Two county employees file sexual harassment suit

Two employees of Faulkner County’s Office of Emergency Management filed a sexual harassment lawsuit Thursday after the county judge refused to fire the office’s director despite advice from two attorneys who separately investigated the allegations for the county.

Julie Woodward and Mary Johnson filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Little Rock against the county, County Judge Jim Baker, County Administrator Tom Anderson and Emergency Management Director Shelia Bellott.

The plaintiffs are among four employees who have filed complaints with the county alleging sexual harassment by Bellott. Attorney Tom Mickel said the other two workers may sue later. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission notified both plaintiffs of their right to sue after they also filed complaints with that agency.

The county’s civil attorney, David Hogue, first investigated the employees’ complaints. He has said he advised Baker to fire Bellott but that Baker instead first chose to have her work from her home rather than in the Emergency Management Office with the four employees. Baker later assigned Bellott to work from an office in the county’s old courthouse, about five miles from the office where the other employees still work. The lawsuit said Bellott now is allowed to communicate by phone with just one employee, Tyler Lachowsky, who relays information to the others.

Bellott has not been suspended or placed on leave since the complaints were filed.

The defendants’ “complaints-handling procedure is a sham,” the lawsuit said.

Hogue said he had not seen the lawsuit as of late Thursday afternoon and could not comment on it. He said he would seek a copy to give to the law firm that will represent the county and its officials.

The Quorum Court asked now-former Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland to conduct a second investigation of the sexual harassment allegations. Neither Hiland nor Baker released those findings, but the lawsuit said Hiland also recommended Bellott’s dismissal. Hiland has since left that office and is the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

Hiland also found that Bellott “acted punitively toward all the OEM employees, including [Woodward and Johnson], by requiring them to fill out forms that the County itself discouraged,” the lawsuit said. A few weeks after the complaints were filed, Bellott told the employees to complete a form each day, documenting every detail of the day, including phone calls and emails made and received — forms they had not been required to complete previously, the complaint said.

The lawsuit referred to Hogue and Hiland by their position titles, not by name.