Georgetown College employee says she was fired after complaining of harassment by president
A second woman has alleged that she was sexually harassed by former Georgetown College President William Jones, and she has filed a lawsuit saying she was fired from her position at the school after coming forward.
Jones was fired Nov. 1, over allegations that he sexually assaulted a female college employee on a work trip and engaged in what the school termed “inappropriate behavior” with another female employee, according to a news release.
The woman who filed a lawsuit in Scott Circuit Court Tuesday says in the suit that on Nov. 1, she filed a formal complaint with the college, “reporting the ongoing sexual harassment that she had been subjected to” and notifying the school of the alleged sexual assault of another woman on a work trip that she did not attend.
She says she was placed on paid leave soon after she made the report and was involuntarily terminated from her job. Dec. 16.
The Herald-Leader typically does not identify victims of sexual harassment or assault.
Georgetown College said in a statement Friday evening that it does not comment on pending litigation.
“Georgetown College continues to uphold the highest of principles. Actions by individuals do not reflect the institution as a whole,” the statement reads.
The former employee says in the lawsuit that she met Jones in about 2016, when he was president of Bethany College in Kansas and she was the director of a child care center that served the college’s employees. She says Jones “used his influence” to get her husband a job at Bethany and to get her a raise in 2018, then began making “sexual advances and requests for sexual favors, to which Plaintiff felt compelled to and did submit to.”
The following year, she alleges, Jones helped get her a position at Bethany College, though she didn’t have a background in higher education, and she says he “continued to make unwelcome sexual advances and/or demands.” She says in the lawsuit that she was required to take overnight work trips with Jones while employed at Bethany, a small Christian school affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The month after Jones became president at Georgetown, the woman claims that he had a position created and arranged to have it offered to her at a “significant increase in pay and benefits,” a job she says she “reluctantly accepted.”
“After Plaintiff started at Georgetown, Jones continued to schedule overnight trips with Plaintiff, where he was continuing to make unwelcome sexual demands of Plaintiff,” the lawsuit states. “At times, Plaintiff attempted to persuade Jones to take his wife on these trips, but Jones insisted that she accompany him.”
The woman says that after she “firmly told Jones that she would not give in to his sexual demands any longer” last May, the harassment intensified.
“Jones frequently touched Plaintiff in a sexually intimate manner in both public and private places, hugging her, smacking her rear end, and otherwise finding excuses to be alone with her and to place his hands on her,” the suit alleges.
It says he also had a key to her home made without her knowledge.
The woman alleges that Jones tried to compel her to accompany him on an overnight work trip to Indianapolis on Oct. 18, but she was unable to go because of an event involving her son. Instead, the suit states, another female colleague was sent on the trip, and Jones allegedly assaulted that woman while they were out of town.
The woman who was allegedly assaulted on the trip later filed for and was granted an emergency protective order in Fayette County. She said in court documents that she notified police in Indianapolis after the assault in Jones’ hotel room.
The lawsuit states that on Oct. 23, Jones confronted the plaintiff, who had begun dating someone else, in a “loud and public argument” at Georgetown’s homecoming football game, and that he “expressly threatened” her employment at that time.
The employee he had allegedly assaulted in Indianapolis witnessed at least part of that exchange and asked to meet with the woman privately. At their meeting Oct. 27, the employee who was allegedly assaulted told the plaintiff about it, according to the lawsuit.
The woman who filed the lawsuit says she made a formal complaint to the school Nov. 1 and on Nov. 4 was interviewed by an attorney for Georgetown College who she believed was investigating the allegations.
Soon after, she says she was placed on paid leave, and she was fired Dec. 16. She is suing Georgetown College and Jones, alleging sexual harassment, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
She alleges that Jones “engaged in intentional or reckless conduct that was outrageous or intolerable” when he used “his position and authority to coerce Plaintiff into an unwelcome sexual relationship and by aggressively harassing and stalking Plaintiff after she expressly informed him that she would not continue the sexual relationship.”
