Harassment

It was billed as a "shocking tell-all" and a "world exclusive," but the National Enquirer's March 26 cover story landed with a thud. TMZ, Page Six and other major players in celebrity gossip ignored the article in which a masseur claimed John Travolta offered money for sex. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article used the term "masseuse"; it should have said "masseur. " Five weeks after the issue left the checkout aisle, a DUI attorney from Pasadena put the anonymous masseur's tawdry tale in a lawsuit and it became an overnight pop culture sensation, topping Google News, trending on Twitter and meriting a segment on "Good Morning America.

The Los Angeles Unified School District on Wednesday announced the settlement of a sexual harassment allegation against retired Supt. Ramon C. Cortines by a senior employee in the facilities division. The district will pay $200,000 plus lifetime health benefits, valued at $250,000 to $300,000 to Scot Graham, the director of leasing and asset management. In return, Graham will resign from his $150,000-a-year job. In a statement, Cortines, 79, denied any harassment, but acknowledged what he called "adult behavior on one occasion," adding that "as the district's former top staff member, I regret allowing myself to engage in such spontaneous, consensual behavior.

I have given presentations on our equal opportunity and harassment policies, where I discuss racial harassment and sexual harassment. I recall one particular incident when I was talking about being careful about the words that you use. In our contract (with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), there are provisions . . . . when a foreman is gone for a day or more, a person takes the foreman's place. And that person is called the shadow. While I'm discussing the proper use of language in the workplace, one of the participants pipes up and asks "Does that mean we have to eliminate the use of the word shadow in our labor agreement?"

AURORA, Colo. - On May 2, D'Avonte Meadows, a 6-year-old with an infectious grin and rambunctious streak, was suspended for three days from Sable Elementary in suburban Denver for crooning "[I'm] Sexy and I Know It" to a girl in lunch line. The school declared it sexual harassment and told his parents that, because D'Avonte sang the same song to the same girl before, he is a repeat offender. The news media pounced. And Stephanie Meadows, D'Avonte's 29-year-old mother, gave her bewildered son, a special needs student, a crash course in birds, bees and sexual boundaries.

Heavy metal rocker W. Axl Rose was arrested early Tuesday for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon after allegedly clubbing his next-door neighbor on the head with an empty wine bottle, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials said. Gabriella Kantor, 37, was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after complaining of a possible concussion.

Sen. Robert Krueger (D-Tex.) and his wife, Kathleen, have lived in fear for eight years. They have picked up the phone to hear a former campaign worker screaming obscenities or making death threats. They have heard the man pounding at the family door or endlessly ringing the doorbell. And they have found terrifying notes in their mailbox. The former worker is now in jail for the third time.

Reports of the Egyptian government blocking employees of non-governmental organizations, including American citizens and the son of a U.S. Cabinet secretary, from leaving the country drew sharp criticism from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who said Thursday that the matter was of "special personal concern. " McCain called on the Egyptian government to cease its "harassment" of the NGOs and warned that the aggressive investigations "could set back the long-standing partnership between the United States and Egypt.

Herman Cain's wife, Gloria, has emerged to defend her husband against allegations that he sexually harassed women during his time at a Washington trade group in the late 1990s. “To hear such graphic allegations and know that that would have been something that was totally disrespectful of her as a woman, and I know that's not the person he is,” Gloria Cain says in an interview to be aired Monday evening. Her husband, she says, “totally respects women.” ( Watch video below.

Regarding "Sex Harassment: The Problem That Won't Go Away" (by Lynn Simross, Feb. 18), the American workplace is structured in such a way that employees have virtually no protection against harassment of any kind within the companies we work for. Bosses decide where employees work, how much space they work in, when they can go to lunch, how long they have to eat. Bosses also determine how much we make, when we make more (or less), whether we're promoted, and how long our tenure is with the company, unless we're part of the small minority with a contract or union agreement.

I am homeless and within the past three or four days I've not only noticed but have to basically run the gauntlet with Ventura's finest: the Police Department. For some reason known only to the mayor, City Council and the Police Department, it seems that we homeless have been targeted for undue harassment, intimidation and, sorry to say, truly unjust treatment. I would like to ask why. I admit that there is, on the streets here in Ventura, more than one person who just seems to want to mess up everyone's life.

A UCLA physician has filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the UC Board of Regents, alleging that he was routinely publicly humiliated and once was depicted as a gorilla being sodomized in a slide show presentation during a resident graduation event. In a 40-page complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, Dr. Christian Head, a head and neck surgeon, accused the university of failing to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation. "I am very discouraged," Head said in an interview.

A former business manager for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Leonard Cohen was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months in Los Angeles County jail for violating restraining orders and sending Cohen and others thousands of harassing email and voice mail messages. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert C. Vanderet said Kelley Lynch, 55, showed no remorse for a "long, unrelenting barrage of harassing behavior. " "No person should be subject to that kind of targeting by anyone," Vanderet said.

SAN DIEGO —UC San Diego officials have reached an agreement with the federal government to end an investigation into racial tensions on campus that began after white students held an event laced with racial stereotypes during Black History Month. In a settlement announced Friday with the federal departments of Justice and Education, UC San Diego promised to maintain an Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination to receive, investigate and resolve complaints. Among other things, administrators will offer training sessions for staff and students on the university's policy against harassment, and will make more efforts to interest low-income and minority students in attending UC San Diego, where about 2% of the undergraduate student body is African American.

A Los Angeles County jury Thursday found the former business and personal manager of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen guilty of violating restraining orders, making harassing phone calls and sending thousands of harassing emails. Kelley Lynch, 55, showed no emotion as a court clerk read the verdict. She had pleaded not guilty to five counts of violating protective orders and two counts of repeatedly contacting Cohen with the intent to annoy or harass. Over several days, prosecutors played voicemails said to be from Lynch, who had a business and personal relationship with Cohen for about 17 years.

The woman's voice in telephone messages left for singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was low and steady. "You are a sick man....You are a thief....You are a common thief. " Prosecutors say the voice mails were from Cohen's former business manager, Kelley Lynch, 55, who is on trial for allegedly making harassing phone calls to Cohen, sending him, his attorneys and other people he knew thousands of emails and violating restraining orders. Lynch, sitting next to her attorneys, occasionally smiled as voice mails from 2011 were played for jurors in L.A. County Superior Court on Friday.

CAIRO - The ragged effigy of a fallen leader dangles from a lamppost over the remnants of a dying revolution. Those left from the uprising that swelled through Tahrir Square last year and brought down Hosni Mubarak live in tents, harassed and cursed, but mostly forgotten. TV cameras no longer perch on balconies; the great banners have been spooled away. The slogans of rebellion have been pressed onto T-shirts, and tourists, their expressions saying they somehow expected more, take pictures, trying to summon the images that captivated the world those many months ago. But the joy has turned sullen, and the nation has slipped back to the burdens of life while these defiant few still hunker with their placards and rage.

MOSCOW - The only thing missing from the scene was one of those heroic images of Lenin peering from a shop window, or perhaps a glimpse of the Soviet hammer and sickle fluttering over the nearby Kremlin. When the new U.S. ambassador to Russia arrived this week for a private meeting with a prominent human rights activist, he was confronted by a crew from a Kremlin-controlled television station that blocked his path and peppered him with questions. Uniformed men, tall wool military hats on their heads, were there too. And a burly civilian held up a sign with a pointed question for Ambassador Michael McFaul's host: "What is the price of the motherland today?"