Harassment Suit Hits College : Litigation: 2 women employees say they were sexually harassed by Saddleback campus police chief and that their complaints were ignored by district.

MISSION VIEJO —  Two Saddleback Community College District employees charged in a lawsuit Friday that they were sexually harassed by their campus chief of police who leered through binoculars at female students and took delight in describing students having sex in the college parking lot.

The women said they had already filed grievances against Director of Safety and Security Dennis Rotzoll and assistant director of campus safety James Pyle with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and that the college district, which was aware of their complaints, ignored them.

“It’s been very strenuous,” Nettie Ruth Dickey, 42, said in a brief interview with The Times. A married mother of three children, she said she gained 100 pounds in stress-related eating since the harassment began with her hiring in January, 1986.

“It’s unbearable, it’s intolerable,” added fellow plaintiff Maria E. Thorpe, 36, also the married mother of three children.

The district declined to comment on the case. “Our practice is not to comment on anything that is in litigation,” said district spokeswoman Diane Riopka.

Rotzoll oversees a staff of 25, including 19 armed officers, three of them women, at the district’s Irvine Valley and Saddleback colleges. Neither he nor Pyle could be reached for comment Friday.

Thorpe, a campus officer, and Dickey, Rotzoll’s former secretary, claim they remained on the job because they needed to work to help support their families. They are now on medical leaves unrelated to the lawsuit that was filed Friday in Orange County Superior Court.

The lawsuit contends that Rotzoll, who is responsible for the safety of 34,000 students at the two campuses, sexually harassed the women both physically and verbally since shortly after they joined his staff, and that Pyle knew and “condoned” the behavior. The women claim they reported instances of sexual harassment and discrimination to Pyle, who failed to investigate the complaints.

The lawsuit quotes Thorpe as saying that Rotzoll “spies on students engaged in sexual encounters and reported, in plaintiff’s presence, the graphic details of the sexual activity which he observed. Defendant Rotzoll has stated that he is not interested in stopping such sexual conduct among students because he enjoys watching it.”

And this, charged in the lawsuit by Dickey: “On several occasions, in plaintiff’s presence, Rotzoll has used binoculars to observe female students and employees from his office. He has made unwelcome, sexually oriented comments on his observations to the plaintiff. Rotzoll also seeks out students having sex in vehicles. Rotzoll makes offensive remarks in plaintiff’s presence regarding scantily clad women or various sex acts he purportedly observes.”

Thorpe alleges in the lawsuit that the harassment by Rotzoll began shortly after she was hired as a campus safety officer by the defendants in November, 1990. She was promoted to the status of “weekend/holiday campus safety officer” in the spring of 1992.

“Defendant Pyle has condoned the offensive and hostile sexual environment by participating in the telling of offensive jokes and anecdotes in the presence of Plaintiff Thorpe and acknowledging the impropriety of this by remarking, also in the presence of plaintiff, that the defendants ‘should be careful’ because they could be charged with sexual harassment for their language and conduct,” the lawsuit states.

“Defendant Rotzoll has embraced (Thorpe) from behind, touched her arms, back, waist and hands in a sexual, offensive manner and has repeatedly criticized the somewhat loose fitting of her uniform, even ordering her to obtain tighter fitting uniforms. This conduct has (occurred) during the summer months of 1992 and also during the first weeks of the school’s fall semester,” the lawsuit continues.

The lawsuit further charges that the women were subjected to “incredibly offensive staring, leering, profanity and sexually explicit remarks, as well as racist comments, by Rotzoll,” who then blocked Thorpe’s chances of gaining full-time employment with the district by “refusing her the right to . . . (a formal job) interview” despite her qualifications.

Thorpe filed a grievance with her union last month and claims she has been subjected to retaliation by Rotzoll, who eliminated her overtime hours and reduced her regular workload. She maintains Rotzoll is now trying to build a case of trumped-up charges to fire her.

On Oct. 3, the lawsuit states, Rotzoll also screamed at her during a meeting and “made thrusting motions with his pelvis while sitting in a recliner chair, and touched his genital area and rubbed his stomach--all the while staring in an offensive manner at plaintiff Thorpe.”

In Dickey’s case, she contends she has been sexually harassed since she was hired as a dispatcher for the campus safety department in January, 1986. She claimed that Rotzoll has embraced her against her will, attempted to kiss her and touch her “breasts, knees and back.”

She claims Rotzoll “had an ongoing practice of staring at plaintiff’s breasts and groin and then making sexually explicit comments about her,” and of spreading untrue gossip among the staff that they were having an affair.

In the summer of 1987, Dickey was reassigned as Rotzoll’s personal secretary. After rejecting his sexual advances and putting on considerable weight, the lawsuit states, Dickey was subjected to demeaning remarks about her weight.

Dickey contends she was threatened with physical harm and termination if she ever complained about Rotzoll’s conduct toward her, and was denied a management reclassification after she began taking on additional duties related to air quality standards.

The lawsuit states that on Oct. 22 Rotzoll called Dickey at home and tried to dissuade her from filing a sexual harassment grievance by offering her a secretary, her own office and a 5% stipend for performing the school district’s air quality standards work from January, 1990, through November, 1991.

Both women claim they have co-workers and students who witnessed some of the harassment, and their attorney said other plaintiffs may join the lawsuit.