the arrest earlier this year of Robert Machuca<\/a>, a now-former Garden Grove police officer who is facing criminal charges for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old in the Police Explorer program.<\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t think this was one bad sergeant \u2014 people knew who he was,\u201d Darvish said. \u201cThis was a department that looked the other way. I think it was a \u2018good ol boys\u2019 network\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman who brought the new lawsuit alleges that Starnes \u2014 who was her direct supervisor in the department\u2019s traffic division \u2014 harassed her from July 2025 into early 2026.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that Starnes \u201csubjected\u201d the woman and other female employees to \u201ca barrage of sexually explicit remarks, unwelcome commentary about other women\u2019s bodies and sexual acts and gender-based hostility.\u201d It also contends that the sergeant \u201cdescribed his own sexual practices, women\u2019s genitalia and his sexual preferences, often in front of multiple witnesses and directed at or in the immediate presence\u201d of the woman or other female coworkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was looking to get into some type of sexual relationship with her, this wasn\u2019t just someone going around making joking comments \u2014 there was a purpose behind them,\u201d Darvish said. \u201cHer day-to-day working environment was horrible. It was like walking on eggshells at work, waiting for the other shoe to drop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starnes began pairing the sexual comments with threats to the woman\u2019s performance evaluations \u2014 which he controlled \u2014 and her assignments within the unit, the lawsuit alleges. In February, the lawsuit alleges, \u201cafter months of harassment and threats about her performance evaluation,\u201d the woman suffered a panic attack at work that required emergency medial treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer body couldn\u2019t physically take it anymore,\u201d Darvish said.<\/p>\n
The attorneys said Starnes was placed on administrative leave after the woman reported the alleged conduct. But, according to the lawsuit, Starnes was allowed to go back into the traffic office, where he allegedly told other officers \u201cThis is why you can\u2019t f\u2014\u2013g trust civilians! I\u2019ll be back, I am not even worried.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the lawsuit, Starnes retired in April 2026 while still under investigation.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that nearly a year before the woman reported the alleged harassment, Starnes on one occasion spoke to her about allegations that Machuca \u2014 the officer later arrested for his alleged sexual conduct with an underage Police Explorer \u2014 had sexually harassed a young woman. The lawsuit alleges that Starnes response to the allegations against Machuca was to say \u201cYeah, but if she was 18 and hot, I wouldn\u2019t mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of financial damages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A civilian employee at the Garden Grove Police Department alleges she was subjected to \u201csevere and pervasive sexual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,1312,723,138,100,136],"class_list":["post-503829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503829","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=503829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}