Federal officials and several Oklahoma City-based landlords have reached an agreement to settle claims of sexual harassment of their tenants by their agent.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma said defendants Rosemarie Pelfrey, Omega Enterprises LLC and Pelfrey Investment Company Inc. agreed to a $1.25 million settlement to resolve a Fair Housing Act lawsuit alleging that their agent, Walter Ray Pelfrey (Pelfrey), sexually harassed female tenants and prospective tenants while owning or managing dozens of rental properties in the Oklahoma City area. Pelfrey died in 2018.
Under the terms of the consent order, which was approved by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, the defendants will pay $1.2 million in damages to female tenants and prospective tenants harmed by Pelfrey’s harassment and a $50,000 civil penalty to the United States.
The United States’ lawsuit alleged that Pelfrey’s harassment spanned a period of almost 20 years, through at least 2017, and included demanding that prospective tenants engage in sexual acts to obtain housing, offering to reduce rent and overlooking unpaid rent in exchange for sexual intercourse or contact, evicting and threatening to evict female tenants for refusing his sexual advances, groping and grabbing female tenants’ breasts, buttocks, and genitals, making unwelcome sexual advances and comments, and entering the homes of female tenants unannounced and without their consent to further these advances.
The defendants — Rosemarie Pelfrey, in her capacity as trustee of two named trusts and as personal representative of Pelfrey’s estate, Omega Enterprises LLC and Pelfrey Investment Company Inc. — were named in the lawsuit because they owned the properties at which the discriminatory conduct took place, and are therefore vicariously liable for their agent Pelfrey’s harassment.
Under the terms of the settlement, the defendants must provide Fair Housing Act training for their employees, provide a complaint procedure to tenants and release judgments obtained against victims whom Pelfrey wrongfully evicted.
The Justice Department’s Sexual Harassment in Housing Initiative is led by the Civil Rights Division, in coordination with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices across the country.
This case was prosecuted by Western District of Oklahoma Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ron Gallegos and Emily Fagan, together with trial attorneys from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
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