Three former aides of ousted San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia have accepted $1.2 million to settle lawsuits alleging he engaged in a pattern of sexual harassment and created a toxic work environment.
Former senior customer service representative Mirna Cisneros received $600,000, former assistant Karen Cervantes received $425,000 and former part-time legislative aide Jackie Aboud received $175,000. The city sent the payments to the three on June 20, said city spokesperson Jeff Kraus.
Cisneros and Cervantes went public with their allegations in February 2020. Two months later, Aboud alleged that Valdivia retaliated against her for not engaging in a sexual relationship with him and for reporting his inappropriate behavior to city officials.
Former San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
The city initially rejected the women’s damage claims, and Cisneros sued in June 2020. Cervantes and Aboud filed their lawsuits in March 2022.
The purpose of the settlement was to end the years-long litigation and the costs associated with it, Kraus said in an email.
“There is no admission by any party related to the claims made in the lawsuit(s) by the plaintiffs,” Kraus said, noting that the agreements specifically state that Valdivia and the city deny any liability.
Tristan Pelayes, who represented the three women, said they were satisfied with the outcome of their cases. He scoffed at the city and Valdivia’s denial of any wrongdoing.
“As a lawyer, I find it intriguing when settlements of this magnitude include language that denies any liability or admission of guilt,” Pelayes said in a statement.
Valdivia’s re-election bid in 2022 collapsed when he was defeated in the city’s June primary after he had been censured by the City Council for misusing public funds.
In their lawsuits, filed between June 2020 and March 2022, the three women alleged Valdivia repeatedly propositioned them to engage in sexual relationships with him. When the aides rejected his advances, they claim, the women were retaliated against, and either fired or forced to resign due to intolerable working conditions.
Cisneros and Cervantes alleged Valdivia often demanded that they accompany him on business trips, and that he sent numerous texts and photos to Cisneros filled with sexual innuendos, including a photo of a man having a golf ball teed off his penis.
Two months later, Aboud filed a claim alleging Valdivia ridiculed and subjected her to offensive and graphic sexual comments and gestures during her time in the mayor’s office. She described her employment with the city as a “misery program,” and alleged Valdivia regularly suggested she develop a personal relationship with him and threatened to fire her if she refused.
Aboud said she reported Valdivia’s conduct to the city’s human resources department twice in 2019, but was dissuaded from filing claims out of concern for Valdivia’s response.
All three women were represented by Peleyes, who also is representing Valdivia’s former chief of staff, Matt Brown, and former field representative Donald Smith, in lawsuits they filed in November 2020 alleging whistleblower retaliation for reporting Valdivia’s alleged unlawful conduct.
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Pelayes said a mediation is scheduled with the city in November to address the remaining two cases.
Brown alleges in his lawsuit he witnessed Valdivia engage in daily sexually harassing conduct toward Cervantes and Cisneros that was often “hostile, aggressive and verbally abusive,” creating a toxic work environment.
When Cervantes and Cisneros complained about Valdivia’s sexual harassment, the mayor, according to Brown, instructed him and Valdivia’s executive assistant to provide him false written statements disputing the allegations and write up poor work performance evaluations on them. When Brown refused to do so and complained to human resources, he was fired.
Smith alleges, among other things, that he was forced to watch Valdivia and another woman he picked up at a bar in Irvine during a 2019 fundraiser “intensely kissing” in the backseat of the car he was chauffeuring the two around in, and then again at another bar, where the two sat for an hour at another table drinking and “intensely kissing.”
