A secretary to the village manager in suburban University Park has sued the village and her former boss, claiming village officials subjected her to an “onslaught” of sex-based harassment from 2019 until she transferred to a different position in mid-2021.
Uskeisha Kitching filed suit on June 6 in Cook County Circuit Court, against the village and University Park Village Manager Ernestine B. Beck-Fulgham.
Kitching is represented in the action by attorney Cass T. Casper, of the Disparti Law Group, of Chicago.
University Park Village Manager Ernestine Beck-Fulgham
| University-park-il.com
According to the complaint, Kitching was first hired as secretary to the village manager by former University Park Village Manager John E. Pate. She continued in that role when Beck-Fulgham was appointed to replace Pate in September 2019.
According to her complaint, Kitching said she then became the subject of “harassing conduct” from village officials.
In her complaint, Kitching accuses University Park’s mayor of “flirtatious” and ”suggestive” behavior, including sitting “uncomfortably close” to her, following her from “room-to-room” to “engage (her) in flirtatious conversation."
She “perceived the Mayor to be propositioning her and intimating that he would give her workplace benefits in exchange for her succumbing to his advances,” the complaint said.
University Park Mayor Joseph Roudez, who was elected in April 2019, is not named as a defendant in the case.
The complaint accuses Beck-Fulgham of making untoward, “humiliating” comments “about her body and physical appearance,” and comments “insinuating that she was sleeping with administration officials” and “threatening … that she ‘better not find out (Kitching) was sleeping with anybody’ at the Village.”
According to the complaint, Kitching “endured such comments from Beck-Fulgham on a near weekly basis” from July – September 2020, and “more sporadically thereafter until January 2021.”
Kitching further accused Beck-Fulgham of smacking Kitching’s buttocks in front of coworkers, allegedly humiliating and degrading Kitching and shocking her coworkers.
The complaint further asserts Beck-Fulgham allegedly made other comments toward Kitching, including saying she was tired of “seeing men walk behind you and stare,” because “we all know you have a body built like a shit brickhouse,” and, on another occasion, denying Kitching’s request to go to lunch with a public works employee, by saying “there will not be any blummer pudding around here.”
According to the complaint, Kitching ultimately transferred to the University Park Police Department, to a job as a record clerk and court officer in June 2021 “in order to get away from Beck-Fulgham.”
The alleged harassment was “so severe and pervasive as to have the effect of altering Plaintiffs’ terms and conditions of employment so as to make coming to work completely unbearable and hostile and to interfere with Plaintiff’s work performance.”
Further, Kitching claims she has sought therapy and counseling, medication to help her sleep, and suffered other problems “stemming from the trauma she experienced while working as secretary to Beck-Fulgham.”
Beck-Fulgham and Roudez did not reply to an email from the Cook County Record offering them the opportunity to comment or respond to Kitching’s claims.
Kitching is asking the court to order the defendants to pay unspecified money damages, plus attorney fees.