Officials Warned About BTK Harassment

(Note to Senate Foreign Relations Committee: the following story is about real harassment and about how the harassed handle the grievance; right away, not ten years later.)

They say that there’s this thing called ‘woman’s intuition.’ However, a Kansas woman named Mary Capps didn’t need to employ it to know that something wasn’t right with her boss, a man named Dennis Rader, now thought to be the serial killer known as BTK. Before his arrest in February of this year, Dennis Rader, the accused BTK serial killer, had been accused by Capps of harassment and worse several times.

"Dennis was a very difficult person to get along with," said Capps, a 45-year-old single mother. [ed. note: BTK seems to have particular anger against single women and preyed upon them.] [SNIP]

She says he discriminated against her because she is a woman. With her lawyer, Tad Wagner, she is filing complaints with state and federal commissions alleging a hostile work environment.

Wagner said they also are investigating how she suffered a series of unexplained ailments while working for Rader in a two-person compliance office.

Wagner has requested records from Park City about purchases and use of tranquilizers in animal control, one of the duties of the compliance office.[SNIP]

In an interview with The Eagle this week, Capps said that starting in 2001, she began to suffer muscle spasms. She had trouble concentrating. She sometimes missed work.

It's possible some of her symptoms could be from work-related stress, Wagner said.

Capps said her ailments ceased Feb. 24.

Rader’s arrest was announced on February 26.

Ms. Capps had filed three complaints against Rader and was in the process of filing a fourth when Rader was arrested. She is also taking legal action against Park City, Kansas officials, whom she says did nothing about the situation between her and Rader.

Capps' lawyer, Ted Wagner, said Capps has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Park City "for their failure to respond to a hostile work environment." Another complaint is being prepared for the Kansas Human Rights Commission, he said.

Capps alleges that when she complained verbally about Rader to other city officials, she was derided as suffering from menstrual symptoms. Charming. This is the sort of stuff that keeps harassed women from coming forward.

Hopefully all you high government officials out there will check it out thoroughly when someone says her boss is a jerk. It might save your city/state/etc. some money, not to mention saving a few lives.

Comments

[Carridine]

Juliette, I read stuff like this from America, and I am stunned. Literally. I choose to live in Bangkok, raising two lovely, intelligent, curious, courteous and feisty bi-lingual boys...

Stuff like this makes me wonder if its wise to go back to America... I tend to help people in trouble, expect children to keep themselves on the polite side of 'violent tantrum', and I stop to give first aid to injured.

But this gives me pause, I tell you...