The consequences women may face if they report sexual harassment will get the spotlight in Aberdeen this week as Laura Zylstra Kaiser’s civil rights lawsuit goes to trial.
Recall that in 2015, Zylstra Kaiser filed suit against her former boss, Division of Criminal Investigation chief Bryan Gortmaker; and fellow former DCI agent Mark Black for hindering her employment. In her complaint filed September 23, 2015, Zylstra Kaiser alleged that, after eight years as a highly praised member of the DCI Drug Task Force, she was subjected to harassment by then Brown County deputy and Drug Task Force member Ross Erickson. Based on a lack of employer support in a sexual harassment claim in 2005 and advice from a fellow female agent who felt taking the complaint to the boss could hurt Zylstra Kaiser’s career, Zylstra Kaiser spoke to fellow Aberdeen agent Mark Black. Contrary to her initial impression that Black was supportive, Zylstra Kaiser alleges that Black set to turning other agents against her:
Unbeknownst to Plaintiff, Black told Brown County Deputy Damian Bahr and DCI Agent Dave Lunzman, the only other law enforcement in the Aberdeen office, about Erickson’s treatment toward Plaintiff.
On or about October 20, 2011, Erickson told Plaintiff that Black had told the “entire office” about what was happening. Plaintiff apologized and stated that it was not her intent to have the office know about the issue. She mentioned she regretted telling Black.
Later that day, Plaintiff approached Black and asked why he shared her personal information. Black attempted to shift the blame to Plaintiff and began ignoring her.
On information and belief, Black then called Supervisor Jason Even to report Plaintiff’s complaints against Erickson and told Even he no longer wanted to work with Plaintiff because he could not trust her.
That afternoon, Black surreptitiously met with Erickson, Bahr, and Lunzman in a park. On information and belief, and knowing Even would investigate Plaintiff’s harassment complaint, Black worked with Erickson, Bahr, and Lunzman to formulate a set of talking points in an effort to have Plaintiff removed from the department or terminated, including planning to state they did not trust Plaintiff, she falsified the harassment to test Black’s trustworthiness, they were unwilling to work with her, and that she was mentally ill and schizophrenic [Complaint, Zylstra Kaiser v. Gortmaker and Black, U.S. District Court of South Dakota Northern Division, 2015.09.23].
Suddenly, after eight years of positive performance reviews, Zylstra Kaiser was placed by supervisor Jason Even on a 30-day Work Improvement Plan. Zylstra Kaiser submitted to the psychological evaluation required by the plan and completed all of the WIP’s other requirements but one, rebuilding “positive relationships,” which her fellow officers apparently made impossible.
Although she successfully met eight of nine objectives, Plaintiff was involuntarily demoted from Special Agent III to Special Agent II, which resulted in a reduction in her pay.
Plaintiff was reassigned to the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in Pierre, South Dakota, over 150 miles from Aberdeen, effective January 3, 2012. On information and belief, Plaintiff is the only agent who has ever been transferred against her wishes [Complaint, 2015.09.23].
Zylstra Kaiser asked for a transfer back to Aberdeen so she could be with her family (which, at the time, included a 15-month-old son). DCI refused the request. As I reported in 2015, Zylstra Kaiser filed grievances over the demotion and transfer with Gortmaker and Attorney General Marty Jackley. Both grievances were denied. Zylstra resigned from DCI effective May 18, 2012. She applied for jobs with the Department of Social Services, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Labor Relations, and private employers but received no offers, because, she alleges, of DCI’s “negative references and misrepresentations about [her] employment, demotion, discharge, and performance.” She filed charges of discrimination in 2014 against those three state agencies who didn’t hire her.
This lawsuit implicates all sorts of local and state officials.
At the top we have A.G. Jackley, who is now running for Governor. He rejected Zylstra Kaiser’s grievance, much like he has thus far rejected allegations that his latest nominee for the Board of Pardons and Parole, former U.S. Marshall and SDHP chief Gene Abdallah, sexually harassed lobbyist Tiffany Campbell in 2012 and that then House Speaker Val Rausch covered up Campbell’s complaint. Jackley has had nothing to say about Abdallah’s brutish response to the allegations.
Former DCI agent Dave Lunzman won election to the Aberdeen City Council last June.
Zylstra Kaiser’s husband is current Aberdeen City policeman and District 3 Representative Dan Kaiser, who is running for sheriff. Kaiser wants to replace fellow Republican Mark Milbrandt, who as sheriff employed deputies Ross Erickson (who, Elisa Sand reports, left the sheriff’s office this year) and Damian Bahr (who is still on the county force).
The initial sexual harassment that provoked this lawsuit happened over six years ago. Zylstra Kaiser could not have foreseen that her suit would go to trial during a period of media attention to sexual harassment unseen since the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings. But the testimony and the outcome of this trial this week in Aberdeen will feature prominently in our discussion of whether women can get a fair hearing over sexual harassment complaints in South Dakota… and whether they even dare speak up.
She has been wronged. I hope she rings the bell.
Cory writes:
The South Dakota DCI is a sewer of secrecy, corruption and reckless arrogance, and Marty Jackley is its chief enabler. I can see how partisan Democrats might want to support Jackley in the Republican primary for governor (for the same reason many of them supported Trump in the Republican primary for president). Please don’t.
Didn’t Black and Jackley team up against Brandon Talioferro and Shirley Schwab for the tag team championship awarded by a biased jury or something?
Kurt, are you suggesting Democrats would switch and back Jackley in the primary as an Operation Chaos on behalf of Sutton? That seems to run counter to the impression I’ve gotten from a number of observers that Noem would be weaker against Sutton than Jackley would.
But hey, if Jackley’s side (and he’s not a party to this case, but his DCI is) loses this case, Noem might well gain an advantage… assuming she can come out with some credible promise to root out sexual harassment and discrimination in state government.
MIke, yes, you can review Black’s involvement in the Schwab/Taliaferro/Mette affair here:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2015/04/10/black-says-he-wouldnt-have-followed-jackleys-orders-if-hed-known-about-mette-plea-deal/
http://madvilletimes.com/2014/01/taliaferro-schwab-case-shows-the-ugly-politics-of-south-dakota-foster-care/
Among the six main causes of wrongful convictions is corrupt government and law enforcement agencies. That circumstance was fully exposed in the instances of the DCI, the Brown County Stats’s Attorney office, and the Attorney General Office by the testimony in the Schwab-Taliferro case, and in the judge’s reasons for dismissing it. Innocence and justice projects do not understand why the South Dakota Bar Association never took disciplinary actions or why the prosecuting agencies were never sued for malicious prosecution.
Ms. Kaiser’s trial in a federal court might provide further evidence of the need for severe corrections in the state justice system.
Thanks both Cory and Doc Newquist. I will get on them links ASAP. I wonder if it won’t take a bigly change in the registrations of elected pols in South Dakota to straighten all the messes out. Jackley certainly has been involved in his share of skullduggery in your fair state.
The Mette case was worse than I could remember. Everything in it screams out for justice for the children and Talioferro and Schwab. Is there a staute of limitations on government varmints?
I read about the Mette foster child abuse affair extensively and remember Mark Black’s involvement. I was appalled at the scandle and at how many state agencies were involved in the coverup. I am convinced SD is the most corrupt state in the union.
Letter to the editor in the May 6, 2015 Aberdeen American News
By invesigating the “state system”, I meant the Department of Criminal Investigation.
Investigate DSS and state system
On March 30, a federal judge ruled that South Dakota Judge Jeff Davis, a Pennington County state’s attorney, and the secretary of the Department of Social Services (DSS) “developed and implemented policies and procedures for the removal of Indian children from their parents’ custody in violation of the mandates of the Indian Child Welfare Act and in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
The ruling states that the DSS took hundreds of children from reservations by holding hearings before Judge Davis at which he ruled for the DSS 100 percent of the time.
A National Public Radio broadcast in 2011 exposed how the DSS, without legal basis, took hundreds of children from reservation families. The March 30 ruling verified it. Further, the broadcast revealed how South Dakota received about $100 million annually from the federal government by taking reservation children. The more children the DSS took, the more money the state received.
About the time of the 2011 NPR broadcast, there was the Mette rape scandal (“Ex-DCI agent: Info would have changed my investigation,” American News, April 10) where the DSS had for many years basically ignored abuse of Native American children taken from reservation families and placed with the Mettes. Finally, the Mettes were charged with 34 counts between them but, in a bizarre twist, all except one were dropped by the Brown County state’s attorney. That state’s attorney then charged and prosecuted two child advocates who had worked on the case (and were critical of the DSS) with charges so absurd they were acquitted mid-trial before they presented their defense.
In view of the NPR expose, the March 30 ruling and what happened in Aberdeen, there are now calls for federal investigations into corruption within the South Dakota legal system and the DSS. Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” For the sake of all South Dakotans, let’s have the investigations.
Bill Johnson
Stratford
I overheard a fellow Democrat say that he’s switched to R to vote in the primary. When asked about choosing twisted Kristi over smartyMarty, he said I’d rather vote for stupid over evil.
I’d written:
Cory replies:
I didn’t mean to suggest Democrats would change parties and actually vote for Jackley in the primary, but I can see how some partisan Democrats might want to support him in other ways.
Gene Abdallah is aggressively defaming Tiffany Campbell by making the ridiculous claim that he’s never even met her and publicly condemning her to hell. It seems to me that Kristi Noem would be a stronger candidate than the guy who stands by his nomination of a notorious alcoholic and criminal loose cannon like Abdallah to sit on the parole board.
“Bucko Bear” writes:
In the race to protect individual liberty, Noem runs far too slowly for my taste. Jackley runs in the wrong direction.
Kurt is far too generous to Rep. Noem. If she is “too slow,” my turtle is a greyhound.
My good friend Bob has a good point. Plus, evil usually wins because it doesn’t play fair. Watch and see what new corruption pops up next.
Cory, I wish you would investigate what happened to Mike Myers campaign scheduler the day after the election. Recall Mike spanked Marty pretty good in Federal court to get his pick for Lt Gov on the ballot. Was it retaliation that the next day his campaign worker’s husband was arrested for sexual abuse of his daughter after the local police deemed it not credible because the story did not make sense? It looked like a “normal” family conflict to the police and also to the first jury that this was an innocent man. The jury was hung 11-1 innocent. THEN the judge retried the man without the testimony from the Forensic pathologist (out of state) who proved the man was “framed by Jackley”. (I have the letter) Even the father’s lawyer reportedly said, “Jackley needs this case because he is running for Gov” (and implied he needed a counter for the Mette Rape case debacle). Judge Jensen ordered a retrial without the same testimony from the pathologist claiming fraud in the AG’s office…and the man is now in jail . And hence Judge Jensen has been appointed to the Supreme court of SD…..