Two CEOs Face Harassment Complaints

While most of the nation’s workplace sexual harassment complaints are made by women, the number of men filing sexual harassment complaints has been increasing over recent years. Matt Harney, a former executive for the $403 million OnPath Federal Credit Union in Harahan, La., is among those men.

But what makes Harney’s case so unusual is that he claims not just one, but two former CEOs of OnPath, Mignhon Tourné and Sonya Jarvis, subjected him to numerous incidents of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation that created a hostile work environment leading to his termination. Based on these allegations prohibited by federal and state laws, Harney is suing the credit union.

OnPath filed an answer to Harney’s lawsuit denying his claims. Nevertheless, the credit union declared itself as a third-party plaintiff against Jarvis alleging that her actions were intentional and reckless, and breached her executive duties, damaging the credit union’s reputation that caused revenue losses and the lack of confidence among its 137 employees.

Tourné and Jarvis did not respond to CU Times’ email and phone requests for comment. Jarvis’ listed lawyer on court documents also did not return CU Times’ email and phone requests for comment.

Harney, who told his wife about these workplace issues that lasted for more than nine years, declined to comment when reached at his home.

He was hired in July 2010 as director of operations for what was then named ASI Federal Credit Union.

According to court documents, within the first few months after being hired, Tourné allegedly sexually harassed Harney. The documents included claims that she repeatedly told him the sexual acts she would do to him and that they should run away together even though she knew he was married.

“She would also go into explicit detail about her sex life,” Harney wrote in court documents.

Although he objected to these remarks and complained about them, Harney alleged credit union officials ignored him. In its court papers, OnPath denied these allegations.

In addition to the sexual harassment, Harney also alleged that many times over several years, Tourné forced him to take vacation days to work on her properties in Covington and Metairie, La.

“This was well known at ASI and I believe the CFO even reported it to the board,” Harney said in court documents. “This work was very labor intensive and included building houses, cutting down trees and fixing everything.”

On one occasion, a contractor delivered several tons of limestone to one of Tourné’s properties. After Tourné allegedly forced Harney to move the limestone by hand, he claimed that he was in excruciating pain and could barely walk while at work. Harney told his boss he had to go home to recover.

“Due to the pain, several employees of ASI had to help me to my car when I left,” Harney claimed. “Will (Harney’s boss) told Minghon about my injury and she immediately called me and told me not to say that I had hurt my back at her property but instead to say that I had hurt it at (my) home.”

Harney also alleged that the former CEO forced him to work on other properties, including a private school in New Orleans where she served on its board of directors.

Harney alleged this work he performed was discriminatory because Tourné did not force female employees to work on her properties.

In the fall of 2015, Tourné announced she would be stepping down in 2016 as CEO, a position she held for nine years. She also served on the credit union’s board of directors for 20 years. There was no specific reason given for her resignation, though she continued as CEO until her replacement was found and said she planned to serve as a consultant for the credit union.

In May 2016, Jarvis took over as CEO.

“In the beginning everything seemed fine and we were getting a lot of work done,” Harney said. “However, the sexual discrimination, harassment and retaliation continued. The first such incident with Sonya occurred when I walked into her office to discuss a project and she made a comment about my clothes that made me uncomfortable.”

Harney claimed Jarvis began setting up more meetings with him, during which she would tell him that “she had sexual fantasies” about Harney and about the sexual things she would do at night while she thought about him, and repeatedly told him about the sexual acts that she wanted to perform on him, according to court documents.

Harney also claimed Jarvis set up private Gmail accounts for him and her, which she allegedly used to send him sexually explicit emails and texts. Court documents also revealed that during an after-work hours dinner with Jarvis, Harney and another executive, the CEO placed her hand on Harney’s leg and crotch.

“I let her know that this was not welcome and that she was making me feel uncomfortable,” Harney said.

The next day, Jarvis allegedly called Harney into her office and instructed him to apologize to the other executive because he may have gotten the wrong idea that Harney was hitting on her. When Harney offered an apology, the executive allegedly said Harney had nothing to apologize for and that Jarvis owed both of them an apology.

As Harney claimed to have rejected Jarvis’ sexual advances, she began to treat him differently at work.

“The stress of the whole thing finally caught up with me and I ended up in the hospital with a mild heart attack in December 2016 and spent the next day and a half in the hospital,” he said.

To get away from Jarvis, Harney began working remotely from one of the branches. This worked for a while until Jarvis found out about it and allegedly continued to sexually harass him.

“Because of this, I started working from home, but this made things worse as I began to be criticized at work and given evaluations that negatively impacted my career chances at ASI,” Harney said in court documents.

In January 2019, Harney was contacted by a lawyer for the credit union’s supervisory committee. During their three-hour meeting, the lawyer questioned whether Harney had an improper relationship with Jarvis and about sexual harassment.

Because Harney alleged Jarvis threatened him about saying anything to the lawyer, Harney claimed he was nervous during the questioning and only gave “as much detail as was absolutely necessary.”

He claimed to have denied having a sexual relationship with Jarvis and confirmed the sexual harassment incidents.

Harney said he hunted for a new job and had interviews, but suspected he was never hired because Jarvis or someone from the credit union retaliated against him, according to court documents.

Harney said he was unlawfully terminated in June.

Sometime after that, Jarvis landed the CEO’s job at the $367 million Navigator Credit Union in Pascagoula, Miss.

The chance of Harney’s lawsuit ever being heard before a jury is a long shot.

Most sexual harassment cases are dismissed by federal judges and only 3% to 6% of those cases make it to trial, according to a 2017 report by National Public Radio. The news report cited research conducted by University of Cincinnati professor Sandra Sperino, who co-authored a book on employment discrimination with Suja Thomas of the University of Illinois.

The book’s research revealed that federal courts have developed ways to judge workplace discrimination cases that tip the scale in favor of employers over employees. Because the legal standard to prove sexual harassment is high, federal judges have dismissed cases even when there have been repeated incidents of sexual harassment, Sperino indicated in the NPR report.

In a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision the “behavior needs to be ‘severe and pervasive’ in order to qualify as harassment, whether it’s on the basis of sex or race,” according to the NPR report.

The number of sexual harassment complaints has averaged about 7,284 from 2010 to 2019, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In 2010, 16% of those cases were filed by men, which increased to nearly 18% in 2012. From 2013 to 2015, about 17% of the sexual harassment complaints were filed by men. But from 2016 to 2019, the number of complaints fell slightly to about 16%.