A veteran female Orange County prosecutor was awarded $3.5 million this week by a San Diego jury that found she was the victim of sexual harassment and a hostile work environment at the District Attorney\u2019s Office, the latest verdict in a series of lawsuits related to the actions of a disgraced former supervisor and former close friend of DA Todd Spitzer.<\/p>\n
Bethel Cope-Vega described Gary Logalbo, her former supervisor at the DA\u2019s office, repeatedly sexually harassing her, including making late-night phone calls asking what she was wearing and saying she was naked in his dreams.<\/p>\n
Cope-Vega, in testimony during the civil trial, also said Logalbo made explicit and demeaning remarks to her when she tried to distance herself in his office, telling her \u201cYou know, you don\u2019t have to stand back there. Are you afraid? I\u2019m not going to just bend you over that chair and take you from behind,\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m not going to bite unless you ask me to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving to sue the job I continue to love has been heartbreaking,\u201d Cope-Vega said in a statement released after the verdict. \u201cThis was never about money for me or the other victims \u2014 it has always been about standing up to injustice and doing what is right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was against the county of Orange. A county representative declined to comment on the verdict.<\/p>\n
As a prosecutor, Cope-Vega in recent years has handled the county\u2019s most shocking child-abuse related crimes. That has included the successful prosecutions of an Anaheim woman who committed \u201cunspeakable\u201d torture on her 10-year-old step-daughter<\/a> and a couple whose infant son was left blind and quadriplegic due to malnutrition and exposure to extreme temperatures<\/a>. In 2024, Cope-Vega was chosen as the \u201cOutstanding Prosecutor of the Year\u201d by the California District Attorney\u2019s Association.<\/p>\n \u201cMy client is a devoted public servant whose only goal has ever been to serve her community with integrity,\u201d said attorney Aaron Brock. \u201cThe County of Orange should not only be proud of her exceptional work but grateful for the dedication, fairness, and leadership she has brought to the Orange County District Attorney\u2019s Office and to the community she serves.\u201d<\/p>\n In late 2020, sexual harassment allegations came to light involving Logalbo, then a high-level DA supervisor who decades earlier had served as the best man at DA Spitzer\u2019s wedding. Spitzer previously testified that he had grown apart from Logalbo over the years. But at least one of Logalbo\u2019s accusers and her supervisor raised concerns about Spitzer\u2019s potential role in an investigation into Logalbo.<\/p>\n County HR officials took over the investigation. Logalbo was placed on leave and quickly left the DA\u2019s office. He died in 2021.<\/p>\n A county report ultimately found that Logalbo sexually harassed four female attorneys under his supervision. But the public release of that report \u2014 complete with potentially identifying details regarding victims and those who aided the investigation \u2014 by DA leadership \u201cshocked\u201d and \u201chumiliated\u201d the victims, who believed it was an act of retaliation for their participating in the investigation into Logalbo.<\/p>\n DA officials blamed the verdict in Cope-Vega\u2019s civil lawsuit not only on Logalbo but also the County Counsel office, which handles legal matters for the Orange County Board of Supervisors and county departments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Orange County District Attorney\u2019s Office has always supported the victims of sexual harassment and their right to sue and receive compensation for their damages,\u201d said Kimberly Edds, an OC DA spokeswoman. \u201cThe OCDA has and continues to advocate for all its employees to be free of discrimination and harassment. This verdict is about the harassment engaged in by a former Senior Assistant Deputy District Attorney; it is also a condemnation of the actions of County Counsel.\u201d<\/p>\n Edds accused the county counsel, Leon Page, of being responsible for the public release of the report into Logalbo\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n \u201cHe hired an outside investigator who threatened our employees with termination if they did not participate in the investigation and promised them confidentiality,\u201d Edds said. \u201cThen County Counsel went on to publicly humiliate and victim-shame these women by deeming the confidential report a public document, failing to adequately protect their identities in that public document and then releasing it to the media. We are not in any way surprised by this verdict or the dollar amount since County Counsel broke its promises to these women and betrayed their trust.\u201d<\/p>\n A representative for the county declined to comment on the DA\u2019s statement regarding county counsel, citing a policy not to discuss pending litigation and settlements.<\/p>\n Several current and former DA employees have filed lawsuits related to Logalbo\u2019s actions and the fallout from the investigation. In 2021, they agreed to six-figure settlements with the county, but those agreements were rejected by the Orange County Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n The cases were transferred to a courtroom in downtown San Diego in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest regarding former prosecutors from the DA\u2019s office who has since become judges.<\/p>\n Last year, a lawsuit brought by former DA supervisor Tracy Miller became the first of the Logalbo-related cases to go to trial<\/a>. Miller over a two-decade long career as a prosecutor had risen to the upper echelon of the OC DA office, ultimately becoming the highest-ranking woman in the organization.<\/p>\n A previous jury awarded Miller more than $3 million in damages<\/a>, determining that she had been targeted for harassment by Spitzer and Sean Nelson \u2014 Spitzer\u2019s former second-in-command who is now an Orange County judge \u2014 and forced out of the DA\u2019s office. Miller alleged the harassment against her intensified after she cooperated with an investigator looking into Logalbo and tried to protect his victims, including Cope-Vega.<\/p>\n During the trial related to Miller\u2019s lawsuit, Spitzer and Nelson both repeatedly denied speaking out against or targeting the women who reported the sexual harassment by Logalbo<\/a>.<\/p>\n But, as part of the verdict in the Miller case, jurors found Spitzer personally liable for $25,000 in punitive damages, which are meant to punish behavior. On top of the initial $3 million verdict for Miller, a judge later awarded $1.5 million in attorneys\u2019 fees<\/a> related to her successful lawsuit<\/a>, increasing the financial exposure to the county.<\/p>\n Unlike the trial related to Miller\u2019s lawsuit, Spitzer was not personally named as a defendant in the lawsuit brought by Cope-Vega.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A veteran female Orange County prosecutor was awarded $3.5 million this week by a San Diego jury that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1312,723,138,100,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-183937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}