The Galveston County Daily News

GALVESTON — When Cathy McBroom complained in May that she had been sexually harassed by U.S. District Judge Samuel B. Kent, she wasn’t just recounting an off-color remark.

Rather, she described an episode that her attorney, Rusty Hardin, characterized as unwanted physical contact.

Hardin is a well-known Houston attorney who argued a case against Anna Nicole Smith and who represented Rudy Tomjanovich, Warren Moon and Scottie Pippen, to name a few.

While Hardin characterized the alleged conduct as criminal, no criminal charges have been filed against Kent and no one has indicated any are imminent.

Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk on Monday told The Daily News it was unclear whether his office had jurisdiction over the federal courthouse on 25th Street in Galveston.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Houston last week said it wouldn’t comment if the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals had referred a criminal complaint against the judge.

Hardin declined to go into further detail about what Kent was accused of doing to his client, who at the time was the judge’s case manager.

But Hardin said he and McBroom are frustrated by the 5th Circuit’s vague reprimand outlining what seemed like a light punishment for Kent. Hardin said he and McBroom were considering what their next move might be.

Kent and his attorney, Maria Boyce, have not returned repeated phone calls.

‘Very Frustrating’

In August, Kent was removed from his bench in the federal courthouse on 25th Street in Galveston for the rest of the year.

Then last Friday, less than a week after The Daily News reported that a sexual harassment complaint had been filed against Kent, the judicial council for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans reported that it had reprimanded the judge. It was the first formal punishment handed down by the 5th Circuit, composed of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, in at least seven years.

But the order said only that sexual harassment and other unspecified complaints had been made against Kent. In reprimanding him, the order didn’t even say whether the 19-member judicial council found the complaints to be credible.

Hardin said the report didn’t adequately describe what he claims Kent did to McBroom, 49 — or what the council did to Kent.

Hardin, a former Harris County prosecutor, said the report was “very frustrating” for his client.

Expansion Of Complaint

While Hardin wouldn’t further describe what McBroom claims happened, The Daily News was told the judge called his case manager to his office, where physical contact occurred.

When she resisted, he told her she owed him because he had interceded in her favor in a dispute among clerk’s office employees, the paper was told.

Since Kent was suspended in August, The Daily News has conducted interviews with more than a dozen members of the legal community — lawyers, their employees and employees of the court. Some claimed first-hand knowledge of allegations of Kent’s misconduct, but none agreed to be identified.

McBroom wasn’t the only female employee Kent, who is more than 6 feet tall and more than 200 pounds, is alleged to have touched inappropriately, The Daily News was told.

The judicial council’s report also seems to indicate more than one incident occurred.

“Following its initial investigation, the Special Investigatory Committee notified the judge in question of an expansion of the original complaint ... to investigate instances of alleged inappropriate behavior toward other employees of the federal judicial system and ultimately recommended that a reprimand of the judge be issued along with the accomplishment of other remedial courses of action,” the council’s order said.

Other Reports

Those aren’t the only reports that Kent engaged in inappropriate conduct.

Other sources have told The Daily News that, at a party and in the offices of a law firm, a drunken Kent cornered women and grabbed them.

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization of Women, on Monday told The Daily News that it is common for someone who commits sexual harassment to do so on multiple occasions.

“I think sexual harassers are serial sexual harassers,” she said. “I don’t think you do it one time.”

The National Organization of Women is so outraged about the Kent affair that it has asked the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Kent should be removed from the bench. Under the Constitution, the only way for Kent to be removed from his job is for the House to vote to impeach him and the Senate to vote to remove him.

Whose Jurisdiction?

Meanwhile, the Texas State Bar Association on Tuesday said it was powerless to discipline Kent because he was a sitting judge. That task falls to the federal judiciary.

The only discipline spelled out in last week’s order were the reprimand, the four-month paid suspension and unspecified “remedial” action.

Hardin said that amounted to a four-month paid vacation.

Despite his frustration with the judiciary’s lack of transparency, Hardin said he didn’t want his client’s complaint to be pressed into the service of somebody else’s agenda. Hardin said his complaint didn’t have anything to do with politics. Rather, he said, it has to do with getting justice for a client who complained of being assaulted by a single judge.

“We do not want to become the captives of somebody’s political agenda against federal judges,” Hardin said.