After a five-year court battle, a jury awarded a former Georgetown employee $90,000 in compensatory damages and back pay and $1 million in punitive damages last Thursday when it found that her supervisor at Georgetown’s Office of Treasury Services sexually harassed her during her employment there.

Monica Estes was the university’s cash manager in the Division of Financial Affairs from 1993 to December 1996, when she was fired. According to a transcript of the trial proceedings, the jury found that Estes was “subjected to a sexually hostile work environment” and was “discharged in retaliation for engaging in protected activity.”

According to her lawyer, Debra Katz, Estes’s supervisor, Earnest Porta, maintained a “locker room environment” in the office and increased the harassment when Estes complained to university officials. Ultimately, Katz said, “a series of reasons were manufactured” to fire her.

Georgetown maintained that no laws were violated. “We are disappointed and surprised by the jury’s verdict last week,” Assistant Vice President for Communications Julie Green Bataille said in a written press statement. “We believe strongly in the lawfulness of Georgetown University and the actions of the employee in this case.”

Estes’s suit, filed in 1997, alleges that Porta made several sexually suggestive comments to female employees and encouraged a work environment rife with sexual comments, vulgarity and innuendo, starting in 1995 when he became director of treasury services. He has since been promoted to acting vice president and treasurer.

Her original suit charged that Estes had been passed over for promotions and responsibilities because of her gender and because of a pregnancy and subsequent childbirth. A trial judge had earlier dismissed these allegations along with a charge that Georgetown officials intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

“I feel incredibly vindicated,” Estes said in a statement released by her lawyer’s firm. “A jury of my peers has done for me what Georgetown had steadfastly refused to do – to state unequivocally that the behavior to which I was subjected was wrong, unacceptable and illegal. Hopefully, the jury’s message will be loud enough for Georgetown to finally listen.”

The case included eight days of evidence in which the court heard testimony from former Georgetown employees and Porta’s wife, Katz said. An 11-member jury deliberated for five and a half hours before reaching the verdict, she said.

“The jury’s verdict trumps Georgetown’s retaliatory discharge of Monica and will let her get on with her life,” Estes’s co-counsel, Joseph A. Yablonski, said in a press release. “My only regret is that Georgetown’s insurer will pick up the tab rather than the university itself.”

Green Bataille said in a Sept. 9 Chronicle of Higher Education article that Georgetown has had a sexual harassment policy since 1995, and university officials do not believe it was violated.

Georgetown’s policy defines sexual harassment as, “any unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favors or other verbal or physical of a sexual nature” under certain conditions, including when it interferes with an individual’s performance at work or creates a hostile working environment.

It also states that supervisors bear an “important responsibility” to deter and investigate any sexual harassment complaints brought to their attention. According to a press release drafted by Estes’s lawyers’ firm, Estes reported concerns about sexual harassment, gender-based wage inequities and disciplinary standards to Porta, the Employee Assistance Program, the Human Resources Department and the former university president. Rather than take corrective measures, the release says, “they joined ranks to manufacture a pre-textual basis to fire her.”

According to a Hoya article published Feb. 14, 1997, Estes’s suit stemmed from her complaints that co-workers posted pictures of scantily clad women and used her office computer to access pornographic material online. Estes said in the article that Porta wrote an unsubstantiated negative evaluation of her work performance after she returned from maternity leave.

“Georgetown’s consistent position is that they did nothing wrong,” Katz said. “But a jury of 11 people disagreed entirely.”

“We are evaluating our post trial options and expect to seek some form of relief, including appeal if necessary,” Green Bataille said. “We continue to believe that the employee and the university acted lawfully.”