Investigation Finds ‘Insufficient Evidence’ of Sexual Harassment by John Duran

An investigation by a private firm of alleged improprieties among City Council deputies has found “insufficient evidence” to support former deputy Ian Owens’s claim that he was sexually harassed by his boss, Councilmember John Duran.

However, the report concludes “that John Duran did engage in making sexually related comments in the workplace, which were unprofessional and generally violated West Hollywood Administrative Regulations pertaining to harassment. While there may have been no specific intent to do so, Duran’s behavior generally contributed to creating a less than professional working environment at the City of West Hollywood.”

The report was prepared by Steve Rodig of RCS Investigations and Consulting. RCS was hired by the city last year after it was revealed that Owens had been listening to the private conversations of Council deputy Fran Solomon in her adjacent office. Owens, using a fake email address, shared with media outlets and others what he alleged were Solomon’s requests that people participate in a photo shoot to promote the re-election of her boss, Councilmember John Heilman. WEHOville revealed that Owens was the source of the email, which prompted Solomon to file a complaint with the city, alleging that Owens was spying on her. The incident brought to light a number of problems with the 30-year-old deputy system, as a result of which the Council voted last summer to eliminate it.

Owens sued the city and Duran last May, saying he was the victim of retaliation for reporting Solomon’s alleged misconduct and that Duran sexually harassed him instead of helping him get action on the matter. Last month the city settled the suit for $500,000, a decision that City Attorney Mike Jenkins said was motivated in part by pressure from the city’s insurer.

In explaining their conclusion that Duran did not sexually harass Owens, the investigators noted the unique nature of the relationship between Duran and Owens, who had had sex with one another and became friends before Owens took a job in which he reported to Duran. They also noted that other than Michelle Rex, another Council deputy who is a close friend of Owens, no one interviewed confirmed Owens’s sexual harassment claims. Also, the report noted that neither Rex nor Owens reported the alleged sexual harassment. “If (Rex) believed Duran was harassing (Owens), (she) had a duty to report the alleged violations contemporaneous to (the city manager or human resources director) when they occurred; however (she) apparently failed to do so.

The Rodig report was released after WEHOville filed a formal request for it under the state’s freedom of information laws. The 129-page document is heavily redacted, with 64 of the pages completely blacked out and many of the others largely obscured. Even Owens’s name is blacked out in a summary of Rodig’s interview with him. The report examines five allegations, although it identifies Duran as the subject of two of them and obscures the subjects of the others. Those subjects are likely Owens, Solomon and Rex, who is the former deputy to and campaign manager for City Councilmember John D’Amico. Allegations have been made about Solomon doing political work for Heilman, Owens spying on Solomon and Rex conspiring with Owens.

Jenkins said the redactions were necessary to protect the privacy of the people interviewed and other city employees and to avoid making the city vulnerable to another lawsuit. Jenkins said Aanand Ghods-Mehtani, who represents Owens and Rex in her own lawsuit against West Hollywood, has threatened to sue the city if any information released in the report maligns Owens. Solomon also has filed a claim against the city, alleging harassment by D’Amico.

Duran is the only one of the 13 people whose interviews are summarized in the report who is clearly identified. However, the identities of some of them — Owens and Rex, Councilmember D’Amico, former Human Resources Director LuNita Bock and former Duran deputy Hernan Molina — are easy to determine. Others whose interviews apparently are summarized in the report include Heilman and City Manager Paul Arevalo.

The report says that Owens and Rex claimed Duran had sexually harassed Owens and made sexually provocative statements while on the job. Rex had a fraught relationship with Solomon that reflected the animosity between her boss and Solomon’s. No others interviewed by Rodig said they were aware of any sexual harassment by Duran or retribution by the city for Owens’s making claims about Solomon. Owens did not make those claims officially until he was put on leave with pay while his alleged spying on Solomon was investigated.

Many of those interviewed did, however, say that Duran was very open about his sex life, sometimes embarrassingly and inappropriately so. Rex said that Duran made “comments in regards to who he might have slept with … whether, you know sort of in gay terms, whether he was a top or bottom, things of that nature.” Asked if Duran made reference to specific body parts, Rex said, “Yes, the penis.”

Another unidentifiable person told Rodig that Duran’s sexual comments were “tongue-in-cheek. And it’s like, oh gosh, I can’t believe he just said that type of a thing, but everyone’s kind of snickering. It’s very like 8th grade boy humor to a degree… Everyone will enjoy it because it’s meant in gest. But he’s the only one that will say those types of things.” Duran has “a very high profile,” said another person interviewed, and “his sex life is part of who he is.”

One person also cast doubt on Owens’s claims. “(Ian) claiming that John Duran harassed (him) really just seems like (Ian’s) making things up…. (Ian’s not very professional and (Ian’s) just kind of going about his business being a rude person, and (he) got, (he) got caught doing something (he) shouldn’t have been doing, and now I think (Ian’s) kind of grasping at straws.”

As he claimed in his lawsuit, Owens told Rodig that he met Duran on Grindr, the gay hookup app, in April 2012, and they had oral sex. Owens said he then came to regard Duran as a friend and a mentor and was hired by him for the deputy position, which he began in August 2012. At one point in his statement Owens said Duran made sexual advances to him at least twice a week after hiring him and at another point that he made advances “once or twice a month.” Duran has denied those allegations noting that he was only at his City Hall office twice a month on average. Owens did, however, also accompany Duran to civic events outside the office. Owens said he confronted Duran about the sexual solicitations in March 2014, after which Duran stopped.

But Owens said Duran continued to share his sexual adventures with Owens. “He would go into long drawn out discussions about his hookups that he’s had or the boy that he’s pursuing,” he said. “He’d show me pictures on his phone; he’d show me their chat history on the Grindr, he’d have the Grindr open, app open the entire time we were conducting business, half the time not paying attention.” Owens also said Duran had told him that he had had sex with men after hours in his Council office, another allegation Duran has denied. And Owens claimed that Duran groped the breasts of LuNita Bock, then the city’s human resources director. That allegation was denied by Bock in her interview with Rodig.

Owens said he didn’t take his complaints about Duran to the city’s human resources staff because he didn’t want to lose his job. ” If I ever made it an issue, it could’ve gone out publicly and looked bad upon me, which is a clear example of how I’m being beat up in the press now,” he said. “I would also lose my job, if Councilmember Duran loses his job; my job’s directly tied to him.”

In his interview with Rodig, Duran said his initial meeting with Owens, arranged over Grindr, “was all about 20 minutes one evening, one time.” Duran said they became friends. “So we became more friends … (went) to barbeques, pool parties, we went to Disneyland with a group of people, so (Ian) was just a friend. More than an acquaintance, no dating, nothing sexual after that first night and not employee-related either.” Duran said he didn’t view their initial encounter as “intimate.” “Intimate to me means like dating or something more than just the one time, 20-minute affair.”

Duran said he didn’t make comments of a sexual nature to Owens at the office or at official events. He said Owens blocked Duran’s access to his Grindr profile, a sign that Owens wanted to draw a line between their personal and professional lives. But Duran conceded that the two discussed their sex lives in phone texts and conversations, although Duran said he wasn’t sure if that continued after Owens became his deputy. He said he shared stories about his sex life with Owens when they were off work and hanging out with friends. Owens sent him explicit photos of men he was dating, Duran said. Duran also said that Owens made jokes about suing Duran for sexual harassment.

Councilmember D’Amico told Rodig that he had warned Duran not to have the Grindr app open on his cell phone while on the Council dais. “He was on Grindr during a council meeting and I took a picture of it and I said ‘John, stop it, if I can see you doing that, other people can too’.” D’Amico upset Duran at a Council meeting last month by publicly calling him out for looking at Grindr during the meetings.

D’Amico said he didn’t take Duran’s sexual banter seriously. “John and I are friends, and we joke with each other, and it’s pretty clear to me that his interactions with me were in the interest of being funny, in the interest of being light, in the interest of being not sexualizing our friendship, but in the interest of discussing his own sex life.”

In his interview with Rodig, Hernan Molina, Duran’s long-time deputy before Owens was hired, said Duran had never crossed a boundary with him. “”I’m (a gay man) myself and so is Councilmember Duran, we knew where the boundary was and I never felt uncomfortable and Mr. Duran never expressed feeling uncomfortable with my conversations, which were of the same tenor as Mr. Duran, an exchange, a friendly exchange.”