Settlement reached in sexual harassment

A federal judge has approved the settlement of an Oakland woman's lawsuit claiming she was sexually harassed by a California Highway Patrol officer while working with him on a morning-traffic broadcast.

Che Presant of Oakland gets $100,000 under the settlement agreement signed this month and filed this week by U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong of Oakland.

The pact also says Alltech Inc. -- the Tennessee-based information technology consulting firm for which Presant worked -- will provide sexual harassment training for all of its Northern California workers; review and revise as necessary its harassment policy and grievance procedure; and take other administrative steps. The agreement says it "shall not be construed as an admission of any violation" by Alltech.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had sued Alltech on Presant's behalf, claiming the company failed to take reasonable steps to keep Presant from being subjected to a sexually hostile work environment as a result of CHP officer Pedro "Pete" Barra's conduct.

EEOC regional attorney William Tamayo issued a statement saying the agency hopes this agreement underscores that the law requires employers to deal promptly with sexual harassment in the workplace, whether or not the harasser is the employer's own worker.

Presant had filed a separate federal civil lawsuit against the state, the CHP and Barra. This settlement closes that case, too.

Though officially working for different employers, Barra was Presant's de facto supervisor in her 2002-2003 work as a computer technician on a morning commuter television broadcast in which Barra -- a spokesman for the CHP's Golden Gate Division -- was the on-air personality.

"As a result of Pedro Barra's conduct, he was terminated by the CHP -- his conduct was so outrageous, he needed to be," said Presant's attorney, Oliver Jones of Oakland. "He continually groped her, made sexual advances toward her, unwanted touching."

Jones wouldn't comment on how the $100,000 settlement figure, gleaned from court documents, is being split among the cases' defendants, but he said his client is satisfied. "She's glad to put it all behind her."

CHP spokeswoman Jaime Coffee would neither confirm nor deny Thursday that Barra had been fired, but she did say he's no longer a CHP employee.

Neither Barra's attorney, Michael Rains of Pleasant Hill, nor the CHP's attorney, Denis Kenny of San Francisco, returned calls seeking comment Thursday.

Ironically, Jones noted, Presant worked near and knew Caltrans worker Eltora Charles, to whom an Alameda County Superior Court jury this month awarded $345,300 in her lawsuit against Caltrans. Charles worked a graveyard shift in the Caltrans Transportation Management Center in Oakland from 2001 to 2003, and was subjected to coworkers and CHP staffers watching sexually explicit movies -- including some pornography -- in the workplace.

But Presant's case didn't name Caltrans as a defendant, just as Charles' case didn't target the CHP or Barra, Jones said.

Contact Josh Richman at jrichman@angnewspapers.com.

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