Report: SEC to Pay $145,000 to Settle Harassment Case

WASHINGTON —  The Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to pay a former employee $145,000 to settle claims that she was a victim of pervasive sexual harassment at the agency, including unwanted physical advances and verbal invitations for sexual liaisons, sources said Thursday.

The confidential settlement reached late last month is the largest of its kind in the agency’s history and comes about three months after the SEC lost a major sexual harassment case involving attorney Catherine A. Broderick, who is to receive $88,000.

Disclosure of the latest settlement, to Veronica Awkard, is likely to be a major setback for the SEC, which has been striving to overcome the unfavorable publicity over sexual discrimination and affairs between supervisors and employees at the commission’s disbanded Washington regional office, where Broderick worked.

Sources said the more than $200,000 in total awards to Broderick and Awkard were pegged to back pay since federal employees are ineligible for punitive damages in harassment cases.

While Broderick’s allegations concerned behavior in the SEC’s Washington regional office from 1979 to 1984, the settlement reached late last month with Awkard concerned incidents at SEC headquarters in 1983. SEC spokeswoman Mary McCue said Thursday that the agency had no comment on the Awkard matter.

According to court documents, Awkard, then a branch chief in the agency’s Office of Applications and Report Services, filed a sexual harassment complaint in May, 1983, alleging that suggestive sexual remarks and other actions by supervisors and colleagues created an atmosphere that condoned “sexual harassment of female employees.” In addition, Awkard alleged that Frank Stultz, then executive assistant to the director of the Office of Reports and Information Services, harassed her.

Awkard left the agency in July, 1983. Stultz, who joined the SEC as a messenger in 1946, left in 1983 after apologizing to Awkard.

Awkard’s allegations about the work environment at the SEC were echoed in the opinion of Judge John H. Pratt, who found in the Broderick case that the SEC’s Washington regional office was a “hostile and offensive work place.”