Posted on 05/16/2002 7:30:29 AM PDT by Glutton
Woman files sexual harassment suit against conservative contributor
By WILLIAM McCALL
The Associated Press
5/15/02 9:38 PM
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A woman who worked as a translator for Loren Parks has filed a $6 million federal lawsuit claiming the financial backer of conservative causes pressured her into having sex with him on trips and sent employees sexually explicit e-mails.
Maria Guerin spent four years working at Parks Medical Electronics Inc., the suburban Aloha equipment company Parks founded in 1963 based on medical devices he invented.
Guerin, 56, filed the lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court in Portland after a complaint she had filed against Parks with the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries was withdrawn in order to pursue the case in court.
Efforts to reach Parks for comment were unsuccessful and no attorney was listed in court documents.
Guerin's attorney, Craig Crispin, said Parks has been notified of the lawsuit but has not responded. Under the rules of federal procedure, Parks has 20 days from the May 9 date the suit was filed, Crispin said.
The original complaint was filed last November with the Bureau of Labor & Industries, an agency headed by state Labor Commissioner Jack Roberts, a Republican candidate for governor.
Roberts knows that Parks has been a Republican campaign contributor but the commissioner was never told about the complaint against Parks because it was handled as a routine investigation by agency staff and withdrawn, said Chuck Deister, campaign spokesman for Roberts.
"The commissioner is not brought in until it's time for a decision," Deister said. "In this case, the party withdrew the complaint, so there's nothing unusual in the fact that the commissioner didn't know anything about it."
He added that Roberts has not sought any campaign money from Parks.
In the Bureau of Labor & Industries complaint, Guerin alleged that Kevin Mannix, another Republican candidate for governor, once witnessed Parks "look up and down my body in a lewd manner."
The incident occurred in July 2001, according to the complaint, when Parks summoned Guerin to his office to meet Mannix during a fund-raising visit. The Mannix campaign has received $50,000 from Parks.
Mannix, who is an attorney, also briefly represented Parks to defend him against Guerin's initial claim.
A spokeswoman for Mannix said Wednesday that he could not comment because of his attorney-client relationship with Parks.
In her Bureau of Labor & Industries complaint, Guerin said she felt pressured to have sex with the 75-year-old Parks because a female co-worker who spurned his advances was subjected to "increasing hostility from other employees" that led to the co-worker's resignation.
The complaint alleges Parks first forced her to have sex while she was "trapped" aboard a cruise ship in the Baltic Sea in June 1999.
"I did not want to have sex with him, but felt I had no choice," Guerin said in the complaint.
In response, lawyers for Parks said Guerin's claims were fictional. They also produced a "contract to have a sexual relationship" that Guerin allegedly signed before the Baltic cruise.
"We will be sleeping together on the trip for our mutual pleasure," the statement reads. "Neither of us is obligated to continue an intimate relationship following the trip. All this has been discussed with my supervisor, Claudine Gilmore."
The response was filed by Portland attorney Corbett Gordon but a spokesman said the law firm no longer represents Parks.
The claims made in the complaint filed with the Bureau of Labor & Industries are repeated in the federal lawsuit filed last week, which also said Guerin "submitted to Parks' sexual advances out of fear for her safety and her job."
Guerin claims in the suit that Parks placed false documents in her personnel file, including the "alleged release of liability."
The suit also claims Parks sent repeated e-mails to Guerin and her co-workers bearing "sexually explicit jokes, pornographic materials, misogynist humor and graphic photographs of deformed female sexual organs and female amputations."
The lawsuit also notes that Parks maintains an Internet site "devoted to the practice of a type of hypnotherapy" which offers relief to people "who believe they suffer from a variety of mental and emotional disorders, including sexual dysfunction."
The complaint says that Parks used the site to advertise "his ability to 'train' women by the use of his voice to be 'sexual machines,' offered explicit tales of his successes with a number of women" and "stated that most of his 'sexual superstars' were foreign-born women."
Since 1994, Parks has contributed more than $1.2 million to conservative leaders and causes, according to Janice Thompson of the Money in Politics Research Action Project.
She noted that Parks gave Mannix $175,000 in his unsuccessful bid for attorney general in 2000 and gave $204,000 to two political action committees, including one organized by Mannix.
Thompson also said that Parks has given $258,000 -- or almost $1 of every $4 -- donated so far to petition signature-gathering campaigns for ballot initiatives this year.
"We will be sleeping together on the trip for our mutual pleasure," the statement reads. "Neither of us is obligated to continue an intimate relationship following the trip. All this has been discussed with my supervisor, Claudine Gilmore."
How romantic.
Maria Guerin spent four years working at Parks Medical Electronics Inc., the suburban Aloha equipment company Parks founded in 1963 based on medical devices he invented.
Top billing has to go to the fact that he gave to conservative causes, not that he is a successful inventor of medical devices that may have saved this biased writers sorry @$$!
Things just get wierder and wierder.
FMCDH
God knows, if a mugger is registered, he's a Democrat.
In Eugene, the newspaper - we call "the republican Guard," even is actually left to centrist in political outlook - calls anarchist; "self discribed anarchists."
Hey, hate anachists if it is your trip to, but these gals and guys calling themselves are indeed anarchists.
At any Lane County election central scene at the Fairgrounds, Conservatives hunker down to a few safe tables while the Greens and Demos rage with everything but a mosh pit.
The title choser of this piece was making anti- Conservative hay. And as I point our with other examples, this is a fun past-time in the U.S. of A.
Goddess/God help us. ;-)
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