Hostile work environment claims
Ex-administrative assistant details allegations
TUCSON – Five days before University of Arizona football coach Rich Rodriguez was abruptly fired, his former administrative assistant filed a multimillion-dollar claim accusing him of sexually harassing her and creating a hostile work environment.
The allegations included forcing her to keep secrets about Rodriguez’s extramarital affair and inappropriate behavior toward her.
The notice of claim, filed with the state Attorney General’s Office by an attorney representing Melissa Wilhelmsen and her husband, Jason, seeks $7.5 million in damages from Rodriguez and his wife.
The claim was filed Dec. 28, the day after Arizona played its last game and the day the university said that an investigation into harassment allegations against Rodriguez had been completed.
The nine-page claim by the Wilhelmsens is a precursor to a lawsuit. The Arizona Republic obtained a copy of the document Tuesday night.
The claim alleges that Melissa Wilhelmsen, who worked for Rodriguez from late 2011 to August 2017, felt constant pressure to hide Rodriguez’s extramarital affair from his wife. She said she, along with two others on the football staff, referred to themselves as the “Triangle of Secrecy.”
She described several occasions in which Rodriguez’s actions and words made her particularly uncomfortable, including walking past her shirtless in his underwear, trying to kiss her and asking her to come to his house alone to assist him with his dog.
The university, in a letter about his firing signed by President Robert C. Robbins and athletics director Dave Heeke, said it had hired the Phoenix law firm of Cohen Dowd Quigley to “conduct a comprehensive investigation” in October after a former employee in the athletics department alleged that Rodriguez harassed her.
The investigation finished Dec. 28 and found that the original harassment allegations against “could not be substantiated based on the evidence and witnesses available. However, Arizona Athletics did become aware of information, both before and during the investigation, which caused it to be concerned with the direction and climate of the football program,” the letter said.
The university said the former employee declined multiple requests to participate in the investigation into her allegations and was “unwilling to turn over communications that she alleged provided support for her allegations.”
The university said its decision to fire Rodriguez was based on several factors, including the “direction and climate of our football program.”
Rodriguez released a statement Tuesday night calling the harassment claims “baseless and false.”
He said he was “deeply disappointed to learn by email this evening that the University of Arizona is buying out my contract.”
He admitted to having a consensual extramarital affair with a woman not affiliated with the university and added he was working to regain the trust of his wife and children.
The Wilhelmsens’ claim alleges Rodriguez was a demanding boss, calling “at all hours of the night just to change travel plans or make some other requests which were only emergencies to him.”
Rodriguez had Wilhelmsen get a sideline pass for his girlfriend for a November 2015 game against Southern California. His wife also was on the sideline during that game, and Wilhelmsen had to stand between the two women to avoid a confrontation, the claim says.
Wilhelmsen said Rodriguez’s wife in May 2016 asked her to lunch, “which became a 3-hour interrogation of sorts to find out what Melissa knew about Rodriguez’s flirting and promiscuity.”
Rodriguez’s personal behavior toward Wilhelmsen led her first to seek, unsuccessfully, a job in another university position and later to resign her job as the coach’s assistant, the claim says. Among the allegations:
The coach called her into his office in January 2017 when he began discussing his marital problems and then grabbed her, “embraced her, touched the side of her breast, and tried to kiss her.” She managed to pull away. Two weeks later, he called her back to his office and said he wanted to “take care of her.” Rodriguez handed her $300 in cash, but she refused the money.
Rodriguez asked Wilhelmsen to get him underwear from the equipment area. After she found a male staff member to bring them to him, Rodriguez told her how “his preferred style of underwear ‘visually enhanced’ his genitalia when worn.”
A coaching assistant made a comment that when Wilhelmsen raised money for the football program she did it by rubbing her breasts on donors. Rodriguez laughed at the comment.
Rodriguez asked Wilhelmsen to come to his home alone to help him with his dog. Wilhelmsen texted the coach that she and her husband could come, but she would not come alone. “You know I love you,” Rodriguez texted back, with a kissing-face emoji.
Wilhelmsen’s attorney, Augustine B. Jimenez III, said via email he and his clients would not be commenting beyond what was in the claim.