THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 16, 1996 TAG: 9602160490
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
A former canteen worker at the city jail has sued Sheriff Robert J. McCabe, accusing him of getting her transferred out of the jail because she refused to have an affair with him.
The woman, Heather D. Worley, 21, of Virginia Beach, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Norfolk Circuit Court. It seeks $1 million in compensatory damages, plus $350,000 in punitive damages.
McCabe, speaking through his attorney, denied the charge.
The lawsuit names McCabe and the canteen contractor, ABL Management Inc., as defendants. Worley was an ABL employee and a canteen supervisor. The company could not be reached for comment.
In her lawsuit, Worley says she was called to a ``meeting'' with McCabe on May 25, 1995, at The Hole in the Wall Grill in Chesapeake. There, she says, McCabe asked her to accompany him on business trips, quit her job and work for him. She says he offered to buy her a car, a television and a microwave oven.
The lawsuit says that Worley's boss, a woman, encouraged Worley to begin a sexual relationship with McCabe because it would be good for the company's business and Worley would get a car.
In an interview Thursday, Worley said McCabe made the offers at a late-night social gathering at the bar attended by about a dozen people, mostly jail employees. She said the sheriff bought her about six shots of liquor, even though she was 20 at the time. She said McCabe did not directly ask her for sex.
Two weeks later, after refusing McCabe's advances, the lawsuit says, Worley was transferred by ABL to a job at a Norfolk warehouse where she had to lift heavy boxes. She says she had a bad back and quit.
The lawsuit says an ABL district manager told Worley that she was transferred because she had hurt McCabe's ego by refusing to have sex with him. The lawsuit accuses McCabe and ABL of sexual discrimination and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
``These are allegations made by a disgruntled employee of ABL Management. She is not employed, and never has been, by the sheriff,'' said McCabe's attorney, Jeffrey A. Breit. Several witnesses at the bar ``deny unequivocally there was anything inappropriate said or done'' by McCabe, Breit said.
Breit said the lawsuit is an attempt to embarrass the sheriff, who is married, ``to force him to avoid a trial by paying her money.''
Worley's attorney, Thomas F. Hennessy, denied the charge Thursday. ``Whether there was going to be publicity on this or not, we were going to sue the sheriff,'' Hennessy said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Sheriff Robert J. McCabe, speaking through his attorney, denied the
charge.
by CNB