DWP to Settle Harassment Suit for $1.5 Million : Workplace: Payment to woman becomes effective today unless council blocks it. Agency officials admit serious problem, saying five people have beem fired and 12 suspended.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has agreed to pay a Riverside County woman $1.5 million to settle a sexual harassment suit--believed to be the largest settlement by a government agency in such a case in California.

The settlement, which will go into effect today unless the City Council blocks it, comes as a ranking DWP official acknowledged serious problems with sexual harassment in the ranks, with five employees fired for harassment in the last two years and 12 others suspended.

The settlement is to be paid to Ruby P. Zilly, 32, who worked as a security officer for the DWP at its Downtown headquarters from 1989 to 1993.

In a Superior Court suit she filed in November, Zilly alleged that she was physically and verbally harassed by men in the male-dominated, 96-member security unit and that DWP supervisors ignored her complaints and condoned odious acts by her co-workers.

“I was more scared of the people I was working with than the people I was supposed to be protecting the city property from,” she said.

In an interview Tuesday, Zilly said she was pleased the suit had been resolved. But she said she felt the DWP had failed to take sufficient action to deal with a widespread problem of sexual harassment in the security unit.

Beverly King, the DWP’s director of human resources, acknowledged in an interview that sexual harassment is a significant problem at the DWP.

“In the past two years, we had 98 incidents of sexual harassment that have come to our attention, from minor incidents that were resolved very quickly to major incidents that involved formal complaints,” King said. “The results of those investigations are that five people have been terminated from employment with the DWP.”

She also said that 12 other DWP employees had received significant suspensions totaling 192 days stemming from sexual harassment in the last two years.

King said that among those who were fired for sexual harassment was one of Zilly’s co-workers, Anthony (Tony) Carter. King said the firing stemmed from investigation of Zilly’s charges.

Zilly said in her suit that Carter initiated a series of assaults, batteries and other harassing acts against her, including “repeatedly grabbing Zilly, forcibly kissing her, forcing his tongue down her throat, throwing her against a wall, feeling her body and genital area with his hands, following her into the women’s rest room and other conduct.”

The Times was unable to reach Carter for comment.

King also said that discipline “is under consideration” against other people whom Zilly complained about to DWP officials.

Zilly’s suit described a number of other offensive actions directed toward her.

Early in her employ, she said, one supervisor began to inquire about her drinking habits, invited her out on dates and insisted on questioning her regarding private sexual matters, “such as her sexual practices, sexual preferences and her choice of undergarments.” This man, she said, also subjected her “to explicit descriptions of his own supposed sexual practices.”

In her suit, filed by Brentwood attorneys Jeffrey S. Thomas and Samuel J. Wells, Zilly said she complained about this harassment to DWP security chief Thomas C. Gaines Sr. She said that Gaines, although acknowledging that he knew of the man’s penchant for harassing female employees, failed to take any meaningful or effective action to stop the offensive behavior.

Gaines, who could not be reached for comment, is one of 10 DWP employees who was named as a defendant in the suit.

According to the suit, another supervisor assigned Zilly, while pregnant, to surreptitiously monitor the activities of other supervisors who were suspected of failing to sign logs properly and “were not where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there, were coming and going as they pleased, etc.”

Zilly viewed this assignment as an act of retaliation. “The assignment was a particularly high-risk undertaking, especially given her condition of being pregnant, as it required her to travel and work alone in an unmarked car without a radio in dangerous areas of South-Central Los Angeles,” according to the suit.

In August, 1990, Zilly gave birth to a son “after a difficult Cesarean birth, which temporarily left her incontinent,” according to the suit. In addition, during her stay in the hospital, Zilly was sterilized without her consent.

When she returned to work two months later, she met with three supervisors, including Gaines, and confided to them the facts of her incontinence and sterilization and asked that the information be treated confidentially.

But within two hours of that meeting, “male DWP security guards began taunting . . . Zilly with statements such as, ‘Now we can get you because you can’t get pregnant,’ and further taunted her by calling her “pee-pee Zilly.”

Zilly, who has three children, said she stayed on the job for almost 30 more months because she needed the money. Attorney Thomas said Zilly was “the primary breadwinner in her family,” as her husband had only part-time work as an auto repairman.

“I kept thinking of my children and how we needed the money” as she contemplated enduring nights of harassment on the graveyard shift, she said.

However, the harassment did not stop and one incident in November, 1992, played a key role in Zilly’s decision to leave the agency. DWP conducted a sexual harassment prevention class for some DWP employees, but “the instructors allowed the class to degenerate to a circus-like atmosphere, with many DWP employees loudly and openly making fun of the subject of sexual harassment and women in general,” according to the suit.

At one point during the class, Carter “folded up a piece of paper, put it over his thumb, pushed it upwards and looked at plaintiff Zilly, stating ‘you’re giving me a hard-on,’ ” according to the suit. Finally, in February, 1993, when it had become clear that DWP officials “would take no action to protect her, to stop the sexual harassment” or take any other action to stop the conduct of some of the male DWP security employees, she left the DWP, Zilly said.

She has been under a doctor’s care since then for physical and emotional problems, according to the suit. In December, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge granted an injunction ordering Gaines and other DWP employees to cease threatening or harassing Zilly, her husband or her children.

The Board of Water and Power Commissioners approved the settlement Sept. 8, according to Edward C. Farrell, the chief assistant city attorney for Water and Power. Abby Leibman, executive director of the California Women’s Law Center, said this was the largest settlement she knew of in such a case against a governmental entity in California.

“It’s always wise to settle a case that can expose you to great damage,” said Constance Rice, vice president of the DWP board. Rice said that the DWP had good policies on sexual harassment but did not have adequate mechanisms to enforce those policies. Rice said she and the other commissioners are determined to see that changes are made in DWP’s work culture to eliminate the problems.