Complaints about sexual harassment and office tradition at Casa Latina in Seattle result in board investigation

Casa Latina, a decade-old organization founded to empower immigrants and provide job and educational opportunities, has raged amid a series of protests that challenge the nonprofit’s handling of allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

The board of directors announced last week that they would investigate after complaining about the allegations and complaints from some of its 37 employees, as well as former employees and people Casa Latina refers to as “members” – those who come to us the “general workplace culture” heard the job placement organization.

“An immediate next step is to bring in the necessary and qualified experts to investigate and gather pertinent information, review practices and procedures, and provide a full report to the board,” said a board statement that includes mediation and work on rebuilding trust within the organization and the wider community.

Multiple allegations of sexual misconduct as well as additional complaints about disrespectful treatment will be made addressed to an employee who recently left the organization, according to a statement by Executive Director Marcos Martinez, and interviews with about a dozen people currently or previously associated with the organization. Martinez’s testimony does not say whether the person was fired.

Three women said they filed police reports this year about the former employee alleging behavior ranging from verbal harassment to keystrokes. Answering a request for the police report Case numbers the women provided, Seattle police said they had referred two of the cases to the city prosecutor’s office for criminal investigation. A review is ongoing.

A King County Supreme Court judge on Tuesday denied a request by one of the women for an order to prevent the ex-employee from being sexually assaulted. The judge wrote that the behavior described – rubbing her back and bum and making sexually suggestive comments and gestures – was not raised to the required level.

The former employee did not want to comment.

When these complaints leaked, current and former workers spoke about other alleged incidents involving some of the 220 men and women seeking day and housekeeping jobs through Casa Latina. Several people described being inappropriately suggested or touched at organization events.

In the most serious allegation, a woman who referred household jobs through Casa Latina said she was raped six years ago by a man who also came to the organization for job referrals. Full of shame, she said, she told us about it much later at Casa Latina and waited three years to file a complaint. Seattle police said they were unable to gather any evidence necessary for the investigation.

CEO Pilar Pacheco, a senior program Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation official said Casa Latina had conducted sexual harassment training. And workers said that meetings were devoted to this topic.

“The commitment to protection against sexual harassment was a central part of our work,” wrote Martinez in his statement.

Still, critics of Casa Latina say the management minimized its own problems and apparently wanted to keep allegations silent.

“I am very disappointed with my executives,” said Lucina Carrillo, an employee who takes calls from potential employers and helps get workers to work, and whose allegations against the former employee, the focus of many complaints, initially sparked protests. Several demonstrations have already taken place this month outside the offices of Casa Latina on 17th Avenue South, near South Jackson Street.

Like others in the protests, Carrillo, who said she wanted to be named while bringing her case to the public, is calling for Martinez and other top politicians to step down.

Martinez declined to be interviewed.

Martinez, a former New Mexico public radio news director and head of Entre Hermanos, an organization for LGBTQ Latinos in Seattle, joined Casa Latina in 2016. He replaced Hilary Stern, who founded the organization in 1994.

It had grown into a formidable force handling thousands of job calls each year, winning a city human rights award, specializing in language courses and training.

In 2019, Casa Latina was around $ 2.2 million Income, including nearly $ 900,000 from government grants and hundreds of thousands more from donations. In 2018, after the city council passed a domestic workers ordinance that included protections such as meal breaks and a minimum wage guarantee, Mayor Jenny Durkan went to Casa Latina to sign it.

However, some current and former workers say they have long been dissatisfied with management, citing issues such as perceived preference in posting jobs, bossy behavior from managers and the expectation of overtime. Last year, Casa Latina agreed to a settlement with the Seattle Office of Labor Standards for about $ 8,300 after the organization pressured employees to volunteer at events and work effectively off the clock.

The discontent reached a boiling point as conversations about how to deal with the nonprofit began to spread Carrillo’s allegations.

Carrillo, 48, said she had bullied by her colleague for at least a year. He coordinated drivers like her and thus had authority over them, she said. According to her and others, he was also seen in a position of power because of a personal relationship with one of the leaders of the organization.

In March 2020, Carrillo said he had touched her chest. “I’m in shock,” she recalled the incident.

She said she repeatedly told him to stop harassing her and complained to her line manager, who also said so stop him. Then came the incident she described in the application for a restraining order. Last March, she said, he gave her a credit card to refuel a van. It fell on the floor, and when she bent down to pick it up, said Carrillo, he rubbed her bum. A day laborer, Sergio Ochoa, said he saw it. “Why are you doing this?” he said he asked.

Shortly thereafter, Carrillo said, she filed a personnel complaint that prompted an internal investigation.

Martinez, one of three people carrying out such investigations, said in his statement that “when the first complaint was filed, the offices were quietly reorganized so that the person who made the complaint is not in the same building as the person had to find “. they filed a complaint during the investigation. “

Carrillo says that despite dire straits, the managers didn’t move their desk from his for a month and they had to part as best they could.

The man she accused was eventually disciplined but not fired at the time, according to her and another testimony from Martinez, even though the manager said the employee had not physically returned to Casa Latina.

After a group of workers and activists held a protest rally in early May, which was covered by KING 5, two more women came forward saying they had been sexually molested by the man, mostly verbally.

He also touched men in a way they didn’t like, on their ears or cheeks or when knocking off a hat, said two day laborers in a protest on May 22nd. They portrayed the behavior as disrespectful rather than sexual, although one of the men described the ex-employee poking his hips when walking past a male worker.

A petition circulated at the protest, signed by around 75 people, demanding the resignation of the leaders of Casa Latina.

Some people also wrote letters to the board of directors. One, Alej Gallardo, who worked as an organizer for Casa Latina a few years ago to mobilize support for the Domestic Worker Ordinance, wrote about a report of alleged rape of a supervisor involving two people who came to an agency for the organization and what got Gallardo thought about a negative reply.

In June 2017, Gallardo had reached out to a woman who had previously got a household job through Casa Latina and was open about problems she was seeing. In 2015, she was raped by a day laborer, said the woman.

The woman told the Seattle Times that she went out to eat a couple of times with the day laborer and invited him to lunch on Sunday during housework. After drinking a beer she had brought with her, the woman said she passed out and didn’t wake up until the next morning, naked, with bruises all over her body and the man lying next to her.

“I was destroyed,” said the woman.

Disturbed by the incident and the fact that the woman had not gone to the police, Gallardo spoke in a letter from the board of directors and in an interview with the Seattle Times about reporting the alleged rape in 2017 to Casa Latina Community Program Leader Veronique Facchinelli.

“Who else did you tell about it?” Gallardo said Facchinelli asked, adding that the organizer shouldn’t talk about the alleged incident. “You weren’t hired for that,” said Gallardo, grumbling against Facchinelli.

Reached by the Seattle Times, Facchinelli said she was surprised by the report. She didn’t say whether she knew about the alleged rape or had a conversation with Gallardo about it, but said that anyone who was spoken to “never said anything like that. We would certainly not have taken that lightly. “

At Gallardo’s urging, the woman who claimed she had been raped went to the police. Gallardo accompanied them. It was then 2018, and the time-lapse could explain why the police said they couldn’t collect evidence.

In 2020 she said she told Martinez. She was partially dissatisfied with his reaction, she said, because he did not ask who the alleged rapist was.

Casa Latina communications director Jessica Nieves said that when the case was reported to Casa Latina in 2020, the accused rapist was no longer getting a job through the organization. Nieves said she didn’t know when he stopped coming to Casa Latina and had no information about a conversation between Gallardo and Facchinelli three years ago.

Martinez, in one of his statements this month, said he had attended meetings to hear workers’ concerns and was determined to address them. The board said the board plans to hire staff for the investigation in the first week of June and expects results within 30 days of its start.

The protesters meanwhile say they will rally on June 4th.