The event, attended by more than thirty employees of the medium-security prison outside Ordway and captured on videotape, featured several stabs at big-house humor that had folks roaring in their seats. The party kicked off with the reading of a fake letter accusing the deputy warden of harassing a former female employee, which prompted Paolino to jeer at the woman's lack of sexual appeal. Then things really picked up as the guest of honor unwrapped the gag gifts: enormous plastic balls ("Is this because I have no balls, or what?" asked Paolino); a toy pistol with the barrel pointing at the shooter; and an even tinier gun that well-wishers figured ol' Joe was "man enough to handle."
And don't forget the pantyhose--the pantyhose with a sheath for a male member sewn into the crotch. Wasn't that a stitch? Ever the good sport, Paolino displayed the garment for all to see and compared its slender waistband to his own husky build. "I would wear them, but they're too small," he deadpanned.
Hardy-har-har.
Ten months later, state prison officials are no longer in a partying mood; their pantyhose are in a knot over a recent jury verdict in federal court awarding former DOC security guard Sandra Haberman $362,500 in damages for the sexual harassment she endured while working the graveyard shift at Arkansas Valley in 1992 and 1993. Haberman's case--the first to go to trial in what promises to be a series of harassment-related lawsuits against the DOC--raises allegations not only of hostile and dangerous working conditions for women at the prison, but of threats, retaliation and wildly improper behavior by administrators, including Paolino, who supervised some of the mandatory harassment-prevention sessions at Arkansas Valley.
DOC officials and corrections officers involved in the suit have consistently denied any improper conduct in the case. "When the allegations were made, we conducted a prompt and thorough investigation," says department spokeswoman Liz McDonough.
But jurors had little difficulty believing Haberman's witnesses and other evidence presented by her attorneys, Macon Cowles and Mary Kane. The jury was out only two hours before it decided on the massive award for "emotional distress." The total cost could climb past the half-million mark after Judge William Downes calculates what Haberman should be awarded for back pay and attorneys' fees.
One piece of evidence the jury didn't see was the videotape of Paolino's send-off party; state attorneys were successful in suppressing the tape, arguing that the party had no relevance to Haberman's situation three years earlier. Of course, Haberman's lawyers disagree.
"That video is very powerful evidence of how pervasive sexual harassment was at the facility," says Cowles. "It persuades me that they know nothing of sexual harassment and what it does to women."
The third generation of her family to work in the state corrections system, Haberman claimed that she'd confronted hostility from male employees starting on her first night of work, including undesirable work assignments, degrading comments and requests for sexual favors (see sidebar, page 10). She soon came to understand that if she complained, other officers might refuse to provide backup if she had to deal with an inmate disturbance. The threat seemed particularly ominous in light of Arkansas Valley's recent history; just months earlier, Mary Henderson, a housing supervisor on the graveyard shift, had been taken hostage by inmate William Sojka, who'd beaten her, slashed her with a broken mirror and attempted to electrocute her over a period of five hours before she was rescued.
Henderson had originally joined in Haberman's suit, charging that she also was harassed and that male colleagues had been slow to respond to her requests for assistance at the outset of the hostage incident. But Henderson's case was ultimately dismissed on the grounds that it hadn't been filed in time; the dismissal of a previous suit she'd filed, seeking damages for the hostage ordeal itself, was recently upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled 4-3 that prison officials couldn't be held liable for the episode.
Curiously, Henderson herself was the target of a Denver grand jury proceeding last year, which resulted in no charges. "The grand jury was investigating the DOC theory that, instead of Mary being taken hostage, it was really a lover's assignation--that she wanted to be taken behind closed doors with this inmate," Cowles says. "It's so strange you can hardly believe it. It was a totally bullshit case that was set up to harass Mary." (The state attorney who presided over the grand jury did not respond to requests for comment.)
For her part, Haberman took her complaints to DOC internal investigators, who concluded that, as Cowles puts it, "Arkansas Valley was not a very nice place to work" but declined to reach a specific finding of sexual harassment. Her efforts drew more threats and rebuffs from prison staff, she claims, including an official who allegedly told her, "I don't know what you think this will get you."
That official, Haberman testified, was Deputy Warden Paolino--the same Joe Paolino who was caught on video last spring making light of harassment matters.
As the party is starting, new warden Richard Marr reads a letter, purportedly from a black receptionist who no longer works at the prison. The letter describes Paolino as "the monster who is responsible for my breakdown" and who "made my life a living hell" because the woman refused to meet him for a liaison at the Blue Spruce motel in nearby Fowler. When Paolino realizes the letter is a hoax, he erupts, "Goddamn, she was only here two weeks, and she was as ugly as a mud fence!" General laughter follows.
Cowles believes the video gives the lie to DOC claims that the agency has "zero tolerance" for sexual harassment. "They say they've got this bulletproof written policy, and they have all this training. But [Paolino] was the guy doing the training--and all the people in that room had the training. Somebody should have said this is not right."
Noting that several women were present at the party, Cowles adds, "Even a lot of the women who work there are part of the system. Either you go along with the program, in which case you're part of this salacious, trashy undercurrent among the workers there, or if you say anything about it, you're labeled as a troublemaker, as unstable, as a snitch and a rat. And they threaten that if you get into a jam with inmates, they won't be there to back you up."
The sendoff wasn't the first time the deputy warden's behavior has come under fire. One of the witnesses in the Haberman case, a veteran DOC employee who worked with Paolino at Fremont Correctional Facility in the 1980s, stated under oath that Paolino used a peephole in a false ceiling to spy on women in toilet stalls in the visitors' bathroom in order to arrange busts for smuggling drugs into the prison--and that he persisted in the practice despite a superior's order to stop.
Paolino has denied he ever did any such thing. But accounts of life at Arkansas Valley, offered by former employees who support Haberman or are contemplating lawsuits of their own, paint a picture of a male fiefdom--a place where testosterone cases shout "Hooters!" during training sessions and casually accuse women colleagues of performing oral sex on inmates; where heavyset female clerical staff are mysteriously transferred out of central administrative offices and replaced with shapelier models; and where Paolino himself was, on one occasion, spotted offering massages to secretaries during break time in the weight room.
The DOC's McDonough confirms that "disciplinary action was taken" as a result of the send-off party but declines to provide specifics. Another source claims that DOC director Ari Zavaras personally reviewed the videotape of the affair and reprimanded both Paolino and Marr. Whatever action was taken, it hasn't affected their job assignments; Marr is still the warden at Arkansas Valley, and Paolino is now the warden at Centennial Correctional Facility outside Canon City.
Disciplining the individuals directly involved in making Haberman's life "a living hell" is another matter. "We're not sure that litigation is over," says McDonough, adding that the state is still considering a possible appeal of the verdict.
And there's probably more to come. The department is already under a federal court stipulation to revise the way it handles matters relating to racial and sexual discrimination and must file progress reports with the court every sixty days. Other lawsuits are slowly making their way through the pipeline.
"The system was in very bad shape in the early 1990s with regard to mistreatment of minorities and females," says William Finger, who's represented several litigants in harassment and discrimination cases against the DOC. "There was clear underutilization of females, particularly at higher levels, and repeated stories of women being reluctant to come forward for fear of retaliation."
Finger believes the agency has improved in some respects, but like Cowles, he questions whether "zero tolerance" amounts to merely "paper compliance."
"The real question is why they didn't admit there was sexual harassment against Sandra Haberman and why they didn't support her," he says. "I don't believe DOC has done a very good job of policing itself.
