Killer awarded $65,000 in ‘sex slave’ suit
The #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and abuse has taken an unusual gender and geographic turn, with a convicted murderer in San Quentin State Prison being awarded $65,000 in damages by a federal jury after being turned into a “sex slave” by a female prison staffer.
“This type of claim probably would not have been taken as seriously five years ago, but now people are willing to challenge authority and take into account the claims of people dispossessed by society,” said Ben Rothstein, an attorney at San Francisco’s high-powered Keker, Van Nest & Peters law firm who, with co-counsel Julia Allen, represented the prisoner plaintiff pro bono.
The abuse allegations date to 2010 when William Cordoba, who is serving a life sentence for a 1981 seconddegree murder and robbery in San Francisco, was assigned a job as a clerk in the office of Silvia Pulido ,a vocational janitorial instructor at San Quentin.
In his lawsuit, Cordoba, 57, claimed that Pulido coerced him into trading sex acts for her promise to help him obtain a lawyer to get out of prison.
After months of being her “sex slave,” Cordoba learned
that Pulido was also involved with another inmate, his suit said. When he tried to break it off, Pulido allegedly retaliated, accusing him of disciplinary violations that landed him in solitary confinement for nine months.
Cordoba said the whole ordeal led him to undergo psychiatric therapy. He sued Pulido in 2012, alleging cruel and unusual punishment. In court, Pulido’s attorney challenged his claims as delusional.
After a six-day trial last month in U.S. District Court in Oakland, an eight-member jury awarded Cordoba $15,414 in compensatory damages and $50,000 in punitive damages.
The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was not named as a defendant, and Pulido was represented by private counsel. However, a state corrections lawyer was on hand for settlement talks and the trial.
Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Bill Sessa declined to say who will pay the judgment or otherwise discuss the case. Pulido, who has since taken a job as a business services officer at Napa State Hospital, did not return our call seeking comment. Neither did her attorneys.
The case is a win not just for Cordoba, but also for his lawyers, who are eligible to collect attorney fees for having won the unusual civil rights suit. Title tilt: In another move to “level the playing field,” London Breed’s mayoral rivals are calling for the Board of Supervisors president’s designation as “acting mayor” to be struck from the June ballot.
“It’s not correct, and I believe she had a duty and obligation to change it,” said mayoral candidate and former Supervisor Angela Alioto.
Jim Stearns, a consultant for former mayoral candidate and exstate Sen. Mark Leno, said the campaign might go to court to challenge Breed’s “grossly misleading” job description.
Breed’s campaign lawyer, Jesse Mainardi, said that under San Francisco election rules, “the job you have at the Jan. 9 filing deadline is the title that goes before your name on the ballot.”
Breed was both acting mayor and a district supervisor when the filing deadline for the June 5 mayoral election closed — a dual position she still held when the window for public review of the job titles ended Jan. 22. The next day, her supervisor colleagues chose Mark Farrell to be mayor until June.
Breed initially asked to be designated only as acting mayor, but after discussion with Elections Director John Arntz, the dual title “supervisor/acting mayor” was agreed on.
The progressive supervisors who chose Farrell worried that letting the moderate Breed remain acting mayor would give her the advantage of incumbency in the mayoral race. Her rivals still feel that way, now that she’s a “former” acting mayor.
“Former doesn’t count,” Alioto said. “I’m a former supervisor and a former president of the Board of Supervisors, but on the ballot I’m listed as a ‘civil rights attorney.’ ”
Leno, a former city supervisor, state assemblyman and state senator, is listed as a “small businessman.”
The ballots don’t go to the printer until late March, giving everyone plenty of time to take the matter before a judge.
Because so far, Breed isn’t budging. Friend to all: The San Francisco Police Officers Association may be one of the big winners in the recent mayoral shakeup at City Hall.
Since the fatal shooting of Mario Woods by San Francisco police in December 2015, relations between the union and City Hall have been chilly. They may warm up under interim Mayor Mark Farrell, who was one of the few supervisors who remained close to the union and supported its call to arm officers with Tasers.
The union’s top political consultant, Nathan Ballard, is an old friend of Farrell’s. He’s taking an unpaid leave of absence from the police association job to advise Farrell through the end of his term in June.
“Public safety could not be happier with Farrell,” Ballard said. “He has always been the one supervisor they don’t have to lobby — he understands all their issues.”
The first issue on the table is not a public safety question, but rather the union’s contract. It expires June 30.