Three of five former employees within then-San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia’s office whose lawsuits filed in 2020 contributed to his once-promising political career coming to an abrupt end in 2022 have come to terms with the city for $1.2 million.
Those settling include the three women – customer service representative Mirna Cisneros, office assistant Karen Cervantes and legislative aide Jackie Aboud – whose narratives about what occurred involved the most arrestingly lurid details pertaining to sexual harassment contained in the five suits against Valdivia and the city.
The first week of January 2000, Aboud, now 27, was fired by the city, less than nine months after she had gone to work as a part-time field representative for Valdivia in April 2019. Cisneros, now 34, and Cervantes, now 28, who anticipated being accorded the same treatment as Aboud, retained one-time Adelanto Mayor Tristan Pelayes to represent them.
Three weeks after Aboud’s termination, Cisneros and Cervantes beat Valdivia and the city to the punch, simultaneously resigning from their positions and making public statements as to why they were doing so. While they were working for the city in roles that were directly answerable to Valdivia, they said, the mayor had subjected them to unwanted sexual advances, innuendo and crude remarks, sought to press them into compromising circumstances, insisted that they perform tasks outside their job assignments, and either sought to involve them in or acknowledged to them his skirting of the law pertaining to the use of public funds as well as his violation of the reporting requirements imposed on public officials relating to the reception of donations, money or services. Cisneros said that Valdivia had pressured her to work on political campaigns while she was serving in her capacity as a city employee, and that the mayor suggested that she should use the vacation time she had accrued to work on the campaigns of two of his political allies on the city council, Juan Figueroa and Bessine Richard, who were due to run for election that year.
Pelayes’s arrival on the scene precipitated what was to that point the major crisis in the Valdivia administration, which had initiated in December 2018 following his defeat of incumbent Mayor Carey Davis in November 2018.
Pelayes had taken up representation of Aboud, as well, along with another Valdivia field representative, Don Smith, and Valdivia’s second chief of staff, Matt Brown.
Ultimately, Pelayes filed suit against the city and Valdivia on behalf of Cisneros, Cervantes, Aboud, Smith and Brown. Cisneros’s and Cervantes’ suits mirrored their public accusations against Valdivia, and included accusations that Valdivia plied Cervantes with gin and tonics in an effort to get her to have sex with him and that Valdivia either let slip or openly acknowledged to Cisneros that he was misusing public funds for personal use and was at the very least in violation of the gift-receiving reporting requirements that are applicable to elected and public officials and perhaps had gone further over the legal line into accepting bribes.
In Pelayes’ suit on behalf of Aboud, who had gone to work with the city in Valdivia’s office after her recent graduation from Cal State San Bernardino, it was alleged that she had been provided with no training and was subjected to a circumstance which suggested that she was not hired for legitimate work in serving as a liaison between Valdivia and his constituents but rather as Valdivia’s courtesan. “He told me I needed to spend time with him after hours and invest in a friendship with him if I wanted to reach my career goals,” Aboud said. “He also told me that my job was not to serve the community but to serve him and meet his personal needs.”
According to Aboud, Valdivia gave her orders to “not help, support, or partner with parts of the community that didn’t support him in the election, like the 4th and 7th Ward.”
Smith maintained that Valdivia assigned him to tasks that had no relation to serving the taxpayers, citizens and residents of the city, including, while on the clock for the city, running personal errands for the mayor such as getting the mayor’s car serviced and chauffeuring Valdivia to various locations while the mayor would be engaged in heavy petting in the back seat with various women he was not married to.
In preparation for Smith’s lawsuit, he signed an affidavit under the penalty of perjury in which he related being present in October or November 2018 for a 1 a.m. rendezvous Valdivia had with Danny Alcarez, the owner of Danny’s 24 Hour Towing, Inc. at the Denny’s restaurant in San Bernardino when Alcarez provided Valdivia with “a thick white envelope that appeared to contain a large amount of money,” which Smith said he was given to understand was a kickback provided to Valdivia for his support of city tow franchises remaining in the exclusive possession of several of the city’s towing operations.
Brown was hired in August 2019 to succeed Valdivia’s first chief of staff, Bill Essayli, who guided Valdivia’s efforts during the first six months of his tenure as mayor. In his lawsuit against Valdivia and the city, Brown claimed Valdivia both used and sought to use his taxpayer-funded staff members at City Hall to assist him in promoting his own and his allies’ political fortunes. According to Brown, Valdivia had sought to require employees in his office to use their accrued leave to participate in events to support his reelection campaign.
Brown, who was still in place as Valdivia’s chief of staff when Aboud was fired and when Cisneros and Cervantes resigned, said he was aware that the city had retained Los Angeles-based attorney Carla Barboza to carry out an investigation into the accusations made against Valdivia which was, essentially, intended to discredit the mayor’s detractors and accusers and reach the forgone conclusion that Valdivia had engaged in no wrongdoing.
According to Brown’s claim against the city lodged prior to the filing of his lawsuit, “On or about February 4, 2020 during an early morning telephone call, Valdivia [stated] his intent to go on the offensive with Cisneros and Cervantes and refute their allegations against him. Valdivia indicated he had spoken with Chris Jones, his spokesman and political consultant, and that Jones had convinced Valdivia he needed to be aggressive in dealing with Cisneros and Cervantes.” According to Brown, Valdivia requested that he along with Alexander Cousins, a paid intern then serving in the capacity of policy analyst in Valdivia’s office and Valdivia’s secretary/executive assistant, Renee Brizuela, provide him with false written statements refuting the allegations from Cisneros and Cervantes. “Claimant was stunned because he knew the allegations to be true, since he witnessed them,” according to Brown’s claim. “Additionally, Valdivia requested that claimant write fake work performance evaluations for both employees emphasizing their poor work habits. Claimant refused to participate in the falsification of the said records.”
In the February 2020 timeframe, while both Smith and Brown were yet members of Valdivia’s staff, the mayor requested Brown to speak with Smith and Cousins and “coach them” prior to their interviews with the human resources investigator because he wanted their interviews to reflect positively on him, Brown claimed. Brown refused, according to his claim and eventual lawsuit against the city, and when he told Valdivia he should not be interfering in the investigation, Valdivia retaliated against him and created a hostile work environment. In March 2020, both Brown and Smith retained Pelayes, which became known to Valdivia and then-City Manager Teri Ledoux. According to Brown, Ledoux, who, he claimed, had also been accorded shabby and unprofessional treatment by the mayor, ultimately sided with Valdivia in order to hang onto her $346,616.77 total compensation per-year assignment. Pelayes and Brown maintain Brown was thereafter frozen out of his once-meaningful and powerful role as the mayor’s right-hand man.
In June, the city quietly came to terms with Cisneros, conferring upon her $600,000; Cervantes, paying her $425,000; and Aboud, who was awarded $175,000. The settlements with the trio were made on the condition that they drop their suits and not make any further claims against the city nor seek further damages as a consequence of their experience in San Bernardino.
The city posted checks to all three on June 20, and made no public announcement with regard to the settlement.
It appears that the settlements of the three lawsuits and their terms had been in the works for some time. Litigation is rarely discussed in an open session of the city council. Instead, under California law, both discussion and action with regard to pending and actual lawsuits against governmental entities take place during closed sessions of those entities’ governing bodies. There is a requirement that such discussions be announced on the public agenda for those meetings at which the closed sessions, conducted behind closed doors and outside the visual scrutiny and earshot of the public, take place. There is also a requirement under California law that a public announcement be made if during the closed session a decision of the governing body, as in this case the city council, is reached.
The last time a closed session discussion of any of the lawsuits brought by Pelayes’s clients appeared on the city council’s agenda was for the April 17, 2024 meeting, which referenced the Aboud, Cisneros and Cervantes cases. No announcement was made with regard to those matters after that closed session was completed and the council adjourned into the public portion of the April 17 meeting.
It thus appears the city was seeking to elude any sort of public scrutiny with regard to the settlement.
One consideration is that during the early stages of the mistreatment of Aboud, Cisneros and Cervantes, Helen Tran, who is now San Bernardino’s mayor, was then the city’s human resources director. It has been alleged that initially, Tran minimized the seriousness of the complaints from staff members about Valdivia’s actions, marginalized the complainants or sought to have them drop their protests and, for a time, sought to bury the matter. Allegedly, at some point in 2019, Tran took stock of the seriousness and serial nature of Valdivia’s conduct. It was at that point that she recognized that she was in an untenable position. On one hand, seeking to protect, or advocate on behalf of, the employees under duress would antagonize the mayor, endangering her continued employment with the city. At the same time, Valdivia’s comportment was a ticking time bomb, which at some point was going to explode, discrediting her if it came to light that she had shrunk from acting forthrightly in the face of his abuse. She was able to jump ship at the end of 2019, landing a similar assignment as human resources director in West Covina in early 2020. In 2022, Tran, a resident of San Bernardino, was one of six of those who challenged Valdivia when he stood for reelection. Ultimately, after capturing first place in the June 2022 primary election, she defeated the second place finisher, former San Bernardino City Attorney James Penman in the November 2022 runoff election, and was sworn in as mayor in December 2022.
Perhaps because of Tran’s involvement in the matter, the city was seeking to keep any reference to that chapter in the city’s history from resurfacing in the public conception.
City Spokesman Jeff Kraus was unprepared this week when a smattering of residents and then the press became aware of the settlement. When he was confronted, he reluctantly acknowledged that the suits brought against the city by Aboud, Cervantes and Cisneros had been settled for $175,000, $425,000 and $600,000, respectively, and the payouts made, but offered a puerile assurance that the provision of $1.2 million to the defendants was not an admission of wrongdoing on the city’s part nor by anyone affiliated with it, including Valdivia.
The only reason the settlements were arrived at, according to the city, was to avoid any further costs relating to the litigation.
Attention now turns to Brown and Smith and how much the city will pay them to dispose of what San Bernardino officials maintain are their baseless claims that they were punished for refusing to go along with Valdivia’s mistreatment of Cervantes and Cisneros.
-Mark Gutglueck