher risk of liability. The further disturbing fact is that the volunteer is in a position without protection. If the volunteer makes waves, there is a legitimate fear of reprisal or termination of the volunteer position.”
The documents released by the department show that O’Malley, who placed the attorney on administrative leave on June 30, 2014, questioned why he was allowed to be in the same room with the students.
“Did you ever instruct (redacted) he was not to work with the law clerks? (Redacted) was to have nothing to do with the clerks and in no way was he to supervise them. I need to know if that was communicated,” O’Malley wrote in an email to Blazer.
“When we agreed to place them, you and I had a specific conversation that (redacted) was to have nothing to do with the clerks and in no way was he to supervise them,” O’Malley wrote. “I need to know if that was communicated to (redacted). From all accounts, (redacted) spent an inordinate amount of time with them. Some of the men working in CEPD are completely offended by him.”
The supervisor, Blazer, replied that he did not recall that exact conversation with O’Malley. He said that prosecutor David Lim was the teenager’s supervisor, but the other senior prosecutor found ways to interact with her and others.
The attorney submitted his resignation July 8, 2014. On an unemployment insurance form, he checked a box that he was resigning “in lieu of termination.”
Correction: April 8, 2019:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated a Contra Costa County prosecutor was accused of forcefully kissing a female colleague. The employee was an inspector with the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office.
