Sunday, May 04, 2008

Columbus Dispatch: Simpson ignored sexual harassment complaints

An article in today's Columbus Dispatch indicates Edgar Simpson, at the time chief of staff to Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann took no action to handle sexual harassment complaints and showed no inclination to do so.

Simpson, the former editor of the Joplin Globe, was forced to resign his $110,000 a year job Friday after results of an internal investigation were released:

By early March, when Stankoski and Stout decided to voice their sexual-harassment complaints to the human-resources office, they were met with much the same reaction Aranda had faced months earlier: a willingness to listen, but no efforts to do anything.

Simpson's testimony confirmed that nothing was done about the complaints from March 7 through March 31, when the women were told they would have to make their complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity officer within the attorney general's office.

Even then, Dann's administration did nothing to investigate the complaints until after The Dispatch story was published on April 6.

Espy, a seasoned attorney, former Columbus City Council member and state senator, was clearly frustrated by what he heard as testimony proceeded.

To Simpson, he said, "These allegations have been known for some time by you, Joyce (Chapple, chief operating officer), Leo and to some extent, Marc. But why wasn't he ever disciplined? Why was he always just talked to? The average employee would not have had that many chances with the allegations that he had been drinking and going out with employees, being their boss, their manager."

"Senator," Simpson replied, "I don't have a good explanation."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess this is a really good time for Simpson to come back to the Globe.

Anonymous said...

"I don't have a good explanation."

Hey, Ed ... if one of your reporters said that, would you have accepted that as an excuse?

No, of course you wouldn't.

I'm curious what makes you think it was an option in this case?