Convoluted legal drama
grips police departmentKauai County faces a lawsuit by an ex-cop
after paying $100,000 to his female accuser
LIHUE >> Kauai County agreed to pay a little more than $100,000 to a former police dispatcher to settle a claim accusing the Police Department of coercing her to file a sexual harassment criminal complaint she did not want to file.
The Kauai County Council approved the settlement -- $86,000 in damages, $11,500 for psychological counseling and $3,000 to settle a worker's compensation claim -- one year ago in a closed-door session, but the Kauai County Attorney's Office repeatedly refused to make the amount public until last week. Normally, a settlement is public record as soon as the legislative body of the county or state approves it.
The release of information came less than a week after former police Lt. Alvin Seto filed a lawsuit against the county and police Chief George Freitas in U.S. District Court claiming he was wrongfully forced out of his job. Seto is seeking $750,000 in damages from the county.
The dispatcher's complaint, filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Jan. 3, 2002, accused Seto of coercing the dispatcher into filing the sexual harassment complaint against police officer Nelson Gabriel, who also was working as a dispatcher.
Gabriel was awaiting trial at the time on a charge that he sexually molested his stepdaughter. His wife planned to testify for Gabriel that her daughter had a long history of making false accusations against people who angered her.
Seto, who had investigated the case, wanted to use the sexual harassment complaint made by the dispatcher to persuade Gabriel's wife to change her testimony.
Freitas refused to allow Seto to use the sexual harassment complaint because it was confidential.
Gabriel was acquitted of the molestation charges.
Seto, in return, accused the chief of the criminal offense of hindering the prosecution of Gabriel. But the county Prosecutor's Office refused to file charges against Freitas. After suspending Freitas with pay for five months, the Kauai Police Commission found the hindering-prosecution allegation against the chief had no basis and threw it out.
Seto's lawsuit against Freitas, filed last week, makes the same hindering-prosecution allegation against Freitas.
The suit also means the Kauai County Attorney's Office must do a complete about-face.
Originally, the county attorney was representing Seto and the county against the charges made to the EEOC by the dispatcher. The settlement reached a year ago and made public last week ended that case.
And the county was defending the Kauai Police Commission against a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by Freitas, who claimed the commission's decision to investigate the charges Seto made against him deprived him of his right to a fair hearing guaranteed him in the County Charter. The court dismissed Freitas' lawsuit because he ultimately kept his job and received no punishment.
Now the county attorney is on the police chief's team representing Freitas against the lawsuit filed by Seto.
In the settlement in the dispatcher case, the county also agreed to give her another county job.
After he filed the lawsuit, Seto said in an interview that he had "run into the dispatcher's mother in a bookstore and advised her that her daughter could file a formal complaint." He insisted his role was no more than that.
But the dispatcher, in her sworn EEOC complaint, claims Seto coerced her into filing a formal complaint and making a telephone call to Gabriel in which he made some admissions. That call was taped by police with intent of playing it to Gabriel's wife. Freitas, on the advice of the county attorney, refused to allow Seto to use the tape.
Initially, the dispatcher said, when Gabriel made sexual advances to her, she went to her supervisor and asked only that she be placed on a different shift.
She said her supervisor went to Seto -- who worked in investigations and had no direct role with dispatchers -- and told him about the complaint.
"Lt. Seto, in turn, contacted my mother and began pressuring her to pressure me to file criminal charges against Mr. Gabriel," the dispatcher said in her EEOC complaint. "Seto was not even supposed to have known about my administrative complaint."
"Lt. Seto told my mother to be sure that she tell me to leave his name out of this investigation because he was not supposed to be involved," she said.
Seto sent two detectives to the dispatcher's father's house to obtain a formal complaint from her against Gabriel and to set up the recorded telephone conversation with Gabriel. "At this point I was afraid to resist the detectives. I was afraid that I would be fired or otherwise disciplined if I did not now fully yield to the criminal investigation," the dispatcher wrote.
She also said Seto had urged her to lie to the detectives, but she refused to do so.
"Lt. Seto urged me to tell the detectives that Nelson Gabriel had kissed me on my neck at work. He stated, 'Make sure you tell them about Gabriel kissing your neck.' The problem was that Nelson Gabriel had never kissed my neck, and I had never stated that he had done so.
"Being pressured to lie in a criminal case by a powerful uniformed man was a terrifying proposition. I did not lie in my statement to the detectives; however, I became sickened with anxiety," she wrote.
Gabriel was charged with misdemeanor harassment and found guilty. He was placed on probation and still is working as a police officer. Seto quit the force and now is working as a security supervisor at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range on Kauai.
Seto's attorney, Calvin Ikei, did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment.
