MACHIAS – An investigator for the Maine Human Rights Commission has determined that a former administrator at Marshall Manor sexually harassed a female employee and then placed her on probation when she complained about his behavior.

The commission will make a final determination on chief investigator Paul Pierce’s findings on Dec. 11 in Augusta.

Janet Beaudoin filed a human rights complaint against Marshall Manor on April 7, alleging that former administrator Raymond Brady Jr. had sexually harassed her.

Bernard Davis Jr. of Rockland owns Marshall Manor, according to current administrator Tom Gaddis. Gaddis replaced Brady, who resigned from the facility last spring, according to Portland attorney Sally Moss. Moss referred questions about Beaudoin’s case to Karen Vinzant, a Chicago attorney who represented Marshall Manor in the Human Rights Commission investigation.

Vinzant did not return a call to her Chicago office on Wednesday.

According to Pierce’s report, Beaudoin complained that Brady harassed her over a period of several months. He continually made comments about the size of her breasts and repeatedly propositioned her, at one point saying, “she’d never go back to her fiance once Mr. Brady had her,” according to the report.

Beaudoin said she told Brady to stop his remarks, but she had no one to complain to because he was the top administrator. The owner visited the facility only once a year or so, Beaudoin told the investigator.

Beaudoin told Pierce that she became less and less willing to voice her opposition to Brady’s comments because she was aware that some employees who’d had sexual relationships with him had later been fired.

But Brady was aware of her feelings, Beaudoin told Pierce. When a nurse at Marshall Manor wrote a letter to the facility’s nursing consultant complaining about Brady’s sexually inappropriate behavior, Brady called Beaudoin into his office and asked her what she knew about the report, she said.

As a result of the letter, Brady was put on paid leave while lawyers for the owner followed up on the nurse’s complaint, according to the investigator’s report.

Brady returned to his position on Feb. 29 and made a number of pronouncements to staff, according to Pierce’s interviews with Beaudoin and two other staff members, including that his sexual relationships with staff had “been stupid,” but not illegal, and that he had enough money to sue people if they attempted to further assassinate his character.

He instituted a new policy prohibiting gossiping in the workplace, according to the investigator’s report.

Within days of that meeting, Beaudoin and another employee were reprimanded and suspended for one day when they were caught gossiping, according to the report.

Two weeks later, Brady put Beaudoin on probation for allegedly missing work and not performing her duties. Beaudoin told the investigator she’d received permission from the residential care director to have another employee take her shift because her son needed to go to the doctor.

Bruce Milano, the residential care director, told Pierce he didn’t recall telling Beaudoin she could have someone else work her shift and he didn’t remember her being disciplined.

But personnel records indicate that Brady documented his meeting with Beaudoin and told her that repeat behaviors could result in termination of employment, according to Pierce’s report.

The nurse who complained to management about Brady’s behavior resigned after he returned to the nursing home, as did two others, according to Pierce’s report.

Pierce found that Beaudoin “provided credible, persuasive testimony that, on several occasions, she was subjected to vulgar, offensive, lewd remarks about her breasts and that she was repeatedly propositioned by Brady. As a result, Pierce found that unlawful sexual harassment had occurred.

Pierce also determined that Beaudoin had been the victim of unlawful retaliation “because there was no legitimate reason for XXXBradyXXX to place her on probation.”

He did not find Beaudoin’s one-day suspension for gossiping to be retaliation because the facility had already identified that as an unacceptable behavior.

Pierce also investigated another complaint filed by Beaudoin and one filed by her son, Sean. He found no reasonable grounds to believe that Beaudoin was the victim of discrimination when Gaddis fired her on May 2.

Pierce reported that Beaudoin was dismissed after she punched a time card for another staff person in violation of company rules, and was the subject of several complaints by a number of different staff over a period of five days.

Pierce also found no reason to believe that Sean Beaudoin was dismissed because of his mother’s complaints against the facility and the fact that he suffers from Lupus.

Pierce found that Sean Beaudoin was dismissed because of a confrontation in which he’d come to Marshall Manor when he wasn’t on duty, intervened in a disciplinary session with another employee and insulted a supervisor, who by Beaudoin’s own admission, had been trying to be “decent” to him.

“It is not unlawful for an employer to dismiss an employee who causes such outbursts and evidences disrespect for management,” Pierce wrote in his report.