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Explicit Messages Found 'Accidently' Led To Firings

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

From left: Former county employees Jared Lee, Treasa Handley and Christine Edwards said they used the county's instant message system to talk back and forth but felt like they sent no messages that were offensive.

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By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: January 30, 2008

SEBRING — By accident, a routine financial audit of expenditures for the 9-1-1 emergency call system uncovered voluminous sexually explicit messages sent between three Highlands County employees in the budget department.

The sexually explicit messages, all public-record documents open to public inspection, led to the firings Monday morning of: Treasa Handley, former coordinator of non ad-valorem assessments; Jared Lee, former budget analyst; and Christine Edwards, former budget technician.

Tuesday morning, Handley, Lee and Edwards spoke to Highlands Today to tell their side of the story. They responded to Monday's story reporting only that they were fired due to "the nature of, and the volume of," the personal instant messages they sent between themselves at work on county computers.

All three used words like "flabbergasted," "shocked" and "couldn't believe it" in describing their dismissals. All three said they simply used the instant message service on their work computers as a way to chat between friends.

"The three of us are very good friends and we often have conversations," Handley said about their use of instant messaging.

Lee said, "We had these conversations (on instant messaging) and they were personal in nature and, I guess, to them (county officials), they were excessive."

All three said they knew their messages could be monitored and viewed by their supervisors, and that they were shocked that their messages led to their dismissals.

Tuesday afternoon, Bob Jamison of the Highlands County Clerk of Courts office released transcripts of their voluminous instant messages, which focused mostly on explicit sexual messages.

Jamison said the sexually explicit instant messages were discovered accidentally when his office conducted a routine audit of expenditures for the 9-1-1 emergency call system, to track down and document who authorized various expenditures.

In doing that, Jamison said, Clerk of Courts workers looked at various e-mails and instant messages and discovered the explicit sexual content of messaging between Handley, Lee and Edwards.

The stack of papers on the instant messages sent by the three fired employees is more than 10 inches high.

"That is just a sampling of the messages (of the three) over the past six months," Jamison said. He also said the audit of their messages only went back six months, and so he doesn't know, yet, how long they had been texting each other about sexual topics.

In some cases, disparaging remarks were made about county commissioners, including one message referring to Commissioner Barbara Stewart, a clerk's employee said.

As to the extent of inappropriate messages which the clerk's office uncovered, Jamison said, "I would say a substantial amount of the instant messages of those three people who were terminated was sexually explicit in nature."

Jamison, the senior director of business services in the clerk of court's office, said his staff took no action against the three employees.

"This was a purely accidental discovery," Jamison said. "We did not target them or any other employees."

He added, "When we find something like this, we don't evaluate it. We report it. We don't make any recommendations on discipline. We just report it to the appropriate persons."

Jamison did say that some of his employees were upset after spending many hours for many days having to download and read the numerous messages on various sexually explicit topics.

During the one-hour interview at Highlands Today, Handley, Lee and Edwards repeatedly portrayed their messages as chatting between friends which often was humorous.

Asked if the messages were of the type that "would make someone blush" or such that a person "wouldn't want your mother to see them," Handley answered:

"Some things I wrote could make someone blush, but there's nothing I wrote that my mother couldn't hear."

Edwards emphasized that she, Handley and Lee all knew that their instant messages could and probably someday would be monitored and viewed by county officials. They all said they couldn't believe that their messages could lead to dismissal.

If they did anything wrong, Edwards said, then maybe a written reprimand was in order.

"But this," she said, referring to their dismissals, "was overkill."

Once the sexually explicit messages were discovered during the routine financial audit, Jamison said, clerk's staff found other inappropriate uses of instant messaging by county employees other than the three who were fired Monday.

None of the other employees used their county messaging capability to talk about sexual matters, he said.

"There were other employees who misused instant messages by using it for personal matters instead of its intended use for county business," he said. "But none of those were of this (sexually explicit) nature."

Handley, Lee and Edwards each said they plan to file an appeal of their firings. Their appeals have to be filed by 5 p.m. Thursday, under the county's employment regulations.

Asked if they intend to get legal advice when they write their letters of appeal, or have a lawyer accompany them to their appeals, Lee answered. "We don't have a job now, and so who can afford a lawyer?"

Bernis Gainer, director of the county Office of Management and Budget, made the decision to fire Handley, Lee and Edwards, and signed their termination letter.

Gainer said he could not comment about the dismissals until the appeals, if they are filed, are settled.

Under the county's code, an appeal of a dismissal is heard by, and ruled on, by county Administrator Carl Cool.

What Is County Policy?

Highlands County supervisors can discipline an employee in three ways: a written reprimand, suspension of up to five days without pay, and, finally, firing.

The county's employee conduct code classifies work offenses into two categories.

Category One includes 14 lower level offenses for which the employee can first receive a written reprimand and then, if that same offense is repeated, get a five-day suspension. And if it happens a third time, firing can result.

Offenses in this category range from "sleeping on the job unless authorized to do so" to "engaging in horse play, scuffling, wrestling, throwing things, malicious mischief, distracting the work of others, cat calls, or other disorderly conduct."

Treasa Handley, Jared Lee and Christine Edwards said they assume their offense, which they can't understand precisely, must have been classified in the more serious Category Two, because that category allows dismissal for a first offense with no warning, which is the way they were treated.

Two of the 14 offenses in Category Two, in which immediate firing is allowed, are:

• "Falsification of personnel, county or departmental records, including employment applications, accident records, work records, purchase orders, time sheets, or any other report, record or document;" and

• "Sexual harassment consisting of unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature of which the victim may be of either sex and also need not be of the opposite sex, or other unlawful harassment."

Handley, Lee and Edwards said they cannot understand how their instant-message chats could be as serious as falsifying county documents, which could also be a criminal offense. Nor, they said, can they understand how their offense could rise above lower-level, Category One offenses such as "horse play" or "distracting the work of others."

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