State police officer wins sexual harassment suit

BENTON, Ill. -- A federal jury awarded an Illinois State Police investigator $146,000 in damages after concluding that the state agency retaliated against her when she complained of being sexually harassed by a now-retired supervisory officer.

Jurors in Benton sided with Belinda Storey on Aug. 31, ruling that the state police unjustifiably gave her inferior assignments and lower job-performance marks after she complained about the harassment.

"This was all about vindication," Mary Anne Sedey, one of Storey's attorneys, said Wednesday. Storey, who still works for the state police in DuQuoin, "is so pleased that a jury saw that what happened to her after she complained was illegal."

The case, Sedey said, "shows that people who stand up for their rights have a hard time, and that it's a fairly common phenomena that if you file one of these charges and make a complaint, you have trouble afterwards."

The state police official at the center of the case, now-retired Capt. Phil Sylvester, was dismissed as a defendant last week after the judge ruled Storey's claim against him wasn't filed in time. Claims against another co-defendant, retired State Police Lt. Thomas Stehley, also were dropped by Storey's attorneys because he was involved in only one alleged retaliatory instance, Sedey said.

Messages were left Wednesday with the Illinois Attorney General's Office, which represented the state police and Stehley, and with Sylvester's Harrisburg attorneys.

Storey, who has worked for the state police since 1993, claimed that after Sylvester was assigned in 2001 as the commander of the southern Illinois unit where she worked, he began harassing her. She alleged he asked her for dates, expressed interest in an intimate relationship, showed up uninvited to her home and turned angry when he believed she was involved with other men.

According to the January 2005 lawsuit, when Storey refused to date Sylvester, he denied her a promotion and directed others to file written reports against her and lower her performance rating.

Storey complained in January 2003 to the state police's Office of Equal Opportunity, which seven months later told Sylvester his behavior violated its policies against sexual harassment and discrimination. But the state police still did not discipline Sylvester and took no corrective action, Storey claimed.

After she complained, according to her lawsuit, she was "given substantially inferior work assignments and very little work to do," received lower scores in her job evaluations and her requests for transfer were denied.

Stehley, the lawsuit claimed, knew about the harassment, failed to do anything to help her and retaliated against Storey with "unwarranted discipline."