WARWICK, RI — The city’s attempts to address an 18-month campaign of sexual harassment by employees of the water department were already off to a shaky start before Warwick filed a response this week to the lawsuit filed over the situation — and its latest move only raises more questions about Mayor Frank Picozzi’s ability to handle such serious matters.
In its response to the case brought by former Warwick Water Division employee Bree Boulais in U.S. District Court, the city admitted to some of the sexually inappropriate messages sent by Water Division staffers while denying at least one other.
This kind of selective admission about what water division employees wrote and said doesn’t excuse the behavior that Boulais says she brought to her supervisors, nor the pathetic response she reports getting from her supervisors and city officials that ultimately led her to resign from the city last October.
Boulais’s suit identifies Water Division Business Manager Michael St. Pierre and Chief Terry DiPetrillo, in particular, as engaging in inappropriate sexual speech and behavior, with DiPetrillo once suggesting, in front of other staffers, that they should all have sex with Boulais.
DPW Director Eric Earls is also reported in the suit as conducting a “character investigation” into Terry DiPetrillo’s brother, Michael, who was suspended for 10 days after an incident where Boulais said he threw an angle grinder at her.
When Boulais attempted to explain the abusive environment in the Water Department and include Terry DiPetrillo’s explicitly sexual statement, the suit explains, Earls told Boulais “Bree, this is irrelevant. Move along, we all have places we need to be.”
And that was just the first nine months after Boulais started reporting how she’d been treated.
Between then and the following August, the suit explains, St. Pierre invited Boulais out for drinks and suggested that he had romantic feelings for her before sending her an apology, while Terry DiPetrillo engaged in violent behavior, including falsely claiming that he had a restraining order against Boulais for testifying about his assault of another Water Division employee.
What this entire situation proves is that city officials, at the very least, didn’t handle Boulais’s reports with anything approaching the seriousness she deserved — and, if the case is decided in her favor, it would also show that they didn’t understand a few basic lessons about sexual harassment:
Lesson #1: Responsibility starts at the top
From beginning to end, Boulais’s lawsuit is an account of exactly how city officials should not to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct.
That also includes Picozzi’s slow-walk in releasing the city’s sexual harassment policy and records of when water division employees and city officials received the policy and attended mandatory training, which WarwickPost.com received after filing a public records request with the city.
By the time Boulais was forced to resign her job and sue the city, Picozzi had ample opportunity to learn about this situation — and to deal with it properly.
It’s simply no excuse to say that his subordinates covered up the illegal behavior, and in fact that counts against Picozzi even more, because sexual harassment typically only continues in places where the perpetrators feel they’re protected from consequences.
Lesson #2: It’s about protecting the victim, not the perpetrators
From St. Pierre in the water division to city Human Resources Director Steven Rotondo, Boulais’s suit alleges that no one did the right thing about this situation, and from her narrative, they apparently acted as if they didn’t think they’d be held accountable for getting it wrong.
And, in fact, they have so far been proven true: No one has been fired or suspended as of the publication of this commentary.
The core issue in this situation is, sexual harassment policies are specifically written to treat the victim as a credible party and to thoroughly investigate such incidents, no matter where they lead.
What Boulais’s suit describes is one man after another effectively telling her that her concerns were not valid and not worth their time to hear about or confirm — even worse, it recounts the environment within the water department growing ever more toxic and dangerous for her, including the hiring of a new employee who Boulais says also sexually harassed her.
Lesson #3: It’s never ‘one bad apple’
Sexual harassment of the kind that Boulais reported is often dismissed by apologists as the actions of one person, also known as the “one bad apple” argument.
But if there’s one common thread in nearly all sexual harassment cases, it’s that there are always more people involved, and Warwick’s employees and department heads named in Boulais’s suit certainly followed that trend.
Terry DePetrillo would never have thought he could suggest “running a train” on Boulais (slang for multiple men having sex with the same woman) if his supervisors had addressed his actions immediately and forcefully. He also would never have threatened retaliation against her or hired a new staffer who engaged in the same kind of sexually deviant behavior.
St. Pierre would never had considered expressing his attraction to his employee if he knew his bosses would enforce the laws and policies against such antics.
Earls would never have dismissed Boulais’s complaints so heartlessly if he knew that the city’s priority was the safety and wellbeing of every employee.
And while some may want to blame “the unions” for preventing the city from aggressively clearing out staffers who disregard the city’s sexual harassment policy, the worst the city could face is a legal battle — in which case, it would be far better to see Warwick fight that battle than against protecting the woman they harmed.
Conclusion: If Bree Boulais wins her case, it would prove that the City of Warwick utterly and comprehensively failed to help one of its employees who had been subjected to the worst kind of violent and sexually degrading behavior, and Mayor Picozzi’s continuing failure — or, worse, his refusal — to take decisive and forceful action before it reached this point casts serious doubt on how seriously he takes his obligation to provide safe working environments for public workers.
Author: Warwick Post Staff
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