In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the City of Morgantown released a sexual harassment incident report without redacting the victim’s name, which was then posted online.
For that “outrageous breach of privacy” the victim, identified only as H.M., filed a lawsuit against the City of Morgantown Wednesday. The suit states H.M. was forced to revisit an incident she hoped to leave in her past.
The plaintiff, H.M., has worked for the city for more than a decade. While her name was publicly available online until Wednesday afternoon, The Dominion Post is not identifying her.
The sexual harassment incident occurred in February 2016, according to the suit. An officer with the Morgantown Police Department questioned H.M. about her sexual relations with other city employees during a morning briefing.
Two days later, a captain in the department asked H.M. about it and she became “visibly upset while speaking about the incident.” Others in the briefing room were also uncomfortable with the questions, according to the report. The officer was questioned about it that April and a narrative on the incident was written.
Ultimately, the situation was handled internally and resolved to H.M.’s satisfaction, the suit states. The officer was issued a written reprimand and told to apologize, if H.M. agreed to it, According to an online report. It’s unclear if she did.
The city’s report was one of many documents handed over in response to a FOIA request by Justin McLachlan, a writer. The request was filed Dec. 4, 2020, and completed Jan. 25, 2021.
He told The Dominion Post he filed the request for disciplinary records with many police agencies around the state to see which would release them after the Supreme Court ruled they were subject to disclosure.
“Unfortunately, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that these records are public, Morgantown PD is the only agency in the state that complied with the request,” McLachlan said.
Mclachlan said he wrote for The Dominion Post while he was in grad school and was briefly a reporter with another newspaper in the area – thus his connection to the state.
He said he was surprised the documents were released without any redactions, as that usually isn’t the case.
Muckrock.com, where the document ultimately ended up, describes itself as a nonprofit collaborative news site that provides the public with the tools to keep government transparent and accountable. It has a searchable database of documents obtained through FOIA requests, which makes them available to the public.
Michael Morisy, founder and executive director of MuckRock, said sometimes organizations accidently release information but MuckRock tries to minimize harm while defending the public’s right to know information they have lawful access to.
Morisy said he was unable to find a request to have H.M.’s name redacted or removed but generally speaking, those requests are honored.
“We actually just released some new tools in the past few weeks to speed up our ability to remove and redact sensitive information that was accidentally released,” he said.
Documents are not normally reviewed before being posted, Morisy said. “We have automated systems that automatically post agency responses with the assumption that the documents are redacted properly and are in the public domain. In the past we’ve tweaked our policies and procedures to discourage private information from being posted online, such as restricting requesters from asking for information on themselves.”
Sometime after The Dominion Post contacted MuckRock Wednesday afternoon, H.M.’s name was redacted from the document.
According to the suit, before being released, the document would have been reviewed by the chief of police, Morgantown city attorney and Morgantown FOIA officers. “None of them redacted or obscured information relating to H.M.’s victimization.”
The suit accuses the city of negligence, invasion of privacy, negligent infliction of emotional distress, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent retention, hiring and supervision.
It seeks a judgment in H.M.’s favor for “all claims under the law and as such other legal and equitable relief as this court deems just and proper.”
A Morgantown spokesperson said the city does not comment on current litigation.
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