Annette John-Hall: Greene harassment mess comes as no surprise

Why am I not surprised to learn that the latest twist in this whole sordid Carl Greene mess involves yet another charge of sexual harassment?

The Philadelphia Housing Authority chief has already been suspended by the PHA board for what one claimant's attorney described as "serial predatory sexual misconduct" against female employees. The key word here is serial.

Now, you're not guilty if charged in this country, and no judge that we know of has yet sentenced Greene for proven sexual harassment. But to me, what happened to Kafi Lindsay was harassment under a different guise.

Lindsay, 34, was the attorney - and John F. Street aide - whom Greene hired agents to tail because he supposedly suspected she wasn't going to work.

Now the curtain's pulled back, and we know that it wasn't really about Lindsay. It never was. Lindsay simply represented the only man who wielded any real power over Greene - PHA board chairman Street. Was someone trying to find something to hold over his boss?

Yet, typically, it's Lindsay on whom folks will cast their aspersions, even though she's the unsuspecting puck in an increasingly putrid power play.

If what they claim is even close to the truth, I'm guessing the four women who filed harassment claims against Greene can testify to the violation Lindsay must feel. Take Elizabeth Helm, the PHA architect who claims Green told her a promotion depended on whether or not she'd put out.

"I know you don't want to kiss me," Greene allegedly told Helm before grabbing her and forcing a kiss on her, according to a letter sent to PHA by her attorney.

There are reports of Greene berating women to tears. Jenelle Scott, one of Greene's administrative assistants, said in a complaint filed with both the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the EEOC that during one tirade Green got so close he spit on her lip.

"It was unimaginable, something out of a horror story," says one woman I spoke to who didn't want her name used. She now works for the City of Baltimore and is afraid Greene's powerful reach may extend there. The former employee, who worked directly with Greene from 2002 through 2007 as a communications specialist, told me Greene usually focused his wrath on powerless women.

"He would degrade you, calling you stupid, and ask how'd you get a degree," she said. "But if you were politically connected, he acted differently."

Exactly.

Greene's management style, if you can call it that, is classic bullying. And it's behavior that allows sexual harassment to fester, says Carol E. Tracy, executive director of the Women's Law Project.

"I can't imagine men doing well there, either," Tracy says. "It must have been a terrible place to work."

Especially when the boss is perpetrating the behavior.

"You always want to go to the boss and make sure corrective action is taken," Tracy says. "That's the worst possible scenario, when the CEO is the problem."

Which may have been the reason Greene could settle hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of harassment suits without the board knowing. I mean, the boss isn't going to blow the whistle on himself.

Yes, there's power in numbers. Victims have to stand to their fears and create outrage by going public. And their co-workers - male and female - must support them - because it looks like the ones in power sure aren't.

Not Mayor Nutter, who's been disturbingly silent on this issue.

Not Gov. Rendell, who - when he was mayor - knew about a Detroit woman's damning harassment charge against Greene, yet went ahead and hired the housing director anyway.

And surely not PHA board member Jannie Blackwell, who says she's reserving her judgment on Greene because "he's the only one moving housing in the recession."

Gotta love Philadelphia's priorities.

Plain and simple, women need to "raise hell," says Tracy.

"Forty years ago, we got laws on the books and enforced laws that argued that workplace, homes and communities be free from [sexual harassment]," Tracy says.

"That shouldn't be a radical notion."