The Louisiana state employee who leveled sexual harassment accusations against a senior aide for Gov. John Bel Edwards last year says she experienced more than a year of verbal and physical harassment while working at the governor’s office. That included sexually explicit text messages and demands of sexual favors from the aide as early on as her job interview, she said.
The woman, Juanita Washington, is questioning why Edwards ever hired Johnny Anderson as deputy chief of staff, after Anderson had faced claims of sexual harassment when he worked for former Gov. Kathleen Blanco more than a decade ago. Anderson resigned in November after Washington’s allegations leaked to the media.
"I know that Johnny is at fault, but the governor (Edwards) is at fault as well," Washington said in an interview with NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. She agreed to be identified by her full name.
Washington said Anderson’s harassment began even as he was interviewing her for a job in Edwards’ administration, days after the governor was sworn in. During what was supposed to be a follow-up interview, Washington said, Anderson locked the door to his office in the Capitol, grabbed her breasts and vagina and demanded she give him oral sex.
While she worked at the governor’s office under Anderson’s supervision, Washington said Anderson regularly sent her sexually explicit text messages, requested naked photos of her, masturbated in front of her and fondled her during private meetings he scheduled during the work day. Washington said she felt pressured to go along because she desperately needed the job to provide care for her elderly parents and her daughter with medical problems.
Washington, the state and Anderson signed an agreement last spring to settle her allegations, in which she received a payment from the state for, among other things, “claims of personal and bodily injury,” according to a document she provided. The document does not detail the injury.
Anderson declined to comment for this story and referred questions to his attorney, Karl Bernard of New Orleans. Bernard said neither Anderson nor Washington should be sharing the details of their interactions because their settlement agreement prevents them from criticizing each other publicly.
“Whether or not Mr. Anderson will sue, that will be up to him,” Bernard said. The copy of the settlement says, "Anderson expressly denies any liability or wrongdoing of any kind,” and that he also maintains “there is no evidence that Louisiana sexual harassment laws or any other applicable laws have been violated."
Edwards’ office said once the governor became aware of the allegations against Anderson, he immediately started investigating the matter. He has implemented new personnel procedures as a result, though the office didn’t detail what those procedures are. “The governor has a zero-tolerance policy against sexual harassment, period,” Edwards spokesman Richard Carbo said in an email.
The settlement says Washington, Anderson and the governor's office cannot make "disparaging remarks" about one another. Washington said she is speaking publicly about her experience because of growing frustration about not having her job anymore. The governor’s office maintains she left of her own accord.
“The biggest thing I don’t understand is me having to lose my job,” she said. “I wasn’t treated like a victim.”
Anderson resigned about a week before Washington left the governor’s staff. In interviews last year, he said he chose to leave the job and wasn’t forced out of his position working for Edwards. The governor’s office maintains Anderson was asked for his resignation, and he complied.
Washington moved to Baton Rouge from Atlanta in late 2015 to care for her elderly parents, shortly after Edwards was elected governor.
She had two meetings with Anderson before the governor took office, but Anderson had said he would need to interview her again before she was officially hired. Washington said she was supposed to work under Anderson’s supervision, but details of her actual job needed to be worked out.
On Jan. 14, 2016, three days after Edwards was sworn in as governor, Washington texted Anderson to ask when and where he wanted to meet to finalize her job offer. She showed a reporter these and dozens of other texts in her phone exchanged over months with two different phone numbers, which she said belonged to Anderson.
A reporter has reached Anderson multiple times through one of the phone numbers Washington provided. The second number was answered recently by a voicemail recording saying the caller had reached “Johnny G. Anderson, the deputy chief of staff for programs and planning for Gov. John Bel Edwards”. A message left to that number was not answered.
What awaited Washington on the fourth floor of the Capitol wasn’t what she expected, she said. She showed up for what was supposes to be the final job interview, only to have Anderson lock his office door behind her, she said. Almost immediately, Anderson asked Washington to walk around his desk and come closer to him. Washington said he started touching her breasts and vagina. While Anderson was sitting in his desk chair, he unzipped his pants, grabbed her head and pushed it toward his penis, asking for oral sex, she said.
Washington said she didn’t tell Anderson to stop because she was in shock. She said she did what Anderson asked, and then left to meet the staff member who she would replace. The next day, she filled out paperwork with the human resources department to take the job, but did not inform that department about what she says Anderson did to her.
Washington said she felt trapped. Her family was depending on her for an income and health insurance. She said she felt her job would be at risk if she refused Anderson’s advances.
“It’s almost like I was doing it for survival, like where you are a hostage,” Washington said. The events that transpired during what was supposed to be a job interview were only the beginning, Washington said. She said Anderson sent her sexually explicit messages often and pleaded and pressured her for sexual favors. During other meetings in his office, she said he touched her breasts and vagina and masturbated in front of her. He also groped her several times in an automobile when they were traveling to New Orleans for work once, she said. Washington said she performed oral sex only one time on Anderson and they never had intercourse. Anderson resigned in late November 2017, hours after Edwards was shown text messages exchanged between Anderson and Washington, the governor’s office said.
“Within one day of being notified of these accusations against Mr. Anderson, his resignation was demanded and accepted,” Carbo said. “Prior to this instance, there was not a single complaint of any nature regarding Mr. Anderson filed with our office.” Washington isn’t the only person who raised concerns about Anderson’s behavior while he worked for the governor. About a month after Anderson resigned, another woman told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune he had acted inappropriately toward her over social media when she was trying to lobby the governor’s office for a partnership with her faith-based nonprofit.
That woman, who does not want to be named, never filed a formal complaint, but said she talked to the governor’s office about her concerns once Washington’s allegations were public. Anderson has denied he harassed that woman. Washington left her job Dec. 1, 2017, which she said she would have preferred not to do.
Though Washington never filed a lawsuit against Anderson or the state, she gave NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune a draft of a petition she said her attorney, Jill Craft, had written before her settlement was reached. Details included in that draft, and dozens of text exchanges Washington shared, paint a picture of Anderson consistently seeking sexual attention from Washington.
According to Washington, Anderson started sending her sexually explicit text messages Feb. 8, 2016, referencing the oral sex from her job interview. The messages she shared included a text asking her to send nude photos of herself and another asking Washington to participate in group sex with another woman. If at first she didn’t respond, messages and phone calls would continue until she relented, Washington said.
Washington worked in a different state building than Anderson. When he wanted to see her privately at the Capitol, Washington said he usually had his executive assistant call her, so as not to raise suspicions. When she came to his office, Anderson would then lock his door and put a chair up against it, Washington said. These one-on-one encounters would often last two to three hours in the middle of the day, she said. Anderson’s former assistant, Chandra Goodwin, declined to talk to a reporter about the meetings between Washington and Anderson when reached by phone Wednesday.
Goodwin still works for the governor's office.
Washington said Anderson would mention that he was well connected and could get to “anyone” in Louisiana if he wanted, according to the draft lawsuit. Washington said the statements made her feel intimidated.
Washington said she always felt her job security depended on consenting to Anderson’s sexual advances. She didn’t feel comfortable going to anyone else with her concerns – particularly the human resources staff at the governor’s office – because many of them had close relationships with Anderson and worked with him when he was on Blanco’s staff, she said. One time, according to Washington, a text message she received made clear he could fire her. She shared a text conversation dated March 24, 2017, which included a message received just after 6 a.m. that she says was from Anderson, upset about a post on Washington’s Facebook page in which she said Louisiana was lame.
The text message said she should refrain from criticizing Louisiana publicly because she worked for the state, and that several other people would be happy to have her job. Five people had already expressed an interest in her job, the message said.
Washington responded, saying she had deleted her Facebook post. “Hell no they can’t have my job I am loving it and doing it with excellence,” Washington wrote. “Loll!!!” came the response.
“Lol dam !!! I wish you tell me who (the five people were.) I would delete them off my page,” Washington texted. “You will have to make up to my d--k for that!!” was the response she received. “Okay done !!!,” Washington replied. The text exchanges were often graphic and called back to what Washington said were previous times Anderson had touched her at work. “I want a fresh pic now!” said a text she once received moments after she had gotten a text that used a crude word to refer to her vagina. “Ok,” Washington responded.
“Love it! Might call you over today,” she received in reply.
Washington said she did not initially talk publicly to the media about Anderson’s alleged behavior because she was afraid people would think she was complicit in the sexual relationship. In the text exchanges she shared, Washington often appears to be playing along, responding to sexual advances, sending nude photos of herself and making explicit comments of her own.
She said she often cried at her desk and at home because she felt like her job was at risk if she didn’t go along. “I played along so it could end fast,” she said. “I had only one choice -- participate, give in. There was no way out. If I didn’t pretend like I missed it or wanted it, he would get angry.”
Washington said that at the time she confided to an acquaintance, complaining to him on two separate occasions several months apart about sexual harassment from Anderson. The man, who asked not to be named, told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune that Washington told him twice about being harassed by Anderson. The man said Washington did not tell him the harassment included physical contact. Washington said she didn’t share those details with her acquaintance because she was ashamed.
Washington said when she became involved in a relationship later in 2017, and started to refuse Anderson’s requests. She said Anderson then put her into difficult work situations. Instead of reporting directly to Anderson, she was assigned to other supervisors, one of which she didn’t get along with. She said Anderson would foster an environment in which Washington and her supervisor would argue, so that Washington became dependent on Anderson to resolve her work disputes.
She said in October 2017 Anderson told her the governor’s attorney, Matthew Block, wanted to fire her for traveling to South Korea while she was out on unpaid leave for a medical injury. She said she believed Anderson when he said Block was upset and that her job was in jeopardy. Anderson told Washington he could find her another job in state government if she resigned – but not if she got fired – she said. At Anderson’s urging, she said, she wrote a resignation letter in November 2017. She now thinks Anderson fabricated what she said he told her about Block, in order to control her.
Block said in an interview that he never spoke to Anderson about Washington’s job performance or travel. Block said he didn’t even know who Washington was at the time.
The text messages Washington says she exchanged with Anderson show they were arguing a few weeks before her sexual harassment allegations went public, as she tried to delay the date she had put on the resignation letter she said he had advised her to write. A text she received apparently from Anderson’s phone told her she might face ethics fines over her South Korea trip, so Washington said she hired an attorney.
Washington said her lawyer, Craft, and friends explained to her that she was a victim of sexual harassment. Craft did not return messages seeking comment for this story.
The governor’s office accepted Washington’s resignation letter the day after Edwards’ staff saw some of the text messages and the same day Anderson resigned, according to job separation documents provided by Washington. Her last day on the job was Dec. 1, 2017 – 11 days after the governor’s office had seen the text messages she says she exchanged with Anderson.
The governor’s office said Washington never indicated – personally or through her attorney – that she wanted to keep her job.
“Her decision to leave the governor’s office was entirely hers,” wrote Carbo, the governor’s spokesman.
Washington said she felt as if she was being pushed out the door. Human resources called her multiple times on her final day to have her to turn in her ID badge, and co-workers had stopped inviting her to lunch and treated her like she “had the plague” after her allegations came to light. She questioned why the governor hired Anderson in the first place, given Anderson’s history with sexual harassment allegations. Edwards put Anderson in charge of women’s policy issues as well as the Louisiana Commission on Human Rights, which probes employment discrimination and sexual harassment complaints from private and public employers in Louisiana, including state government.
“He brought a predator into a position where he could do harm. That is just what he did,” Washington said of Edwards.
Edwards in December said he hired Anderson because Anderson had denied any sexual harassment ever took place when he worked for Blanco and an investigation a decade ago couldn't prove the allegations were true.
"In my years of knowing Johnny, which go back to 2011, I never saw or heard anything directly or indirectly that suggested to me that there would be any problem with his conduct," Edwards said at a press conference Dec. 20. “We take the whole subject matter of sexual harassment very seriously, and as a result, within 15 hours of us learning that there were allegations, Mr. Anderson was called in, the situation was explained to him and he resigned on the spot.” The governor has not discussed Anderson’s hiring again, and his spokesman did not address a question about Washington’s statements criticizing Edwards.
Washington was not the first person the state had to pay after sexual harassment allegations were made against Anderson. He faced accusations of harassment when he worked as assistant chief of staff for then-Gov. Blanco. He was also the chairman of the Southern University Board of Supervisors at that time. In 2006, then-Southern University president Ralph Slaughter said Anderson had sexually harassed as many as nine school employees, but Slaughter and most of the women involved wouldn’t cooperate with investigations. Blanco and the university said they couldn’t substantiate claims made against Anderson.
In a lawsuit Slaughter filed related to those sexual harassment accusations, he said two female Southern employees complained Anderson harassed them when they traveled on work trips. One woman left a work trip early because Anderson’s behavior upset her, and another refused to go on work trips with Anderson at all, Slaughter’s lawsuit said. Anderson has denied he harassed anyone at Southern.
Eventually, the Southern board settled Slaughter’s suit by offering him a two-year contract paying $450,000 annually, according to court records. Slaughter’s contract was not renewed at the end of that period, and he blamed it on his involvement exposing the allegations against Anderson.
Two other Southern employees who were laid off after testifying about alleged harassment from Anderson also received cash settlements totaling a combined $22,500, records show. The university said they were laid off due to budget cuts. But as part of their settlement, the university rehired both of them, according to documents received through a public records request. The most recent payout was reached in 2017 – two months before Washington’s complaints about Anderson went public.
Washington has since moved back to Atlanta, saying she would have had a difficult time getting another job in Baton Rouge after her allegations went public. Among her biggest disappointments, she said, is that Edwards has not apologized to her for hiring Anderson in the first place.
“He didn’t call. He didn’t ask to meet with me. None of that,” Washington said. “He probably doesn’t even know my name.” Edward's office did not respond to a request for comment on Washington's statement. Of the $108,000 the state spent to reach a settlement in her case, Washington received $51,000, according to legal documents. The rest of the money went to Washington’s lawyer, Craft, and the attorney the state hired to handle the case, Vicki Crochet.
Joseph Shelton, a former alumni affairs employee at Southern University who had complained at the time about allegations of Anderson harassing female employees, said he was not surprised Anderson became involved in another scandal. “Here it is. It just took nine years to come out,” Shelton said of the allegations about Anderson at Southern. Shelton was laid off from the university, and he unsuccessfully sued arguing he was a whistleblower on Anderson’s misconduct and had been fired as retaliation. The university said he lost his job due to budget cuts. In an interview in July, he said he was “shocked” that Edwards had hired Anderson.
“The governor couldn’t have known because he doesn’t strike me as that kind of guy,” Shelton said.