Suit by Sheriff's Deputy Alleges 6 Years of Sexual Harassment : Courts: The woman says her male colleagues' offenses included betting on who was the father of her unborn child. The department calls her charges a surprise.

By KENNETH REICH

Oct. 13, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy on unpaid medical leave filed a multimillion-dollar sexual harassment lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department and a number of male deputies Tuesday, charging that she was subjected to crude harassment over a six-year period and retaliation when she complained about it.

Patricia Cordova, 33, a married Santa Clarita mother of four, said in a lengthy complaint that several supervisors and colleagues sought to have sex with her, made pointed remarks about her appearance and, when she became pregnant, formed a betting pool about who was the father and posted derogatory cartoons about her in the station.

Although Cordova’s attorney, Virginia Keeny, said the deputy had filed complaints with state and federal agencies against the Sheriff’s Department in July, 1992, and notice had gone to the department then, a sheriff’s spokesman Tuesday evening insisted that the charges came as a surprise.

“Persons on this department that Deputy Cordova accuses of wrongdoing are baffled by her allegations,” said Capt. Dan Burt, chief spokesman for Sheriff Sherman Block, who as chief of the department is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

“While an established procedure exists to bring allegations of harassment and inappropriate conduct by department members to the department’s attention, individuals and the plaintiff’s bar seem more inclined to convey their message to us via media events on courthouse steps,” Burt said.

“The allegations brought by Deputy Cordova will be thoroughly and professionally investigated by our department,” he added.

Keeny responded, “If these charges come as a surprise to them, their investigation has not been very thorough.”

Indeed, the lawsuit charges that since Cordova aired her complaints last year, there have been hate mail, harassing telephone calls and vandalism at her home, all of which she attributes to the department.

As a result of her experiences, Cordova told a news conference at Keeny’s Pasadena law office Tuesday, she incurred serious stress-related ailments, including sleeplessness, nightmares, stomach cramps, diarrhea and severe headaches, and her doctors have told her she should never try to work for the sheriff’s office again.

At the Mira Loma Jail, the Santa Clarita sheriff’s station and the sheriff’s drug education unit where she had worked, Cordova said she had learned that many of her colleagues “believed there were only two kinds of women.”

“You were either a bitch or a slut,” she said. “A bitch would not put out (have sex), and a slut would. To these men, you just can’t be a nice woman deputy.”

Among those named in Cordova’s complaint as having harassed her was the lieutenant commanding the Palmdale sheriff’s station, a detective lieutenant at the Santa Clarita station, a lieutenant who is the No. 2 press spokesman for Block and a sergeant who works in the drug education unit in Santa Clarita.

Attempts to contact several officers named in the complaint found two who were willing to comment.

One of these was Lt. Jeff Springs, who worked with Cordova at Santa Clarita station and later became a spokesman for Block.

“On one occasion,” Cordova’s complaint said, “Lt. Springs called her into his office on some business. When she entered the office, he told her to step away from the door. When she stepped forward, he grabbed her. He pulled her tight against him with his hands on her buttocks and said, ‘You feel so good.’ He attempted to kiss her. . . She ultimately freed herself by pushing him away from her.”

Springs said Tuesday that being named as a defendant in the lawsuit came as a complete surprise to him, because “she knows I didn’t do any of that.”

“I’m hurt,” he said. “I’m angry. And I’m angry about the process wherein allegations of this type in a civil lawsuit become a media event, without being investigated. I may have to bring a legal action of my own to correct the damage that is being done to me.”

The other deputy who commented, Lt. Mike Aranda, now commander at the sheriff’s Palmdale station, said, “I can categorically deny anything that was alleged by her.” But Aranda confirmed that several deputies had been disciplined at the Santa Clarita station for posting derogatory cartoons about Cordova.

Aranda, 48, who is not named as a defendant in Cordova’s lawsuit because the statute of limitations has run out in his case, is nonetheless described in the suit as having rearranged his schedule so he could work near Cordova, as “constantly staring at plaintiff’s breasts and rubbing against her” and as having told her that he bet she was “good in bed.”

The two were colleagues at the Mira Loma Jail in 1986-87, Cordova’s complaint said. On one occasion, it said, Aranda “arrived uninvited at plaintiff’s home late one night after she had put her children to bed,” and despite her repeated admonitions, “lunged at her and attempted to kiss her forcefully.”

A few months later, when Cordova learned that she was pregnant by the boyfriend she later married, a new period of harassment began, the complaint declares, with “deputies discussing a lottery in the office to guess the name of the father.”

When she sought to complain to the commanding captain at Mira Loma, Ron Oest, Aranda told her he would talk to Oest on her behalf, the complaint said.