Craig DeLuca, then the president of Inntopia, dangled a job—and demanded sex. Only after agreeing to a settlement did I discover that I’m not the only person he did this to.
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| Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast |
Hi Lisa. You don't know me but I'm reaching out because I think
we have something in common. I know you can't discuss your event in
detail but I would like to see if you're open to talking…If not I
understand. Thank you, Alison
I received this message from a
woman in my small town of Stowe, Vermont. We had never met, but I knew
instantly what her message meant: I was not the predator’s only
survivor.
The predator was also the president of a rapidly-growing software company, Inntopia. He
had approached me about a senior marketing position a year earlier.
Although still based in my town, Inntopia is now majority-owned by a
large media company in New Jersey which, in turn, is owned by a
still-larger New York investment firm. I was well-aware of the company’s
growth and that, at the time, it had twice been named one of Outside
Magazine’s 100 Best Places to Work. It’s since been named to that list a
third time.
I interviewed with the president, Craig DeLuca, and
was introduced to the CEO, Trevor Crist. After four months of being
strung along, DeLuca arranged to meet with me alone, isolated and under
false pretenses. What he did next left me struggling with a painful mix
of feelings: vulnerable, angry, sad, and disgusted. His reaction was
different. First came his email celebrating what he had done as
“awesome.” Not long after, he followed with a job offer.
I did
not accept that offer, and with it my swirl of emotions crystallized
into resolve; I would not quietly accept what he had done to me. I
contacted Scott Labby, an attorney I knew would fall on a grenade for a
woman who was being harassed, bullied or abused.
When the
company — including its CEO who lives in my town — and its corporate
owners were notified, I assumed they would do the right thing. That they
would express genuine shock and concern and assure my counsel that my
account would be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated. Instead,
the company’s male CEO and the male chairman of the male-dominated board
defended the predator while reflexively reaching for the tried and true
slut-shame playbook: I wanted it, enjoyed it, should be ashamed it
happened and fear that others would find out.
Predators
use various forms of psychological, physical, and financial power. When
a predator uses his professional position as a source of his power,
employers too often deploy the company’s substantial financial and legal
resources to overpower the survivor a second time. This is devastating
after experiencing any type of sexual harassment, from inappropriate
comments to full-on sexual assault.
The standard and appropriate response to a sexual harassment
allegation is to assure the complainant that the claim will be taken
seriously and then conduct a thorough investigation prior to responding
to the charges. My case was very different. The company quickly
responded with a letter asserting I had “welcomed and eagerly
participated” what he had done to me, and that “hypothesized” I had come
forward out of “regret” because I live “in a small community where Mr. DeLuca also lives, or because Mr. DeLuca is a married man.” The letter also asserted
that my personal grooming habits—of which DeLuca was unaware—had somehow
signaled my desire and consent. For the record, I was dressed for a
winter hike when I met with DeLuca.
Those attempts to shame and
humiliate me into backing down backfired, and my attorney and I were
able to show that numerous details in DeLuca’s account were demonstrably
untrue. Yet even after his actions and attempts to cover them up were
exposed, the company continued to negotiate for him to remain as its
president. I was assured he been stripped of his role in recruiting and
interviewing and was no longer allowed to meet alone with women in or
outside the office.
Even after they finally committed to removing
him, I had serious reservations about signing a non-disclosure
agreement. It seemed unlikely that a senior executive woke up one day,
tossed aside the feminist sensibilities he had espoused to me—including
claiming to be close to Hillary Clinton and her campaign and feeling a
driving need to attend the Women’s March after her loss—and began
hunting job applicants as sexual prey.
Before I agreed to sign, I
received multiple assurances that the company had made a thorough
investigation that identified no other victims, and that changes were
being made to reduce the future risk to women at the company.
In
the end, the settlement I signed included a non-disclosure agreement –
with a guarantee of the president’s departure from the company and a
prohibition against his return in any capacity.
As I had feared, I learned after signing the settlement that I was not the only woman he had harmed while working there.
Several
days after receiving Alison’s message, we met at a coffee shop with the
understanding that, because of my NDA, I could listen but there was
little I could say. My stomach lurched as she described her experience,
the particular language he used, the pattern he followed, the
frightening disorientation she experienced as he became a different
person, transforming into an unprovoked and unwelcome sexual aggressor.
He even excused his behavior with her with the same phrase he’d told me: “I’m Italian, you know.”
When
people who know Craig DeLuca have said to me that they can’t imagine
him doing these things, my response is that neither could I. I blinked
back tears as I listened to her recount detail after detail of her
experience with him—tears for her and for me, too, because much of her
story had also happened to me. My heart sunk further when I realized
that Alison and I are both single mothers who he understood to be
dependent on our incomes to support our families. We shared a perceived
vulnerability.
Alison did not learn about my experience and my
sexual harassment claim against DeLuca as part of the company’s
investigation. Although the CEO was aware that DeLuca had been meeting
with Alison about similar work and during a time period that overlapped
with his contact with me, she says that no representative from the
company ever reached out to her in the course of its investigation of my
case. She described learning about my case only after it had been
settled and my NDA had been signed—when an Inntopia employee disclosed
my name as the person who had settled a complaint against the company.
In
fact, Alison has now said publicly that DeLuca’s harassment of her
began before my own experience with him—and continued for several months
after I had come forward to the company with my claim. DeLuca kept up
his attempts to lure her back to his office and meet with her alone even
after I had reported what he had done to me to Inntopia.
After
signing my NDA, I honored the required silence and turned my energies
toward efforts I hoped would advance conversations and policies related
to safety, dignity, and economic opportunity and security for women. I
was appointed by Governor Phil Scott to the Vermont Commission on Women.
I have written
and spoken on issues of sexual harassment and assault, the silencing of
women, and economic inequality and abuse. I launched The Maren Group, a
female majority-owned company that works with women, businesses, and
investors to reduce the risk and incidence of workplace sexual
harassment, assault, and other economic abuse faced predominantly by
women. We also work to affect public policy and I had the great fortune
to work on and testify in support of Vermont’s sweeping new sexual
harassment law — signed by the governor at the end of May! — as it wound its way through our State House.
Despite those positive steps, it was devastating to realize that
signing an NDA now made me, however unwittingly, complicit. Despite what
I had learned about DeLuca and my belief that the company had been
deceptive in our negotiations about the extent of their investigation,
my NDA remained in place. I could not reach out to any additional women
who might already have been harmed by DeLuca to let them know that they
were not alone, or warn other women about him.
Earlier this month, Alison filed a lawsuit
against our predator and the company, detailing in terms I am all too
familiar with how he brought her in under the guise of a job-related
conversation, closed and locked his door and then asked: “How
adventurous are you?” He pressed her to begin, immediately, a “friends
with benefits” relationship as he dangled needed work before her. DeLuca
continued luring Alison in for additional meetings even after
management had been informed of his behavior and after “confirming
related behaviors by him,” she says in her suit, as “Inntopia maintained
and promoted a culture in which DeLuca’s outrageous sexual harassment…
was implicitly or explicitly condoned, supported, tolerated, forgiven
and/or hidden from public view.”
The suit refers to another “Female job seeker.”
That “female job seeker” has a name. My name. Today, my silence ends.
NDAs were created to guard intellectual property and trade secrets. Somewhere along the way, they became instruments to hide the misdeeds of harassers and the companies that shelter and enable them.
Despite the writing and speaking I have done, I have said nothing until
now that would identify my predator and the company that employed him.
It has become clear in this past year that they did not feel I deserved
that same discretion.
It’s not unusual for companies and corporate actors to express shock
and concern when sexual harassment allegations become public, although
often what’s really shocking and concerning to them is that a woman had
the courage to speak. Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly,
Bill Cosby and so many others have called women who come forward liars.
The confidence of such men often rests on their belief that women must and will not be talking.
Still,
my settlement agreement includes an NDA and there is no existing law
that protects me from being sued even if breaking my silence is meant to
warn other potential targets, even as my predator and his former
company have breached our NDA many times.
Multiple friends told
me that they learned that I made a sexual harassment claim against
DeLuca and Inntopia, and described details of negotiations that could
have only come from the company; other friends learned of my case and
Alison’s (prior to the filing of her lawsuit) when Crist was venting his
frustrations about both of our complaints over drinks; and DeLuca has
continued to tell people that what he did to me was consensual.
DeLuca—who told the Stowe Reporter
last month that the claims in Alison’s suit are false and that he
intends to fight them—said “I’m sorry, I’m not talking,” when contacted
by a Daily Beast reporter.
Alison’s lawsuit claims that,
subsequent to locking her in an office and pressing her to have sex with
him then and there, DeLuca continued to send her sexually suggestive
emails and texts for months. In these messages, her suit asserts, DeLuca
attempted to set up meetings where they would be alone — also
mentioning the possibility of work.
“The alleged behavior as described (in Alison’s suit) is troubling, and is counter to everything the company stands for,” Crist said in an email
after a Daily Beast reporter asked if he had mentioned me since the NDA
was signed. “Neither I nor the company would ever condone the type of
behavior described in the complaint. Such behavior is an affront to our
company values.”
Asked if he’d mentioned me since last May, when
the NDA was signed, Crist wrote “Lisa is an active and vocal member of
our small, tight knit community. So there very well may have been
occasions where her name has come up.”
Six months after our
settlement was signed, I was contacted by a friend who is also the
leader of a foundation I have donated to and asked not to attend a
fundraising event that she was co-hosting. I had already RSVP’d to the
foundation as instructed in the invitation, sent in a donation, and
received a lovely thank you phone call from another member of the
foundation’s leadership. We spoke briefly and he indicated that he was
looking forward to us meeting at the event. The disinvitation was
shocking. The foundation leader explained in an email that Crist had
asked that I not be there, and specifically stated that it was because
of what I have said happened to me at the company he leads. Later I
received a thank you letter from the foundation with a handwritten note
from the same person who had passed on Crist’s disinvitation thanking me
for my “amazing donation” and assuring me that things would get “easier
for me.”
Asked by a Daily Beast reporter if he had asked the
foundation “to disinvite Lisa Senecal from a fundraising event, or
otherwise mentioned her to them,” Crist replied:
“Absolutely not.
For clarification, the party I’m assuming you are referring to was a
small private party I co-hosted and helped organize to raise money for
the… Foundation, which I have supported for several years. It was not
organized by the… Foundation, and the invite list was exclusively
friends of the hosts. She was not on the invite list.”
Earlier
this month, following a story in our weekly paper about Alison’s
lawsuit, I learned that the paper had been contacted with a complaint
and given my name as the other “female job seeker.” The person who
revealed my name was angry that the paper reprinted a Daily Beast piece I had written on sexual harassment. It appeared in the same edition as the paper’s story on the lawsuit.
Setting
aside the existence of the NDA, it’s a special kind of moral lapse to
disclose the name of a survivor without her consent — and even more so
to disclose it to the media in an attempt to harm her. Because of these
and other breaches by the company, it’s unclear if I’m breaking my NDA,
but I am most certainly breaking my silence.
In doing so, I face the risk that the company can and will file suit against me.
Inntopia
can sue me, and I'll sue them, or they can simply do the right thing
and apologize — something which neither the company, nor any individual
involved in this case has been able to bring himself to do — even after a
second woman came forward with a remarkably similar account.
If
it does come down to lawsuits, some good might come from that as well
and we can all find out what the value of silence is, on both sides.
I will not stand silently on the sidelines while a courageous woman’s integrity and my own are called into question.
Even without an NDA, the pressures to remain silent in a small town are tremendous.
Our
little town of about 4,000 souls — including me, Alison, DeLuca and
Crist, and where Inntopia is headquartered — has three coffee shops,
three markets, two main streets and one intersection. As Crist said, it
is a “small, tight knit community.”
Alison and I were both
looking for a job, not a cause. We wanted to make meaningful
contributions to a business and support our families.
There are
some in Stowe who learned the details of what happened to me prior to
the settlement being signed. I have been heartened by the support of
those I already held dear and of those who did not know me so well but
stepped up to stand beside me. Some of those people sacrificed long-term
friendships to do what was right.
It’s also true that I have
been heartbroken when some people I could never have imagined walking
away from a woman in my situation distanced themselves or remained
silent.
From my own experience I know that staying silent can seem
easier — and that it is corrosive. I saw how this company proceeded
after they knew what happened to me, and how they’d relied on my
silence. It’s appalling, it’s wrong, and it’s time to speak about it.
Now every time Alison or I leave our homes, we encounter community members who will be touched by this story becoming public.
I
have spent many hours wondering how the many people who currently greet
me warmly will react now that my silence is broken. When #MeToo becomes
#HereToo, who will stand by the same convictions they professed when
the perpetrators and businesses were abstract and somewhere else?
There
are millions of women in small towns across the country who face
similar situations, pressures, and choices — and whose communities are
put to the test by their responses to those women.
When standing
up against sexual harassment or assault is no longer a theoretical
construct, what will you do? Will you stand firm in your convictions or
choose the temporary safety of silence and complicity, hoping someone
else will take on the hard work of creating the culture we want our
children to inherit?
My choice is to steel myself against the
whispers and the looks, and break my own silence and work to give a
voice to the many women for whom the risk of speaking out remains too
great.
See more at: The Daily Beast
See more at: The Daily Beast
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