Following an initial report of sexual harassment by Cottonwood City Councilman Derek Palosaari of a female city of Cottonwood employee, a subsequent internal investigation has discovered numerous incidents of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior by Palosaari toward female city staffers over several months.
Palosaari Banned from Buildings
After a catalyzing incident of sexual harassment occurred on Dec. 8, which Palosaari admitted had taken place to the victim’s husband and Human Resources Director Amanda Wilber, City Manager Scotty Douglass and City Attorney Jenny Winkler told Palosaari on Dec. 12 to refrain from visiting any non-public areas of city facilities until the incident could be discussed by himself, the Human Resources Department, the city manager, city attorney and mayor.
Palosaari acknowledged the email and subsequently attended the Dec. 12 City Council meeting.
On Dec. 13, after Wilber met with several female staffers who had also reported sexual misconduct and sexual harassment incidents involving Palosaari, Wilber reported the incidents to the city attorney and mayor, who drafted a formal resolution to censure Palosaari.
The parties invited Palosaari to a meeting on Dec. 18 to discuss his conduct and the proposed resolution of censure to be considered for inclusion on the Dec. 19 council meeting agenda. Palosaari refused to attend the meeting.
According to Wilber, while Palosaari is an elected official and legally not an employee per se, “the conduct that has already been admitted to falls under the definition of sexual harassment.”
Due to a pattern of Palosaari’s sexual harassment that “has slowly gotten progressively bolder” and no fewer than two instances “where there has been unwanted physical interaction — hands on shoulders; sniffing hair immediately adjacent to the face of the employee — that caused each of the employees to be visibly shaken and extremely uncomfortable,” Wilber stated that the “pattern and progression should be addressed immediately and action should be taken to create barriers or distance between council member Palosaari and female employees who may be subject to close encounters without supervision to ensure employees within the city of Cottonwood are assured a safe and healthy workplace free from harassment and unwanted inappropriate and unprofessional conduct.”
Outside legal counsel recommended several actions, including requesting Palosaari refrain from accessing any non-public area of city facilities, an action that city leaders had already taken.
One of the victims reported that “Palosaari has said that being a council member comes with prestige. She feels like that is the mindset he takes and that maybe that plays into what he says and does.”
Palosaari was not elected, but was appointed on May 22 and was sworn into office on June 6 to fill a seat formerly occupied by Councilwoman Tosca Henry, a longtime Cottonwood lawyer.
First Victim
According to the report of the human resources investigation, the incident that triggered the investigation occurred during the city’s Employee Appreciation event at the Cottonwood Fairgrounds on Dec. 8. The first victim, a city employee, was walking through the event when Palosaari stood up in front of her, “grabbed both of my shoulders and pulled me towards him and whispered in my ear, ‘I am not trying to offend you, but have your boobs always been that big?’”
The victim reported that she was caught off guard and felt very uncomfortable. She pulled herself out of his grip and walked away because she did not want to cause a scene at a work event.
Palosaari then said, “‘Wow, I did offend you?’” the victim reported. She added that her husband was behind her, saw the encounter, noticed that she was upset and asked what Palosaari had said.
According to the victim, Palosaari then said to her husband, “‘I asked her if her boobs have always been that big.’”
The victim’s husband followed her to ask if she was OK, saw Wilber and pulled her and Palosaari outside to report the incident immediately.
According to Wilber, the husband reported that Palosaari had just sexually harassed his wife, then repeated the comment, saying that it was inappropriate and disrespectful to her and to him.
Palosaari reportedly told them he understood, said he didn’t mean to offend, apologized and admitted that the husband was right and that he should not have made the comments.
Wilber next found Winkler and reported the incident, and they spoke to the victim outside.
“I asked them to ensure that Derek stayed away from me,” the victim stated. “Deep down I felt uncomfortable, disrespected and regretted not having him leave.”
“Ultimately, I would like to avoid all contact with him in the future,” the victim concluded.
Wilber and Winkler directed Palosaari to refrain from making any contact with the victim.
On Dec. 11, the victim wanted to know what the next steps in the reporting process were and said she did not want her reporting of Palosaari’s sexual harassment to affect her employment with the city negatively.
Wilber assured the victim she did nothing wrong and told her that staff would ensure she would be separated permanently from Palosaari, who was then notified to abstain from visiting non-public areas of city facilities.
Second Victim
After city staff was notified that Palosaari was prohibited from accessing city buildings, another employee came forward to report “unprofessional and unbecoming conduct.” The second victim reported several “questionable encounters,” two of which were significant and reportable as sexual harassment.
“Many times he has noted that I look ‘very cute’ and made a note to mention how I look in dresses,” the second victim reported, adding that this “turned into getting such comments on almost each visit he had” to the victim’s department.
“On three counts he has mentioned that I have lost weight and that my body looks very good,” the second victim reported. She added that Palosaari said he has gone through weight loss journeys and wants to encourage others in their efforts; however, she wrote, “it did seem an odd comment to bring up in general” and “I am also not on any weight loss journey.”
On another occasion, the victim was showing Palosaari how to handle his calendar and while she was doing so, he commented, “‘Is that you? You smell great!’ and came up close behind me and took a big sniff of my hair. This was very uncomfortable for me and really took me back.”
“I did not feel unsafe but did make a note of them in case things escalated from there,” the victim reported. “ I felt that I had to keep a guard up when he was around in case something did escalate.”
The second victim also reported Palosaari “had made a strange comment to her about how being a council member comes ‘with prestige.’”
She suggested that the investigator speak with at least three other staffers who had also reported similar encounters with Palosaari. On Dec. 13, Wilber spoke to other employees the second victim had named.
Licking a Candy Cane Pen
A third victim reported that on Dec. 12, four days after the employee party incident and on the same day Palosaari had been notified that he was banned from non-public city buildings due to that incident of sexual harassment, one of the other female staffers who had complained about Palosaari asked if the third victim could “go to the back room and get a candy cane pen from the back room” for Palosaari because he said he needed a pen.
The third victim came back out and handed him the pen “and he proceeded to [make a] motion like he was licking the pen in a provocative manner.
“I looked at him and said, ‘Disgusting.’”
A council member who was present, whose name was redacted in the report, looked at him and shook his or her head while the third victim walked back to her seat.
Third Victim
In a separate interview, the third victim said that the second victim had told her about the incidents of Palosaari commenting on the second victim’s body and weight and sniffing her hair while discussing the calendar on her computer a month or so prior to the investigation. She had advised the second victim at that time to report the incidents to Human Resources.
The third victim also stated that on one occasion when she was present in council chambers during an executive session, another woman was seated between her and Palosaari.
She reported that Palosaari “leans over and says, ‘That dress, that color on you is wow, my goodness, I like it’ while he was staring at her breast.”
The woman said she did not see where Palosaari was looking, “but she confirmed that the manner in which he said his comment was very inappropriate.”
The second victim had reported in her statement that during a new employee announcement at a City Council meeting, Palosaari had said of a fourth woman, “‘Wow, is that you? You look great!’ and added that he was only so surprised because he typically only saw her in her gym attire. He then squeezed her shoulders.”
The second victim said that not only did she notice the action, but that the third victim made a comment about how uncomfortable the fourth woman looked.
The third victim independently reported the same incident and wrote, “Palosaari looked around and realized everyone [had] seen the intent behind his comment and [said], ‘Oh, I mean I see her at the gym with her hair all over the place and gym clothes, she looked different.’ His face was red.”
The third victim stated that she understood her name might be made public and had no problem with that, but other women she had spoken to would not come forward due to risks to their employment.
More Women
The second victim reported that Palosaari has been overly familiar with a fifth woman, commenting on “how great she looks in her dresses accompanied with longer stares. Also asking her if she is married after she had helped him with something.”
In her interview, the fifth woman said she personally is fine and just brushed off some comments that she felt were inappropriate or unprofessional — one was a comment about her dress while going into an executive session and she said it was clear the comment was out of line.
The second victim reported that Palosaari has been attempting to be very friendly with a sixth woman and “very much likes to talk with her and stays quite a long time to speak with her at the end of his meetings.” He did reach out via text to the second victim to get the sixth woman’s contact info in order to arrange a meeting with her regarding housing.
The sixth woman does not oversee housing, the second victim stated in the report. She notified other staff that she had given Palosaari the appropriate city contact and the sixth victim’s work email address only, “and that hopefully it was truly to talk about housing.”
“However, considering what I had been experiencing and what I saw,” the second victim said, she discussed the incident with other staffers to warn the sixth woman that if she felt uncomfortable, she could and should report any misbehavior right away.
The third victim said that incident “was a red flag,” as the sixth woman doesn’t work on housing and city staffers never give out personal information. She instead gave Palosaari the sixth woman’s city email address and looped in appropriate staff so it the matter wouldn’t be dealt with by the sixth woman.
The sixth woman reported that the question about housing was strange but she didn’t think much else about it. She said there have been a couple of other things about her interactions with Palosaari that were strange, “like a hug and a comment about going to lunch or pretending to pick her up at the introduction meeting, but nothing she couldn’t handle or was too far across the line that it was bothersome, even if not really the place for it,” the report stated.
Mayor Elinski’s Statement
Mayor Tim Elinski reported his observations to Human Resources on Dec. 15 “given the incident at the holiday party with Palosaari.”
“At the League Conference this last August, I sat at a dinner table with Jenny Winkler, Scotty Douglass, Derek Palosaari and other guests I did not know,” Elinski wrote. “Palosaari sat next to a woman I did not know and he was very affectionate with her. I witnessed them holding hands, moving chairs in closer to have physical contact, speaking closely and generally behaving as if they were an affectionate couple. I was surprised to learn later after I introduced myself to her that they in fact had only just met. They left together that evening.”
At the Dec. 8 holiday party, Palosaari approached Elinski while he was standing at my table.
“My wife was seated next to me with my two daughters and they were occupied assembling the gingerbread house craft project,” Elinski wrote. “Palosaari began by saying he was glad to see me spend time with my daughters, that he likes to see fathers that are involved with their daughters. He then went on to talk about how in his younger days he would seek out women with ‘daddy issues’ and described his conquests as ‘notches on a belt.’”
Elinski noted that Palosaari “expressed remorse that by targeting women with ‘daddy issues’ then leaving them, he was only reinforcing their issues. The tone was more confessional than boastful. The conversation was disturbing, particularly because it was within earshot of my wife and kids, who luckily did not hear any of it.
“Taken separately, the observations are strange, but admissible. Given the recent report, I thought these observations might provide more context to a larger issue.”
Condemnation
The Cottonwood City Council failed to approve a resolution condemning Palosaari’s conduct towards female employees of the city by a 3-3 vote at their Dec. 19 meeting.
Palosaari refused to deny the allegations when asked directly by Councilman Stephen DeWillis if he had committed the acts of which he was accused, deferring to advice from an attorney.
Councilwoman Helaine Kurot, Vice Mayor Debbie Wilden and Elinski voted to approve the resolution, while DeWillis, Councilwoman Lisa DuVernay and newly-sworn-in Councilman Michael Mathews voted no. Palosaari had made the motion to appoint Mathews at the Dec. 12 meeting without discussing any of the other candidates who had been interviewed that night. Mathews was appointed by a 4-2 vote.
