The Saipan Mayor’s Office worker whom a female employee filed multiple reports of sexual harassment against is Ramon Camacho, the mayor himself. This is according to the woman, who was fed up with her treatment and has quit her job there, and according to the reports she made to several agencies.
“I have been a victim of the Saipan Mayor Ramon Jose “RB” Blas Camacho’s unwanted, inappropriate, and pervasive sexual harassment that has been going on for months in our work place,” the woman wrote to Saipan Mayor’s Office human resources director Juanette DLG Sablan on a letter dated September 14 this year, but submitted after September 19. According to the woman, who spoke to Kandit, and to her report to Ms. Sablan, this was her first attempt to stop the mayor’s alleged illegal activity.
Asked whether the mayor denies the claim, his chief of staff Priscilla Iakapo wrote to Kandit instead, “At the advise of Mayor Camacho’s attorney, Mayor Camacho cannot comment as this is an ongoing investigation.”
The letter to Ms. Sablan was a memorialization of a meeting the woman had with her HR superior on September 14, documenting both the remedies she sought and a six-month long series of alleged sexual harassment and retaliatory events dating back to March 22, 2023. Mr. Camacho took office in January.
“I was heading upstairs to drop off a document to a fellow employee and bumped into the Mayor. I greeted him ‘good morning,'” the woman wrote, recounting the event. “I reached out and shook his hand. When I shook his hand, however, he tickled my palm as if asking for sexual favor. I was shocked and surprised but kept it to myself.”
In another encounter, she accuses the mayor of saying to her in front of his chief of staff, “Why don’t you wear your bikini and go to the farm with me?”
The woman wrote that on August 29, around 2:30 p.m., “I was sitting alone outside for a break. The Mayor came out to smoke. He sat very close to me and started asking me inappropriate questions about sex and if I am good at it? I did not know how to respond, so I just smiled uncomfortably. Again, I kept it to myself out of shock.”
A few days later, she wrote, the mayor again made the hand shake gesture commonly meant to indicate a desire for sexual intercourse. “As a person coming from a previously abusive relationship, this encounter gave me an anxiety attack, which made me feel uncomfortable the rest of the day. Again, I kept it to myself, afraid of losing my job and tarnishing my friendship with the Mayor’s niece, who is also the Chief of Staff.”
The sexual comments – in front of others – allegedly escalated in the days preceding her report, including the accusation that Mr. Camacho would tell her about an abusive ex boyfriend and his imagination of their sex life.
“He constantly likes to remark how I should take back my ex-boyfriend (from an abusive relationship) and how I made him feel good in bed,” she wrote. “I will always remark that he should not be bringing up this ex as I am trying to recover from the abusive relationship.”
The woman on September 14 requested that the sexual harassment cease, that a general communication be made to all staff including the mayor that sexual harassment is illegal and will not be tolerated in the workplace, that copies of the sexual harassment policy be distributed and posted throughout the office, and that the office provide sexual harassment training.
None of those things happened, according to the woman, so on September 28, she filed her report with the Department of Public Safety, the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of the Public Auditor, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
She also resigned that day, despite her financial situation and her need to raise children on her own.
“The sexual harassment I have been subjected to has had a direct impact on my mental health,” she wrote. “I would like to reiterate that these repeated instances of harassment have caused me stress and anxiety, emotional distress and they have been affecting my performance at work. Each time he does this to me, I would repeatedly and respectfully tell him to stop! But he continuously kept on taunting and harassing me.
“I simply can no longer work in such a hostile environment where I feel constantly uncomfortable and unsafe by the Mayor’s unsolicited and inappropriate sexual advances and innuendo flirting.”
“What really haunts me is the way when he shook my hands and he did that to me, it just gross me out,” she told Kandit. “This guy is a pervert. If nobody takes action on this, I’m really gonna advocate for it. I know that a lot of women are going through the same ordeal as me. But they’re afraid to lose their job. I have bills to pay and kids to take care of. I don’t feel safe in that office. I’ve witnessed how he lashes out at the staff. Even his COS is not doing anything.
“It just makes me sick to my stomach. He’s scary. He frightens me when he’s angry. He cannot control his emotions.”
1 Comments
Russ Mason
10/05/2023 at 11:04 AM
No surprise whatsoever. The man is slime.
My heart goes out to the woman who quit. It is to be hoped that she finds a really good job, working with nice people.