01.21.2014
This is a November 2009 file photo of the administration building at Gannondale, a care facility for girls aged 12 to 18, in Harborcreek Township. GREG WOHLFORD//ERIE TIMES-NEWS
A former Gannondale bookkeeper has filed a federal lawsuit claiming the local residential treatment center for young women forced her to attend staff meetings and voice commitment to a therapeutic model of "growth and change" in violation of her religious beliefs.
As a member of the Jehovah's Witness faith, Sharon L. Shepherd said she believes in predetermination, not change and growth.
Instead of accommodating her religion and letting her skip the meetings, Shepherd said, she was fired.
Shepherd filed the civil rights complaint against Gannondale in U.S. District Court in Erie on Friday.
She is asking the court to declare that Gannondale -- which provides treatment for court-placed young women -- illegally discriminated against her on the basis of her religion. She wants reinstatement to her job, reimbursement for lost wages and benefits, plus damages -- including punitive -- "sufficient to punish defendant's illegal conduct and to deter others from engaging in similar conduct."
"Shepherd would violate her religious beliefs if required to state a daily goal related to 'growth and change,'" the lawsuit states. Although Shepherd makes reference to her belief in what she terms "predetermination," she does not define it or otherwise further explain it in the lawsuit.
Shepherd's lawyer, Samuel J. Cordes, of Pittsburgh, filed the lawsuit but declined to comment Monday.
Arthur Martinucci, lawyer for Gannondale, said, "We have not yet received a copy of the complaint, and so can offer no comment at this time."
Gannondale is a ministry of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and is located at 4635 East Lake Road.
The complaint stems from Gannondale's implementation of a model of care known as the "sanctuary model."
The goals, according to Gannondale's website, are to allow staff and residents, many of them traumatized, to work together to create a safe, nonviolent, healing therapeutic community.
Under the model, staff are educated about seven areas of commitment, such as nonviolence, social learning, open communication and "change and growth," the component to which Shepherd objected.
Shepherd said she was first hired in October 2011. At the time of her firing in June, she said, she held the post of bookkeeping supervisor.
Shepherd said several months after she began working at Gannondale, the organization began requiring her to attend brief community meetings about four days a week. At the meetings, she and other staffers were required to state a "daily goal that was related to a 'commitment' to the 'sanctuary model,'" including a commitment to growth and change.
That "commitment to 'growth and change' contradicts Shepherd's religious belief of predetermination," according to the complaint.
Shepherd said she first told a human resources manager in November 2012 that the community meetings interfered with her religious beliefs.
Shepherd said the human resources manager initially told her that she did not have to attend the meetings. But in May 2013, Shepherd said, her supervisor then told Shepherd she would be fired if she did not attend the meetings.
Shepherd said the human resources manager and her supervisor at some later point asked her for proof of how the sanctuary model violated her religious beliefs.
Shepherd said she gave them a one-page document "explaining the contradiction between 'growth and change' and her religious beliefs," but lost her job anyway on June 13.
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