Harassment by D.A. Investigator Alleged in Trial : Courts: Woman says supervisor in district attorney’s Santa Monica office repeatedly made unwanted advances. He disputes the allegations, saying the suit is an act of vindictiveness.

Two years ago, Virginia Harper--the first woman and one of the few African American investigators for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office--was at the apex of her career.

Working out of the district attorney’s Santa Monica office, she assisted prosecutors in their probes of all manner of cases, often going undercover in dangerous conditions.

But in July, 1992, she accused her new supervisor, Henry Grayson, of sexual harassment and retaliation. The initial complaint has grown into a $1 million-plus case against Grayson, who flatly denies Harper’s charges, and the district attorney’s office that is now being tried in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Grayson, who is also an investigator, had been chauffeur for Ira Reiner during Reiner’s tenure as district attorney. He later was made a supervisor and was transferred to the Santa Monica office in January, 1992.

Harper claims that, from the beginning, Grayson sexually harassed her.

“At our first lunch meeting with two other investigators, he touched me on the upper thigh, and he kept touching my hands,” Harper said last week. “When riding in a car, he put my seat belt on and touched my breasts. Even when he handed me cases in the office, he managed to touch me. When I was in his office, he would close the door and, instead of sitting at his desk, sit next to me, rubbing his knee against my leg.”

Harper says that when she declined his repeated invitations to lunch, Grayson became hostile, giving her punitive assignments and threatening her status in the office.

As a matter of policy, the district attorney’s office declines to discuss pending lawsuits. But Grayson, 48, disputes all the allegations. “I am not a bad person,” said the 22-year veteran of the investigation unit, who remains a supervisor in the Santa Monica office. “This is a new kind of blackmail, and I am devastated by it.”

The defense contends that Harper’s case is the fabrication of a woman who resented Grayson’s attempts to increase her productivity while she was working on the side, selling real estate.

“There are two aspects to this case, money and vindictiveness,” said Deputy County Counsel Dennis Gonzales, who is defending Grayson and the district attorney’s office. “She was used to a very lax atmosphere, and Mr. Grayson required full-time work. After seven months, she rebelled in such a way as to create as much havoc in Mr. Grayson’s life as possible.”

Harper, who is on medical leave, also accuses her employers of sex and race discrimination for denying her promotions for 14 years despite favorable performance reviews.

Harper filed her lawsuit in April, 1993, and the case went to trial a year later. But a mistrial was declared after the defense attorney, Deputy County Counsel Curtis Lipkin, died during jury selection.

Harper, 46, contends that she was repeatedly given mediocre ratings when seeking promotion to supervisor despite two earlier promotions and good reviews for her work. She says it was because of her sex and her race.

“When I asked them why I was being passed over, they said it was because they had better qualified men,” she said. “Like all the other blacks who were denied promotions, I just gave up.”

As for Grayson, he was elevated to supervisor of the district attorney’s welfare fraud unit immediately after serving as Reiner’s driver.

In 1987, Grayson made news when he was kidnaped by three men at gunpoint in the district attorney’s Buick Park Avenue while waiting for Reiner and his family outside Spago, the well-known restaurant. He later told of escaping and then pursuing his assailants in another car. All three men were subsequently convicted.

“I did what I was supposed to do. I went to work the next day. And I didn’t sue anybody,” Grayson said to a reporter Wednesday, glaring across the courtroom at Harper.

Grayson also came to public attention in news reports that Reiner had used his driver to run personal errands. While earning about $90,000 a year, the reports said, Grayson was chauffeuring Reiner’s children and running other errands during work hours.

Harper became an investigator in 1973 and rose through the ranks until her last promotion in 1980.

She was the first district attorney’s investigator in the McMartin Preschool child molestation case in 1984. But after several months, she said, she expressed doubts about the validity of the molestation reports and was reassigned. The marathon McMartin case ended in acquittals of the two defendants eventually brought to trial.

Harper also worked slightly less than six months in the consumer fraud unit; she claims she was reassigned two days short of the deadline for reclassifying her at a higher rank.

She began work in the Santa Monica office in 1984. There, Harper often acted as supervising investigator, filling in for her bosses and earning about $70,000 a year. The wife of a district attorney’s investigator and the mother of two teen-agers, she hoped to stay on the Westside, she said, near her son’s school.

When Grayson, who is widowed, joined the Santa Monica office in January, 1992, he was assigned to supervise the office’s three other investigators. Harper says her problems started upon Grayson’s arrival, culminating in an extended medical leave the following November. She remains on unpaid leave after being advised by her doctor not to return to the office.

“Emotionally, I was a wreck,” Harper said. “I couldn’t sleep, and I still can’t. All I thought about was what (Grayson) was doing to me, and I took it home. I complained all the time. Even my kids wanted to see my supervisor.”

When she complained of Grayson’s behavior to the head of the investigations bureau in July, 1992, she says, she was told to stay home and call in sick. After she submitted her allegations in writing a month later, the office investigated and concluded that her complaints were unfounded. She was transferred to the district attorney’s Downtown office--where, she says, she was the object of whispers and jokes.

She turned to Santa Monica attorney Peggy Garrity, who has represented women in an array of prominent cases involving harassment and discrimination based on race and sex, in addition to trying other types of civil cases. In 1990, for example, she won a $1-million judgment for the parents of Teak Dyer, who was slain in Santa Monica on her 18th birthday by an employee of the now-defunct MacGuard Security company.

Harper’s lawsuit seeks $1.2 million in compensation for economic damage and an unspecified amount in punitive damage against Grayson.

Witnesses on both sides of the dispute have been lined up from the district attorney’s office. The defense will call Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin, lead prosecutor in the McMartin case, and federal District Judge Audrey B. Collins, a former administrator in the district attorney’s office.

Among the witnesses subpoenaed by Garrity on behalf of Harper are Reiner, during whose term the events occurred, and current Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who replaced Reiner before the office’s investigation was concluded.

“It’s not just one person’s word against another’s. We have sufficient evidence to counter all her claims,” defense attorney Gonzales said.

But, to Garrity, “this case comes down to race and sex discrimination and blatant sexual harassment,” she said. “The D.A.’s office believes it is above the law.”