Former SLO County prosecutor accuses DA’s Office of harassment, discrimination
A former prosecutor for the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office faced discrimination over a workplace disability and experienced harassment including religious texts and questions about her sex life, she claims in a lawsuit.
In a civil complaint filed in San Luis Obispo Superior Court on February 2020, Rebecca Matthews alleged that the agency — specifically District Attorney Dan Dow and Assistant District Attorney Eric Dobroth — violated her civil rights by harassing her and discriminating against her due to a mental health disability.
Matthews primarily prosecuted sex crimes while working for the county District Attorney’s Office from 2016 to 2018 as a deputy district attorney, according to court documents. She also previously served as a deputy district attorney in other counties since 2007, documents say.
“This is a very sad case,” Matthews’ attorney, Patrick Fisher, wrote in an email to The Tribune.
Dobroth told The Tribune that he and the rest of the District Attorney’s Office could not comment on the matter.
Rita McNeal, who is representing the District Attorney’s Office, wrote in an email that the county “has been and will continue to strongly defend this case.”
Lawsuit: Dan Dow sent religious texts, asked inappropriate question
In a complaint filed with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing in February 2019, Matthews alleged that her former employer harassed her after she complained about her work load, neglect and distress regarding her ability to prosecute child pornography, child rape and child molestation cases.
Matthews claimed she was never given information on ways to get help, including the employee assistance program, workers compensation or family and medical leave, after she reached out to her supervisors.
Matthews told the state agency that she faced retaliation after her husband, who was a police officer, had to take leave and undergo rehabilitation for alcoholism. At the same time, she said, she was experiencing marital problems that included allegations that she had had an affair.
According to the fair employment complaint, Matthews said she was placed on paid administrative leave despite having requested family leave to take care of her family while her husband attended rehab.
“During the paid leave, Dan (Dow) would text me religious-based texts and other texts that would illicit a response,” she wrote in the complaint. “Unbeknownst to me I was being investigated based on what had occurred with my husband,” she wrote in the complaint.
Matthews was not notified that she was being investigated until she stated she was returning to work, the complaint said.
She remained on paid leave until her psychologist filled out paperwork stating she had a disability caused by her work environment and should not handle child pornography and sexual assault cases. Matthews then asked for flexible work hours and other accommodations due to her disability.
Her supervisor asked her to sign away certain rights in order to have her family leave approved, but Matthews refused, the complaint said. The leave was still approved, but the accommodations were never made, she alleged.
Matthews said she faced harassment following her request for family leave, which included being watched and followed.
She alleged that Dobroth gave her a child pornography case to write about in a memo, then told coworkers via email that Matthews would not write about or review the case. He also publicly asked Matthews, “Hey mama, how is your head?” the complaint said.
“I was treated as if I were being punished such as setting very rigid work hours which alienated me from coworkers and clearly singled me out,” Matthews wrote in the complaint.
Following her initial complaint to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Matthews claims in her lawsuit, management initiated a “pre-textual misconduct investigation” to look into her workplace truancy, according to court documents.
She claimed that her absences were due to the emotional distress of her job and not without reason.
During a recorded employee discipline hearing held before Matthews left the District Attorney’s Office, Dow asked Matthews if she had had sex with a particular man after she showed Dow a picture of her beaten face, the complaint said.
Matthews’ injuries are not addressed elsewhere in the lawsuit.
“When I asked why (Dow) was asking, he clarified and asked if I had sexual intercourse with this man. This made me clearly uncomfortable and I felt (it) was sexual harassment,” Matthews said in the complaint. “I was threatened that if I didn’t agree to resign, they would tell all potential employers that I was fired for the allegations I am currently appealing and all based on FMLA-protected activity, First Amendment speech or hearsay from a person unrelated to my employment.”
Matthews stopped working in the District Attorney’s office on Aug. 22, 2018.
According to documents attached to the legal complaint, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing did not take action on Matthew’s complaint because she requested and was granted a so-called “right to sue” notice.
Matthews is suing the county District Attorney’s Office, Dow and Dobroth for failure to accommodate a medical condition, failure to engage in interactive process, discrimination and retaliation, all in violation of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.
SLO County calls former prosecutor’s claims ‘groundless’
The county filed its response on March 19, 2020, and denied all aspects of Matthews’ complaint.
The complaint “was filed without any good faith basis or reasonable cause,” the county said in court documents, describing the claims as “frivolous, unreasonable and groundless.”
Lawyers for SLO County allege that the claims Matthews made in her lawsuit do not have the required level of specificity for each cause of action and also lack specificity to “displace applicable immunity doctrines covering public entities and/or their employees.”
The complaint is “uncertain, ambiguous, and unintelligible,” attorneys representing the county wrote.
If Matthews was damaged, it was not by San Luis Obispo County or the District Attorney’s Office, their response said.
The conduct displayed by Matthews’ former employer “was a just and proper exercise of management’s discretion” and was “for a fair and honest reason and regulated by good faith and probable cause under circumstances existing at the time,” the attorneys said.
Why was case delayed?
Although filed in the winter of 2020, Matthews’ lawsuit was postponed because of COVID-19 delays, according to court documents.
Her original lawyer asked to be relieved from the case in October 2020, citing an “irreconcilable conflict‘‘ between him and Matthews, court documents say. That motion was granted in January 2021, but Matthews did not obtain her current lawyer until October 2021.
“We’ve had a lot of technical/procedural obstacles that were created before I was retained,” Fisher said. “I’ve been trying to repair the damage since I got involved.”
During the time Matthews did not have counsel, she did not respond to discovery requests and missed one court hearing and a case management conference, court documents show. Because of this, Matthews was unable to object to discovery requests and was fined $504.
In September 2021, the county filed a motion for terminating sanctions, asking the court to dismiss the case on the basis of Matthews’ noncompliance with discovery requests and missing court hearings.
She filed a motion for relief in December 2021 asking to be able to revisit the discovery objections, saying her original counsel’s incompetence and her mental health conditions were responsible her non-responsiveness.
According to court documents, Matthews has since filed responses to the county but had not paid the fine as of June 16.
Superior Court Judge Tana Coates ruled June 29 that Matthews cannot be granted relief for procedural violations that occurred during the year she did not have a lawyer.
A hearing regarding whether the case will be dismissed will be held Oct. 31.
This story was originally published July 8, 2022 at 12:45 PM.
