HARASSMENT

of Garow’s harassment and finally quit, taking a job with Lego. Now, she’s a waitress and works in student services for the New England Tractor Trailer Training School.

She’s happy in her new job. But she’s furious about the circumstances that led her there.

“I’m not there and he still is and that really pisses me off,” Bianco said. “He didn’t get much of a punishment and it happens all the time and these guys get away with it and it’s just not right. And yeah, there’s a lot of people that do talk about it, but can you imagine how many people don’t talk about it that it’s happening to?”

Like Bianco, Maille wanted to leave, but she too needed a new job first. She wasn’t set on staying with the judicial branch, but with more than a decade of service toward her retirement, she wanted to continue as a state employee.

When the deputy clerk position opened in the Juvenile Matters court in 2015, she applied for the promotion. She’d been training for it with Garow, and she was qualified for the job.

She interviewed before a panel of four people. Garow was on the panel.

She ignored his presence and felt confident the interview had gone well. But then he approached her in the office. The interaction is documented and verified as “findings of fact” in the judicial branch investigation.

“Lynne what are you going to do for me if I get you this job,” Garow said.

Maille said she was appalled and told Garow that if she were hired, she’d get the job on her own merit.

When an offer didn’t come, she went to Garow’s boss and asked what she could have done better.

“Nothing,” she said he told her. “You did great, but we went with someone else.”

Since filing the lawsuit in June, Maille has been out of the office on medical leave for a neck surgery. Even though Garow no longer works in the same office, she’s still afraid to go back to work. She’s afraid people will look at her differently now that her complaint is public.

“I’m really afraid to go back,” she said. “Every time I think about going back to work I get nervous, even though he’s not there anymore, because people are starting to find out. I don’t know which way they’re going to think about me. I still, when I think about having to go back, I get this fear in me.”

More than Maille

Together, Maille’s and the rest of the CHRO complaints reviewed by Hearst illustrate that harassment ranges from inappropriate comments, either directly or indirectly aimed at female employees, to blatant sexual assault, and often victims don’t know what to do, if they should speak up or who even to tell.

Maille worked within the judicial system and even she felt unsure of what to do, how to handle the harassment and where to turn when things got particularly bad.

While her complaint is not unique — she is far from the only person to have endured substantiated harassment at the hands of a powerful supervisor — her case shows just how pervasive ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination can be in the workplace.

Any workplace.

“It happens everywhere,” Ovrutsky said. “But I think in her case what’s really shocking is it’s the judicial branch. People go to the court system to fight for justice and ultimately achieve peace of mind and that they’re being heard and things in the workplace are going to be fixed, but here, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for Lynn.”

That’s why Maille finally came forward. She didn’t want to be the center of a federal court case against the Connecticut Judicial Branch. But she wanted people to know that harassment is everywhere, and she wanted to believe that if she came forward, she could help even just one woman avoid a similar situation.

“It’s the only reason I’m doing it,” Maille said. “It was a hard life the last 10 years. It needs to get out there that this happens everywhere.”