For Laurie Trieger, a public criticism rekindles a 30-year-old memory of sexual harassment 

Lane County Commissioner Laurie Trieger had heard enough. 

Minutes before, at the commissioners’ Tuesday, April 7, public meeting, Ruben Garcia, a retired Eugene businessman, stepped up to the podium to ask for an apology from Trieger. Garcia said Trieger had asked him not to touch her at a county event recently when he stepped forward to touch her shoulder in a greeting to say hello.

“You just blew up at me,” Garcia said as commissioners listened. “You just started screaming at me.”

Garcia asked Trieger to answer: “Go ahead; say something.” Board Chair Ryan Ceniga admonished him, saying commissioners don’t interact from the dais during public comments.

Several minutes later, Trieger asked for a chance to respond. She had something to say. 

Trieger didn’t respond in the way that Garcia hoped. Instead, she turned to a time about 30 years ago when she and Garcia crossed paths. At the time, Trieger worked in low-wage jobs to support her family, including cleaning office buildings and waiting tables. Garcia owned a commercial cleaning business, and Trieger said she worked for him briefly in the 1990s.

“I have held in for 30 years the fact that you sexually harassed me when I worked for your company,” Trieger declared, visually emotional. “People in this organization have heard me talk about cleaning office buildings at night, waiting tables, working in a number of different low-wage jobs when my family was young, and we struggled. And you were one of those employers. You were one of those employers, sir. And I have never stated publicly that particular fact that I experienced.”

Trieger did not elaborate on details of the harassment in her remarks, focusing instead on the issue at hand and the right of women to turn down advances.

“You came up to me, presuming it was OK to hug me, and I stood back and said, ‘You do not have permission to touch me,’ and that offended you,” Trieger said. “That is what happened out in the lobby. It was not as dramatic as you portrayed at the podium. There were several people who saw our interactions, sir.”

Garcia declared the harassment was a lie and exited the room. Trieger continued. 

“You can leave because you can’t stand to hear this,” Trieger said. “That’s fine. But other people deserve to hear. Other people deserve to hear, sir, if you are going to come and put on the record comments about an interaction we had that were factually untrue, in a lobby full of people who saw it, that’s not going to stand.”

In his remarks, Garcia had suggested that Trieger follow the example of Commissioner Heather Buch, the only other female commissioner on the five-member board.

“Spend more time with Heather,” Garcia said. “She’s a sweet, wonderful lady. I always get a good hug from her.”

Trieger called out that attitude, too. 

“For men to come before this body and speak to the two women here as if they have a right to expect women to smile and demur and allow them to touch them or hug them or approach them in whatever way the man chooses and that he’s embarrassed if we don’t let him, is a problem,” Trieger said. “The fact that Commissioner Buch and I are only the sixth and seventh woman respectively to ever have served on this body — in a county established in 1851 — tells you something about what this community is prepared to see as leadership and respect as leadership.”

Trieger added: “I’m sorry, Commissioner Buch, that he dragged you into that and tried to pit us against one another as if you are the good woman for being nice and smiling, and I am the evil woman for not allowing him to touch me when I did not want to be touched. That cannot stand.”

Applause rang out after Trieger’s comment, and Buch stood up in support.

In an interview later with Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Trieger said: “The number of people who have reached out to me since this morning to say how much it meant to them to hear me stand up like that for women, and their experience, their similar experiences, has been frankly overwhelming.”

She said she takes seriously the platform her office gives her to speak out.

“I am certainly not the first, and sadly, will not be the last woman to have had an experience like this,” Trieger said. “But you know, it took me 30 years to be in a position, literally and emotionally and figuratively in all the ways, to say something about it.” 

‘I don’t remember a darn thing’ 

Trieger didn’t identify Garcia’s business in her comment. But public records show, and Garcia confirmed, that he owned a commercial cleaning business that he opened in the early 1990s. He’s since sold the company.

In an interview with Lookout Eugene-Springfield, Garcia said he could have handled his grievance with Trieger differently, but also vigorously disputes her account that he sexually harassed her. 

“I regret not confronting her in private,” Garcia said. “That’s what I should have done. It was unfortunate. I came with a peashooter, and she showed up with a bazooka.”

He compared Trieger’s remark about an event 30 years ago to the situation that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh faced as a court nominee. Several women accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, which he denied.

“I’ll tell you this: I don’t remember a darn thing,” Garcia said.

Garcia said he didn’t even remember Trieger working for him.

But he said if she did work for him, it would have been for his cleaning company.

When Garcia started a commercial cleaning company in 1990, it had about 10 or 15 workers, he said. Garcia didn’t remember how many employees he had 30 years ago, but when he sold the company four years ago, it had 71 workers.

Despite Garcia’s denial, he said he’s willing to meet with Trieger and “bury the hatchet” and reconcile.

Garcia said: “It’s wrong. I mean, I was shocked. I was like, ‘What? I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. It’s a bald-faced lie. So, I just stormed out of the meeting.’”

In his interview, Garcia said Jensina Hawkins, a Eugene resident and community activist, witnessed his interaction with Trieger, which happened in January during the State of the County event. 

Hawkins, who serves with Garcia on a nonprofit board, did indeed see Trieger turn down Garcia’s approach.

“Maybe it was going to be a hug, maybe it was going to be a pat on the shoulder,” Hawkins posted on Facebook. “I don’t know. But after she flat-out rebuffed his physical advance, he continued to try to touch her, demanded an explanation, gaslit her, then involved me by putting his arm around me and saying to the commissioner, ‘See? Jensina lets me hug her.’”

Hawkins added: “I want to state unequivocally that when a person of any gender declines to be touched by another person of any gender, the ONLY correct response is, ‘I respect your boundary, and I apologize for making you uncomfortable.’

“Did Commissioner Trieger blow up? She kind of did. But for the sake of all women or other individuals who for too long have been told to ‘just accept it,’ she took a stand, and today she reinforced that stand from the dais. She does not owe Ruben any apology for that incident.”