The secretary for a former Logan County family court judge has accused him of sexually assaulting her, two months after the judge resigned and agreed never again to seek judicial office in West Virginia.
Jason D. Harwood resigned his judgeship in July. The admonishment from the West Virginia Judicial Investigation Commission stated that Harwood admitted having a "sexual relationship" with his former secretary.
In a lawsuit filed this week, Harwood's ex-secretary accuses him of sexually assaulting her several times in his chambers, her office, his courtroom and a storage room at the Logan County Courthouse.
The former secretary alleges that Harwood coerced and threatened to fire her if she did not tolerate his sexual advances. When the woman threatened to sue or expose the alleged assaults, the lawsuit states, Harwood threatened to kill her. The woman is not identified in her lawsuit, but the judicial complaint from July lists her initials as TFM.
Harwood could not be reached Wednesday for comment. His attorney, Brian Moore of Charleston, said Harwood denies the lawsuit's allegations.
"Judge Harwood denies that he committed sexual harassment, threats or any unlawful conduct, and we plan to vigorously defend the case," Moore said.
Harwood and his ex-secretary went to high school together, and he hired her when he took office in January 2009, according to the lawsuit.
He allegedly began making crude and unwelcome sexual comments and, on April 10, 2009, allegedly asked his secretary to accompany him to a wedding he presided over while his wife was in the hospital after giving birth.
After drinking a couple of wine coolers, according to the lawsuit, the secretary wasn't drunk but said she felt strange and was losing consciousness. She recalled getting out of a car at Harwood's house, and then woke up naked in the judge's bed with him beside her, wearing only his underwear, the lawsuit claims. The woman said there was evidence of a sexual act, although she doesn't remember any such act.
The next day, a Saturday, the woman alleges, the judge called her and said she had opened Pandora's box and that, "once it was open, it can't be closed." A couple weeks later, the lawsuit alleges, Harwood reminded the woman that he was her boss "and you are going to have to take care of your judge."
He later came into her office, locked the door, pushed her into a corner and against a wall and forced sex on her, according to the lawsuit. The day after, she claims, the judge wrote her a birthday card that said, "Who knew work could be so much fun."
The ex-secretary claims Harwood also forced her to perform oral sex on him several times.
In late 2009, the woman claims, she contacted the West Virginia Supreme Court and asked what to do if a judge was sexually harassing an employee. A Supreme Court employee told her that a formal complaint would have to be filed. The woman claims she asked if that would result in the employee losing her job, and the Supreme Court employee said it more than likely would. The ex-secretary spoke to the same employee again the following spring, and the response was the same, according to the lawsuit.
Another courthouse employee contacted an employee with the Supreme Court administrator's office, according to the lawsuit, and explained what the secretary had told her about the alleged harassment. That administrator allegedly contacted an employee in the Logan courthouse, who advised the judge that, if something was going on, it needed to stop.
Harwood denied the allegations but later confronted his secretary, according to the lawsuit. He allegedly told her that if she was talking about sexual harassment, he would "make sure she is buried at the bottom of Grayson Lake."
At that point, the ex-secretary claims, she stopped talking about Harwood's conduct because she was afraid. The secretary found another job in April 2011, and claims Harwood tried to get her to stay because he was scared she would sue him.
According to the lawsuit, Harwood secretly recorded her saying that he had nothing to do with why she was leaving, but the woman claims she only said that to get away from the judge.
After the woman left her job at the courthouse, the lawsuit claims, the judge continued to try to see her. She agreed to meet with him in November 2013 in a public place, and sometimes would send him emails about politics or friends of hers who had cases pending before him, according to the lawsuit.
However, after talking with police last year, she claims, she realized she should not let him get away with his misconduct.
Charleston attorneys Tim DiPiero and Lonnie Simmons, who filed the lawsuit for the ex-secretary, wrote that they believe discovery will reveal that Harwood also used his power as a judge to try to obtain sexual favors from people who appeared before him. The lawsuit claims that Harwood offered a woman help with her custody issue if she could get her friend to perform oral sex on him, and that a woman told the former secretary that she gave Harwood oral sex the night before a hearing in exchange for a favorable ruling.
Harwood's judicial admonishment in July said the judge "developed an unfavorable reputation in his work environment and perhaps in the community concerning his attitude toward women as sex objects, which was contributed to by his use of language of a sexual nature and his crude utterances about a woman's physical appearance."
The Judicial Investigation Commission concluded that "Harwood's attitude toward women was more like that of an adolescent's notions of women as sex objects than that of a responsible circuit judge and that he should no longer serve in that honorable position," wrote Circuit Judge Ronald Wilson, the commission's chairman.
The lawsuit claims Harwood was accused of sexual harassment in a previous job. He served as a Logan County assistant prosecutor and a county public defender before becoming a judge, and he also worked for the law firm Shaffer & Shaffer, which has offices in Madison and Charleston.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.