{"id":207780,"date":"2026-03-06T19:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T19:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207780\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T19:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T19:31:11","slug":"lawsuit-adds-to-claims-of-decade-long-pattern-of-harassment-at-de-young-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/207780\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit adds to claims of decade-long pattern of harassment at de Young Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another security guard at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has sued the museum and the city, alleging a pattern of abuse that reaches back a decade. This is the second lawsuit in 12 months filed by a current or former security guard and the ninth since 2016. The allegations were first revealed in September in an investigation by The Standard<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a lawsuit filed Feb. 20 in San Francisco Superior Court, de Young security guard Ezra Iturribarria alleges gender-based harassment, failure to prevent harassment, and retaliation for opposing harassment. The complaint names the nonprofit Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which operates aspects of the de Young and Legion of Honor Museum; the city and county of San Francisco, which oversee and employ the security department; and Patrick Smithwick, a museum security supervisor and Iturribarria\u2019s superior.<\/p>\n

Smithwick did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Fine Arts Museums declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation and the \u201csafety and privacy of our employees.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the complaint, Iturribarria said Smithwick \u2014 who featured prominently in The Standard\u2019s investigation \u2014 repeatedly made sexual comments about her body, calling her a \u201cprostitute,\u201d and saying she had a \u201cFUPA (opens in new tab)<\/a>.\u201d She also alleges that Smithwick stared at her while she worked and offered to engage in sexual encounters involving himself and his wife, saying Iturribarria could \u201ccome over anytime. You, me, and [my] wife would have a good time!\u201d Iturribarria claims she was humiliated and shocked by these encounters and suffered emotional distress. She is seeking damages of at least $25,000.<\/p>\n

According to the lawsuit, Iturribarria reported Smithwick\u2019s alleged harassment to her employer on Oct. 2, but the museum failed to properly investigate, conducting what she refers to as a \u201csham investigation\u201d while allowing Smithwick to continue interacting with her at work. The suit says he was temporarily assigned to a different museum but retained access to employee schedules and repeatedly contacted Iturribarria by phone during her shifts. The lawsuit further alleges that on Dec. 19, the museum informed Iturribarria that Smithwick would soon return to supervising her at the de Young; this prompted her to begin an unpaid, ongoing leave of absence. She is slated to return to the museum on April 1, pending a psychologist\u2019s orders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI expressed to them that I don\u2019t feel protected, that I don\u2019t feel safe,\u201d Iturribarria, who has worked as a security guard at the museum since 2007, told The Standard. \u201cMy whole life has been disrupted, and yet this guy is going around like the sun is shining. That\u2019s the MO around the museum \u2014 that you can basically get away with anything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nine security guards who have sued the Fine Arts Museums since 2016 allege a pattern of harassment and retaliation on behalf of the security management team and, in some cases, its human resources department. Several of the lawsuits claim that Smithwick, other security managers, and the human resources department routinely discriminated and retaliated against employees based on age, race, and physical and mental disability. The city and county of San Francisco has doled out more than $1 million across seven settlements of the cases since 2019.<\/p>\n

After The Standard\u2019s investigation was published, the Fine Arts Museums\u2019 director, Thomas P. Campbell, sent a companywide email<\/a> attempting to downplay the severity of the allegations.<\/p>\n

Some incidents in Iturribarria\u2019s lawsuit are alleged to have occurred just days after The Standard\u2019s investigation was published. That report detailed allegations from a guard, Mohammad Joiyah, who filed a suit claiming that Smithwick called him a \u201cterrorist\u201d in front of coworkers. It also reported that Smithwick was criminally charged in 2002 with illegally possessing explosives and making or transporting a destructive device. The felony charge was later dismissed, and he was sentenced to community service and a fine for a misdemeanor before the case was expunged in 2005. In 2013, Smithwick\u2019s private security company, Smithwick Executive Protection Patrol, was fined $16,115 for four violations of federal law under \u201cemployment-related offenses.\u201d Details on the offenses were not made available to The Standard. The investigation also revealed that in 2023, Smithwick directed guards not to lend the museum\u2019s defibrillator to a man suffering cardiac arrest outside. The man died (opens in new tab)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Smithwick is still employed by the Fine Arts Museums. A case management conference is set for July 26.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Iturribarria\u2019s lawsuit also highlights what guards say is a major obstacle to resolving workplace disputes within the security department. SEIU 1021, the union representing the security guards, also represents six of the department\u2019s nine managers \u2014 a structure that creates a conflict of interest, workers say.<\/p>\n

In September, Jennie Smith-Camejo, a spokesperson for SEIU 1021, told The Standard that union stewards are assigned to members in a way that aims to avoid conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe represent many supervisors and line workers across city departments very successfully,\u201d she said. \u201cWe believe representing more workers builds more solidarity and unity and outweighs the perceived conflicts and divisions by ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Another security guard at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco has sued the museum and the city,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2308,71899,1016,32044,2311,101,103,102,29463,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-207780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-de-young-museum","10":"tag-lawsuits","11":"tag-legion-of-honor","12":"tag-museums","13":"tag-san-francisco","14":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","15":"tag-san-francisco-news","16":"tag-sexual-harassment","17":"tag-sf","18":"tag-sf-headlines","19":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207780","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=207780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}