By Patrick Adrian [email protected]
CONCORD — A civil suit alleging sexual harassment and wrongful termination against the Sullivan County Department of Corrections and Superintendent Dave Berry has been dismissed in U.S. District Court.
On Wednesday plaintiff Tori Jacques, a former Sullivan County corrections officer, voluntarily withdrew her claims against Berry and the department, according to paperwork filed by Jacques’ attorney Francis Murphy of Manchester.
According to the stipulations, all claims are “dismissed with prejudice,” meaning that the case cannot return to court for any reason.
The Eagle Times was unable to confirm whether the dismissal involved any terms, such as a monetary settlement, as no terms were identified in the stipulations for dismissal.
Sullivan County Manager Derek Ferland told the Eagle Times that the county is still awaiting final details before releasing any information.
According to a court complaint filed in May, Jacques alleged that she endured “a pattern of sexual harassment” and abuse from other correctional officers while working at the county facility, and that Jacques’s supervisor, Berry, not only dismissed Jacques’s claims but rebuked her for making false accusations.
The complaint claims that Jacques worked at the Sullivan County jail from June 2016 to December 2018, when she tendered her resignation.
“During her tenure at the Department, [Jacques] often found the work environment hostile to her and other women as well as gay men,” the complaint alleged.
The complaint identifies numerous occasions in which male staff allegedly made sexually offensive or derogatory remarks about gender or sexual orientation in reference to Jacques or other officers. Jacques also allegedly learned from a female inmate that one male officer had shared a sexually inappropriate anecdote with a group of female inmates.
Many of Jacques’s reports to administrators concerned a particular officer whose full name was not included into the court complaint.
According to the complaint, Jacques’s supervisor, Berry, dismissed Jacques’s claims by saying the officer in question had “passed his polygraph with a 99.97%.”
Jacques also alleged that Berry accused Jacques of fabricating claims and gave her the option to also take a polygraph exam, with an ultimatum that if she tested poorly she would be “Laurie listed,” referring to a secret list of officers with credibility problems and who will likely never find employment in New Hampshire law enforcement again.
Jacques, believing that polygraphs were not reliable and that Berry had already drawn a conclusion, opted to resign from the department, the complaint alleged.
After leaving the Sullivan County jail, Jacques found herself unable to find hire in another law enforcement department, according to the complaint.
In one incident Jacques was given a conditional offer of employment with the Merrimack County Department of Corrections, the complaint alleged. But when Jacques went to the facility to submit her background paperwork on January 15, 2019, the county superintendent said they were rescinding the offer following a conversation with the Sullivan County Department of Corrections.
Jacques filed her civil suit on April 19. Counsel for Berry and the Sullivan County Department of Corrections did not file an answer to the allegations.
The Eagle Times reached out to Murphy for comment but did not receive a response by the publishing deadline.
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