By Carl Prine
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
GREENSBURG, Pa. — Allegheny County officials insist that the firing of Maj. Robert J. Bytner from the jail shows they take seriously sexual harassment allegations, but internal investigative documents tell a slightly different story.
Bytner, 54, was the fifth-highest-ranking official at the lockup, responsible for handling employee and inmate discipline and investigating allegations of staff misconduct, including those directed against him by two female workers.
An investigative dossier the Tribune-Review obtained indicates Bytner’s downfall was not a result of allegations lodged by his boss, Deputy Warden Monica Long, 40, but rather a complaint levied months later by Tanisha Ramsey, 21, of Turtle Creek, a junior correctional officer he supervised.
Neither woman would speak to the Trib. Ramsey said county rules bar her from speaking to the media. Long did not return messages seeking comment.
Bytner of Bethel Park has vowed to fight his dismissal through legal means, telling the Trib that the allegations are not an “accurate portrayal of myself.”
A warning sign appeared Aug. 12, when Bytner sent Long an email telling her that he would “get high blood pressure on Fridays when you wear that white top!!!” Eight days later, she received a message from Bytner complimenting her “nice gams” and ankles, which he apparently saw while monitoring her on the jail’s camera surveillance system.
Not only was Long his boss, she was a lead investigator in what’s called the jail’s “buddy days scandal.” In July, Bytner served one day of unpaid suspension for allegedly exchanging favors for working the shifts of other jail supervisors, allowing them to take days off while racking up unused sick days that could be sold back to the county. Bytner has denied the allegations, but he did not fight the suspension.
On Sept. 28, Long filed a confidential report with Warden Orlando Harper about “inappropriate” messages from Bytner. She noted that Bytner had progressed beyond emails and had told her, in front of a junior jail officer, that he “could not concentrate due to the shirt I was wearing.”
Deputy Warden Simon T. Wainwright allegedly ordered Bytner to stop making suggestive comments.
Then the major began “doing odd things,” such as flinging “a large rubber band” at Long’s face, according to documents.
If Bytner is “this bold” with “his superior, he could be like this with others under his command who may not feel empowered to speak up,” Long told the warden.
On Oct. 2, jail supervisors began reviewing another allegation: An unnamed “retired employee” told Long that a union leader at the jail knew about the confidential report concerning Bytner, and that someone had obtained a screen shot of it and the attached emails from Bytner. Details about the report were circulating throughout the facility, according to the county dossier.
The report indicates jail officials suspected Bytner had learned about the secret investigation a day earlier, after it was forwarded to the county Human Resources office, and went to that department to discuss it. But no determination was reported by county officials on how the documents were photographed, who took the pictures or why they were disseminated to a union official and other staffers.
Instead, Employee Relations Manager Nichole L. Nagle sent an email to Long asking only for the name of the “retired employee” who blew the whistle on the leaked report.
Long replied that “the retired employee isn’t the one that violated me,” adding that she was increasingly “uncomfortable” and “unable to sleep” because of jail “rumors” sparked by employees who had viewed “the emails he sent me.” Long reported that unknown “people have been sifting through my mail,” even spreading out letters across the porch at her Bellevue address in a crude attempt to intimidate her.
Bytner insists he had no connection to leaking Long’s emails or rifling through her mail.
“I knew nothing about any of that, and I would never condone anything like that,” he told the Trib.
On Oct. 8, Long alerted county officials that she had moved in with relatives at an undisclosed location for her safety, according to the investigative documents.
An internal October memo from Nagle indicated that the investigation of Long’s sexual harassment claims would continue, but the files fail to show what county officials did to safeguard Long or investigate her suspicion that jail employees were retaliating against her and her family.
County Human Resources Director Laura Zaspel cautioned against making assumptions about the county’s handling of the matter, telling the Trib that the investigation isn’t over.
It took two weeks for jail supervisors to move Bytner from his office next to Long’s.
Jail leaders appear to have treated the complaints from Ramsey differently.
Interviewed by Deputy Warden Latoya Warren, Ramsey turned over numerous text messages Bytner allegedly sent to her cellphone, dating from when she was a cadet at the lockup, internal documents show. Harper ordered her immediate removal from Bytner’s supervision, transferring her to a telephone desk “to ensure officers do not harass her due to her reporting this incident to administration,” the file states.
During an Oct. 21 meeting between Harper and his second-in-command, Simon Wainwright, Ramsey told them that she “was ready to return to the field as long as Robert Bytner was not in the facility. She stated that she would not be comfortable to return to the field, upon his return,” according to the files.
The dossier provided to the Trib contains no indication that jail administrators planned to permanently remove Bytner as Ramsey’s supervisor or that Long would not have to supervise him. In fact, senior staffers told jail employees last Monday that Bytner soon would return from a brief suspension and paid vacation.
Hours later, the Trib sent the county a list of questions as part of the newspaper’s investigation.
On Thursday morning, jail leaders informed officers that Bytner had been fired. Bytner told the Trib that the warden informed him Wednesday evening by phone.
This isn’t the first time questions have been raised about how Harper, 51, and Wainwright, 60, handle allegations of sexual harassment and whistle-blower retaliation tied to high-ranking employees.
In 2013, Harper and Wainwright were highlighted in a federal sexual harassment lawsuit brought by six female employees of the District of Columbia Department of Corrections, the jail they ran before Harper became warden of the Allegheny County facility in 2012. In Washington, however, Wainwright was warden and Harper was his deputy.
Five of the women settled out of court. The remaining plaintiff is seeking a jury trial. District of Columbia officials have denied wrongdoing.
In their 2013 complaint, one woman claimed she told Harper about abuse she allegedly suffered and he promised that “he would look into the problem, but never followed up,” and jail investigators never contacted her.
She resigned but later sought re-instatement. Harper denied her the job, allegedly saying, “If you had taken care of the right people and done the right things, maybe you would have been back,” according to the lawsuit.
When a second woman complained that a supervisor touched her inappropriately, Harper allegedly made her sign a non-contact order blocking her from the man, but the accused harasser apparently was not required to do the same, the complaint stated.
A third woman claimed that she took sexual misconduct allegations to Wainwright, but he failed to act and later refused to move her away from the supervisor harassing her, the lawsuit says.
Neither Wainwright nor Harper returned calls seeking comment.
County spokeswoman Amie Downs wrote in an email to the Trib that “officials in government are named all of the time in lawsuits and filings related to employment and other claims.”
“To make an assumption that the naming of an individual in a suit means they were involved or guilty of what has been alleged is quite a leap, even if that suit has been settled or partially settled,” she wrote. “We are not going to comment on a lawsuit filed in another jurisdiction involving allegations or claims that occurred elsewhere.”