Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis was first elected to the City Commission in 1996, became mayor in 2004 and has been reelected three times, twice unopposed.
Now, as Ortis campaigns for what he says could be his final term at age 76, he faces not only his biggest political challenge yet from Commissioner Angelo Castillo, but also an allegation of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit that will play out in Broward County court as the March election approaches.
A former employee at a Pembroke Pines restaurant that Ortis co-owns, Mayor’s Cafe & Bagel Emporium, says the mayor sexually assaulted her in his car in April 2016 and then harassed her repeatedly at work. The mayor claims the incidents never happened and is counter-suing for defamation.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the claims after the accuser reported them to Pembroke Pines police in late 2017. The department said last October that it couldn’t find enough evidence to charge him with a crime.
The woman is pushing ahead with the civil suit, which she filed in March 2018.
She says that shortly after she was hired as a cashier at the restaurant, Ortis asked her to meet him in the parking lot of nearby Pembroke Lakes Golf and Racquet Club after her shift ended. After Ortis told her to get into his car, she says, Ortis repeatedly tried to initiate a sexual encounter.
According to the complaint, Ortis grabbed her hand and forced it onto his pants. He then tried to unbuckle his pants and pull her hand back onto his groin, the complaint says, as the woman moved her hand away. She says Ortis then tried to unbuckle her pants, touched one of her breasts, and “forced his tongue into her mouth.”
The woman says she pulled away multiple times and kept asking Ortis “why he was doing this.”
Ortis told the Herald last week that the claims were entirely fabricated. He added that FDLE “completely exonerated [him] of any wrongdoing.”
After the woman’s lawsuit was filed, Ortis produced travel documents showing he was in Washington, D.C., for business on April 19, 2016, the day the woman initially said the assault took place. In an amended complaint, she said she incorrectly recalled the date and that the incident had actually taken place a week earlier.
There has yet to be a court hearing in the civil suit almost 21 months after it was filed. A trial has not been scheduled.
The lawsuit focuses on the alleged incident in the mayor’s car, but the woman’s report to local police and the subsequent FDLE investigation also delved into her claims about Ortis’ behavior at his restaurant.
The November 2017 police report says that, when she returned to work after the incident in the car, Ortis began asking her crude questions, touching her inappropriately, and pressuring her to send him nude pictures of herself.
The woman told police that Ortis asked her, “Do you want to have anal sex?” and told her, “You have nice tits.” She also said that, in the narrow area behind the counter at the cafe, Ortis would sometimes “grab her buttocks.”
The police report says the woman “was afraid to confront Ortis because she did not want to lose her job.”
Ortis’ counterclaim says the woman posted defamatory reviews of Mayor’s Cafe online that referred to Ortis’ inappropriate behavior.
In a Google review, according to court documents, the woman wrote: “mayor is too busy sexually harassing his female employees.” On Yelp, Benjamin wrote a comment referencing Ortis and the #MeToo movement.
These statements, Ortis’ counterclaim says, “were intended to wrongfully extract monies from [Ortis], who [the woman] knew was a public figure in the community and could potentially be harmed by the false and salacious allegations.”
In an October 2018 close-out memorandum detailing the FDLE investigation, Broward County Assistant State Attorney Christopher Killoran said investigators couldn’t find enough evidence to corroborate the woman’s claims.
Investigators interviewed the woman’s boyfriend, who said the woman relayed to him that Ortis “constantly harassed her and touched her.”
A forensic analysis of the boyfriend’s phone turned up two relevant text messages, including one on an unspecified date in which the woman said she was “filing sexual harassment on [the] mayor.”
In another message from March 17, 2017, the woman told her boyfriend: “I didn’t tell u mayor pulled out his [expletive] and grabbed my hand and put it on his [expletive] and I pulled it off and got so fast out his car.”
Killoran said the fact that the message was sent almost a year after the alleged incident “is not an issue.” Rather, he wrote, the two text messages were not enough to corroborate the woman’s testimony that she had “repeatedly” told her boyfriend about the mayor’s behavior.
“Both the lack of text messages reflecting this coupled with only one text being sent 11 months later contradicts her testimony,” Killoran wrote.
FDLE investigators also took statements from at least three female employees and a manager at Mayor’s Cafe. According to the close-out memo, none of them said they had seen inappropriate behavior by Ortis.
Several employees, however, told investigators they knew the woman had once sent a nude photo to Ortis and the manager.
Ortis acknowledged that he received a nude photo from the woman, but he said it was unsolicited. He told investigators that he and the woman “were friendly and texted,” but that nothing inappropriate ever happened.
The woman told police that Ortis was “constantly pressuring her” to send him nude photos and that he persisted even after she said no. She said she finally sent him a picture of herself in a bathing suit because she was afraid of losing her job.
The police report says the woman believes she was ultimately fired from the restaurant in June 2016 because she “rebuffed Ortis’ sexual advances.”
After the woman’s boyfriend visited the restaurant one day, Ortis asked her if the man was her boyfriend and asked a crude question about their relationship, according to the police report. She says she was fired the next time she showed up for work when the manager claimed $70 had gone missing from her cash drawer.
The woman denied taking any money from the restaurant and said she thought the manager was acting at Ortis’ direction. Ortis told investigators that wasn’t true and that he briefly rehired the woman “because he felt sorry for her,” but that she put in her notice a week later.
The woman also filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March 2017, according to the police report. An EEOC spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on the complaints it receives.
Ortis said that, in his more than 20 years in office, he has never faced any complaints for harassment. A copy of his personnel file obtained by the Herald through a public records request did not include any complaints.
In the state of Florida, victims of sexual abuse can take their abusers to civil court to recover financial compensation for their suffering. If you or someone you love is considering taking an abuser to court, our Florida Sexual Abuse Injury Attorneys at Whittel & Melton are here to help you.
Criminal charges are different from civil suits. Criminal charges are only meant to punish the abuser, so that they do not commit further crimes in the community. A civil suit on the other hand, focuses on the harm done to you. Your civil suit will be all about you, your suffering, and the compensation you deserve.
Your abuser is most likely going to have an attorney of their own, so you will need to obtain your own lawyer to help you get the compensation you deserve. At Whittel & Melton, we’re strongly committed to helping the victims of sex abuse obtain financial justice.