Complaint: DuPage judge tried to retaliate against accusers
A DuPage County judge knowingly told falsehoods to authorities about firing a gun into his neighbors’ apartment and attempted to retaliate against two female court employees who made “substantiated” claims of sexual harassment against him, according to a complaint filed by a judge’s inquiry board on Thursday.
The complaint lodged by Illinois’ Judicial Inquiry Board revealed that investigators found “credible and substantiated complaints” that Circuit Court Judge Patrick O’Shea acted in a manner that “met the definition of sexual harassment” as defined by Illinois Supreme Court rules.
O’Shea’s attorney, Adrian Vukovich, denied the claims made in the complaint and said he looked forward to proving the judge’s innocence at a hearing before the Illinois Courts Commission.
“Judge O’Shea is a good judge and an honorable person,” Vukovich said. “We don’t think because there’s some kind of personality conflict between people, that amounts to misconduct by a judge. The truth will show that Judge O’Shea has not done anything improper.”
In March, O’Shea was found not guilty of misdemeanor reckless conduct. Prosecutors had alleged that he fired a .38-caliber revolver through the wall of his apartment in Wheaton and into the adjoining unit in September 2017. But Kane County Judge Keith Johnson ruled that because no one was home, no one was endangered, and tossed out the case halfway through the trial.
Despite the acquittal, Johnson criticized O’Shea for what Johnson said were misleading statements to authorities during that investigation.
The judicial inquiry complaint says O’Shea gave statements to police “he knew to be false and misleading at the time” and “brought his judicial office into disrepute.”
O’Shea first said he accidentally made a hole in the wall with a screwdriver or nail gun, then when pressed said a relative must have discharged the weapon before eventually admitting he accidentally fired the gun himself, according to the complaint.
Later, in front of the judicial inquiry board, O’Shea falsely stated that he “volunteered to the detectives in the first instance” that he discharged the gun, according to the board.
O’Shea, who previously served on the DuPage County Board, was suspended from the bench after the misdemeanor charge in October of last year, and has been assigned to administrative duties since the notguilty verdict.
Just two days before the alleged gun incident, an investigation by another judge and the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts concluded that two female court employees “both raised credible and substantiated complaints of conduct by (O’Shea) that met the definition of sexual harassment” by Illinois Supreme Court policy, the complaint states.
According to the complaint, two women, within five days of each other in August 2017, separately reported that O’Shea, while in close proximity, “made comments about (their) appearance that made (them) uncomfortable,” in one instance in an elevator and in one when O’Shea and the other women were alone in his courtroom.
When O’Shea was notified of the findings that an investigation had substantiated the women’s claims, “he was specifically admonished that he was prohibited by the policy from retaliating against any complainant,” according to the complaint.
But 10 days later, O’Shea filed a formal complaint against one of the women for what he called her unacceptable knowledge, skills, timeliness and motivation on the job, as well as challenging her sexual harassment claim, the judicial inquiry board complaint states.
In testimony before the board in April 2018, O’Shea said he wanted his complaint in the employee’s file in case she ever tried to file a similar complaint.
“She tries to pull this stuff, ‘Oh, I didn’t like it. He came too close to me. I didn’t like that he said a compliment to me,’” O’Shea testified, according to the complaint. “If she tries that with regard to any kind of work situation, I think they’ll look at this and say, ‘Well, we have to determine whether or not it really was what she O'Shea said or whether it was just another excuse to get out of the situation she’s in.’”
The inquiry board wrote that it considered O’Shea’s complaint a form of retaliation that violated state Supreme Court rules. The complaint alleged that O’Shea had taken “similar actions” only the year before.
According to the judicial inquiry board, another judge reported to supervisors in May 2016 that O’Shea had made comments to a woman in the office that made the judge and the woman uncomfortable.
That led to an investigation by the presiding judge and the state judicial office that also concluded claims of sexual harassment were substantiated, the complaint states.
O’Shea responded by dramatically reducing the amount of work he gave to the employee and forbidding her from entering his office, according to the complaint. He also complained to the woman’s supervisor she had raised her voice against him; that he did not like her tattoos, which he said might be gang-related; that she was “nasty and loud;” and that he wanted her fired and wanted to sue her, the complaint states.
O’Shea “told the supervisor he would hold (the woman) in contempt and have her taken into custody if he had to,” according to the complaint, which added that O’Shea said he was writing down “every single thing (she) does wrong” for her personnel file
The complaint alleged that O’Shea “abused his position in a manner that compromised the integrity and public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary.”
O’Shea will have a chance to file a written response to the allegations, and ultimately to get a hearing.