County Investigator Suspended From Job For Making Joke During Sexual Harassment Training

An investigator with the Will County Public Defender’s Office was suspended two days without pay for making a “lewd” joke during bi-annual sexual harassment training.

The veteran investigator, Ivan Hurd, accused his boss, lame duck Public Defender Frank Astrella, of taking away two days of his pay out of sheer malice born from years of resentment and bad blood. And with Astrella announcing his retirement a year after two of his assistants sued him in federal court for — of all things — alleged sexual harassment, the public defender figured the time was right to strike, Hurd said.

“Once he figured he was out the door, basically, here it is,” Hurd said, holding up his Dec. 11 “Notification and Measure of Disciplinary Action” letter.

Hurd also said the Chicago attorney who ran the Oct. 23 training session, Matthew P. Kellam, singled him out of the dozens of non-managerial employees in the class, repeatedly asking him questions on hypothetical scenarios.

“It was like he was directing every single question to me,” Hurd said.

The question that landed Hurd in hot water, he said, involved a man and woman meeting for drinks, going their separate ways at the end of the evening, and the man, upon returning home, repeatedly messaging the woman.

“She does not necessarily respond but does not tell him to stop,” Hurd recalled of the scenario, telling how Kellam asked how the man could have avoided such a situation. Hurd said he suggested the man “should have been able to satisfy himself or take care of himself.”

In an Oct. 24 email Kellam sent to Will County Human Resources Director Bruce Tidwell and Assistant HR Director Regina Malone, the attorney told of a “lewd, inappropriate sexual gesture” made by an employee he believed to be named Ivan.

While discussing a scenario, “Ivan said words to the effect of the male employee should stop pursuing the woman and, as a replacement, should ‘do more of this,’” Kellam said in his email. “As he said ‘do more of this,’ he raised his right hand in the air and moved it back and forth as if he were masturbating.”

Kellam also claimed an office employee “who was sitting near Ivan apologized to me for his behavior and nothing else was said.”

Hurd said no one apologized to Kellam.

“I’m a Marine,” said Hurd, a veteran of Operation Desert Shield. “I served in the Marines for four years. Nobody apologizes for my behavior.”

Kellam failed to return a call for comment. A call to Astrella was transferred to the spokeswoman for the public defender’s office, Michelle Palaro. Palaro failed to return the call.

Astrella, incidentally, has yet to publicly address the allegations of sexual harassment brought by the two assistant public defenders.

In a memo, Assistant Public Defender Greg DeBord compiled information from 13 employees he said were at the class. DeBord did not identify any of them.

One employee, described only as a “male assistant,” said “his belief was that the trainer appeared to be ’egging Ivan on,’ ” according to DeBord’s memo. A “female assistant” suggested “it would have been a great time for the trainer to point out that Ivan’s conduct would be unacceptable and should have addressed the group.”

Hurd, who said he has never been disciplined in his 16 years as a county employee, also questioned why the trainer kept quiet about his response if it was indeed lewd.

“This man never said anything in class, but he took time at 1:40 on a Saturday afternoon to write the county about this?” he said.

And, Hurd said, none of his colleagues protested or were put off by his behavior.

“You want to know the truth? Everybody sat there and laughed,” he said. “No one gasped. We laughed and we continued on with the class.”

Hurd also feels he was forced into the position he finds himself in now.

“They make it a requirement to make me go to this class, then ask me questions to make me participate in this class,” he said.

“If I had known it was going to escalate to this, I would have sat in that class and kept my mouth shut,” Hurd said. “Because that’s how I am. I mind my own business and I do my job.”