Whittier

A lawsuit has been filed by the former director of a Whittier shelter for battered women against her replacement, who allegedly used a disagreement over whether residents could keep weapons to mount a “witch hunt” against her. In a suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court last week, Dorothy Emery claims that her eventual replacement at the shelter, Sandy Baker, coveted her job and used the weapons issue to get her dismissed.

Emery said that soon after she took the shelter job in early 1984, she learned that residents were allowed to keep weapons such as daggers and guns on the premises. Emery then asked Baker, her assistant at the time, to look into the matter. But Baker never did; instead she went to the shelter’s executive board and accused Emery of misappropriating shelter property, lying and “bartering the weapons for shelter goods,” the suit alleges.

As a result, Emery was suspended and then fired in November, 1984, the suit contends. Emery is suing to get her job back and for an unspecified amount of monetary damages. Baker has declined to comment on the case because she has not seen the suit.