A woman who cleaned the Schuylkill County Courthouse says former Commissioner George Halcovage sexually harassed and assaulted her inside his office. She says other county officials knew she was alone with him after hours and never reported it.
Nineteen days after she reported him, the County rejected the cleaning company’s bid and her work at the Courthouse was over.
Those allegations are in a federal lawsuit filed Sept. 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania against Schuylkill County, Halcovage, County Administrator Gary Bender, Human Resources Director Anthony Kern, and Equal Employment Opportunity Officer Elaine Gilbert. Bender, Kern and Gilbert are each sued in their individual capacities.
The suit comes about 18 months after the county agreed to a $3.2 million settlement to resolve similar sexual harassment claims brought by four other Jane Doe plaintiffs against Halcovage. He was a sitting commissioner when the conduct alleged in the new suit occurred. Halcovage was defeated in the Republican Party primary during his re-election bid in 2023. He’s never been charged criminally with any alleged harassment or assault from either lawsuit.
Doe v. Schuylkill County
Jane Doe 5 says she worked full time for a janitorial company that held the County’s Courthouse cleaning contract. The lawsuit calls her a W-2 employee of the company, which it does not name, and she is the one who prepared its bid to keep the work.
She contends the County was her employer or joint employer because officials controlled how she worked. The County decided which offices she cleaned and when, issued her an electronic access card, provided the trash bags and a storage area for her employer’s supplies, and directed her day-to-day. Halcovage once told her to dust Bender’s desk because Bender would appreciate it, she says, and she did.
The company had cleaned the Courthouse for about 15 years and its last contract ran from Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2023. Jane Doe 5 began cleaning the Commissioners’ Suite in 2023.
Halcovage started by asking about her family, she says, mentioning her grandmother and her late father. She alleges he invoked her father to build her trust so she would be less likely to report him.
The comments then turned to her appearance, according to the lawsuit. She says he called her a “knockout,” told her “you have me completely blown away,” and later said she was “a smoke show.” He asked for her number by holding up an iPad with a note on it while another man sat in his office, requested her as a Facebook friend, and handed her his phone and told her to add herself on Snapchat, she says. Jane Doe 5 alleges he chose Snapchat because its messages disappear, making it harder for her to report him or back up a report, and that he asked her repeatedly to send him photographs.
Her allegations include physical contact, too. On one occasion, when she came to empty the trash can under his desk, she says Halcovage moved his chair back only slightly, leaving her no room to reach the can without reaching toward his body, and touched her between her legs while dropping papers into a bag she was holding open. She alleges the contact was intentional and not incidental to handing over the trash.
On Nov. 28, 2023, Halcovage sent her a Snapchat message asking whether she was in the Courthouse yet, then messaged and called repeatedly until she answered, according to the lawsuit. She arrived about 4:45 p.m.
She says Halcovage commented on everything she had in her hands, and that she was holding a soundbar she used to play music while she cleaned. When she mentioned she kept it in her bra because she worried he would think she was not working if her hands were full, she says, Halcovage told her to put it in her bra in front of him. She declined several times, she says, and he answered “just do it” and “my daughters do it all the time” until she complied. Jane Doe 5 says she was so distraught she believes she blacked out, and that Halcovage told her at some point around then, “I see you on camera.”
All of that happened after 5 p.m., when Halcovage was not permitted in the building, she says. A consent decree entered Jan. 17, 2023, between the County and the U.S. Dept. of Justice required the County to enforce restrictions it had already placed on him by letter in May 2021, limiting him to the Courthouse on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. The decree grew out of the previous Jane Doe lawsuit.
The consent decree also required supervisors to report harassment they observed or learned about to the County’s EEO officer, and defined it broadly enough to cover conduct before it becomes a hostile work environment.
Kern saw Jane Doe 5 in the Commissioners’ Suite the evening of Nov. 28 as he left the Human Resources office, saw that the person she was with was Halcovage, and left without checking whether she was OK, her lawsuit alleges. She says Bender saw her alone with Halcovage on multiple occasions earlier in 2023, walking past the office after 5 p.m. and saying “see you tomorrow” on his way out.
She also alleges Halcovage used her employer’s bid for the next cleaning contract as a reason to see her. He asked her for a copy of the bid packet in late October 2023 and had her meet him at a Dunkin’, she says, then asked for it again in November and met her in a Staples parking lot, where she says he told her to get in his car and told her she was beautiful before discussing what rates he believed would win the bid.
On Dec. 1, 2023, Jane Doe 5 emailed Bender, Kern, and commissioners Gary Hess and Boots Hetherington to report that she had been subjected to sexual harassment and sexual assault by Halcovage. Her employer submitted its bid for the next contract the same day.
Before the bid went in, she says, she told Halcovage she could not get the certified check required as bid security. She alleges he told her to submit it anyway, said his insurance company might be able to get the check, and said he would talk to Bender about securing the contract for her without it.
The lawsuit does not say whether Jane Doe 5 has an ownership stake in the company. It describes her handling the bid throughout, and quotes a Dec. 14 email in which she asked the County about the decision so she could “plan and prepare her staff.”
Gilbert contacted her Dec. 4 and met with her Dec. 5, when she provided a written statement. Jane Doe 5 alleges the investigation violated the consent decree from the start, because Gilbert reported to Bender and Bender reported to the Commissioners, including Halcovage, and the decree bars anyone under the alleged harasser’s direct or indirect supervision from investigating. She says she asked in writing for someone who did not report to Halcovage to handle it, and that Gilbert told her she would leave that decision to Bender or Kern. No outside investigator ever contacted her, according to the lawsuit, and the County never told her what came of her report.
Later on Dec. 5, she went to clean the Commissioners’ Suite and found Bender there alone, the lawsuit says. She told him she was upset about what Halcovage had done and began to cry. She says she asked him, “Why did you let him here still?” and that Bender replied, “He is elected by the people,” “I’m sorry that this happened. I feel guilty. I can’t believe this happened under my nose,” “[Halcovage] has a sickness,” and “it will never happen again.”
She emailed Bender on Dec. 14 and again on Dec. 19, asking when the County would decide on the bid, and got no answer either time, she says. On the evening of Dec. 19, she and a coworker could not clean the Commissioners’ Suite because the lights were off and the door was locked.
She wrote to Bender again the next morning. The silence had left her and the company’s employees feeling “anxious, stressed, and ignored,” she wrote, adding that she “was never made to feel this way before reporting” Halcovage’s behavior toward her and that she was “beginning to regret [her] decision of speaking up.” Bender never responded, according to the lawsuit.
On Dec. 20, 19 days after her report, Commissioners awarded the Courthouse cleaning contract to Diversified Maintenance-RWS LLC at a price of $143,412.32 and rejected her employer’s bid. Halcovage stepped out of the meeting before the vote and was recorded absent. Hess made the motion and Hetherington seconded it, and both voted to approve. Both had received her Dec. 1 report. The company’s contract ended Dec. 31, 2023, and so did her work at the Courthouse.
In this Coal Region Canary clip from the Dec. 20 Commissioners Work Session meeting, you can see Halcovage inform then-Chairman Hetherington that he needs to excuse himself from the meeting as he points at his phone, just minutes prior to the vote on the cleaning contract. Halcovage then exits the meeting and goes into the Hoffman conference room behind the Commissioners board room. He returns shortly after the contract vote.
Jane Doe 5 alleges the rejection was retaliation that cost her the income she earned at the Courthouse. Any argument that the bid failed for lack of bid security is a pretext, she says, because Halcovage himself told her to submit it without the certified check and said he would resolve the issue.
This lawsuit ultimately reached the federal court nearly three years after the events. Jane Doe 5 filed a charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Jan. 17, 2024, which was also filed with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. Her attorney asked the EEOC to issue a notice of right to sue in letters dated July 24, Sept. 2, and Sept. 16 of this year. The agency never issued one, according to the lawsuit, and she is entitled to sue anyway because more than 180 days have passed since she filed.
Her six-count complaint charges the County with discrimination, hostile work environment and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and with discrimination under the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act. A fifth count alleges retaliation under the state law against all five defendants. A sixth count alleges Halcovage, Bender, Kern and Gilbert each aided and abetted the discrimination, which state law allows against individual employees.
Jane Doe 5 is represented by Catherine Lowry of the Derek Smith Law Group in Philadelphia. She is seeking back pay and front pay, compensatory damages for emotional pain and humiliation, liquidated damages, interest, attorney fees, a judgment that the County and the officials broke federal and state law, and a jury trial.
Editor’s Note: The plaintiff is suing under the name Jane Doe. Coal Region Canary is referring to her as Jane Doe 5 because four other women sued the county as Jane Does in the earlier case. The lawsuit does not name her employer, saying that identifying the company would identify her.
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