A domestic abuse victim filed a civil lawsuit Friday against former Assistant District Attorney Lance Marshall, the county and its head prosecutor, alleging Marshall sent her explicit texts and voicemails, intercepted her conversations and offered to trade sex for favors in the courtroom.
The woman is suing on allegations of invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil rights violations and the unlawful interception of telephone communications.
This wasn't the first time Marshall has harassed a woman, the lawsuit alleges. The Centre County Human Resources Department has received several complaints of the former prosecutor's "inappropriate conduct," according to the suit, and at least one person came to the District Attorney's office with complaints Marshall made comments about a woman's appearance.
"Mr. Marshall is, or was, the advocate for victims of abuse in Centre County," said Bernie Cantorna, the woman's attorney. "He's in a position of power and he abused his power. If that's true, we should hold him accountable."
A woman who answered the phone Sunday at Marshall's residence said he was not available and had no comment.
Cantorna said the lawsuit stems from the same series of incidents that forced Marshall in December to resign from his post as assistant district attorney.
Centre County District Attorney Michael Madeira, also named in the lawsuit, maintains he's never heard any such accusations regarding Marshall before. Madeira in January said he and Marshall discussed "certain things" before his resignation and the handling of the situation was an internal personnel matter.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office is investigating Marshall's behavior.
Madeira, who announced Jan. 30 he will seek a second term in office, said he could not comment specifically on the allegations and had no prior knowledge of misconduct.
"Until the plaintiff in this matter spoke to me in December of 2008, I never met with anyone who alleged this kind of inappropriate conduct on the part of Lance Marshall," Madeira said. "As soon as I heard it, I met with him and he resigned his position as assistant district attorney."
The lawsuit, however, contends that after being elected the head prosecutor for the county in 2005, Madeira was advised by an unnamed Centre County commissioner that Marshall needed to be fired. The District Attorney's office took no action, according to the suit.
"Did Centre County fail to take action? Should they have taken action? That's the question raised," Cantorna said.
The lawsuit contends Marshall's pattern of harassment began Dec. 5, when the prosecutor asked the domestic abuse victim to meet him and his secretary at a local restaurant to sign a form. When the woman arrived, the secretary and forms were nowhere to be seen, the lawsuit alleges.
At the restaurant, Marshall discussed his extramarital affairs, said he "thinks about sex more often than most people" and asked the woman to falsify testimony, according to the lawsuit.
From then until Dec. 28, he sent more than 250 text messages to the woman, made multiple telephone calls and left a number of voicemails, some sexually explicit, Cantorna wrote in the lawsuit.
On several occasions, Marshall attempted to elicit sex from the woman and indicated if she complied, he would grant her request to get her boyfriend -- the man Marshall was prosecuting in the domestic violence case -- out of prison, according to court documents.
At one point, he called her and played recordings of conversations she had with the man in prison, according to the lawsuit. He told her he was disturbed she was attempting to get back together with the man, the lawsuit contends.
After a few weeks, the woman said she went to Madeira with her concerns. Days later, on Dec. 30, Marshall resigned. State College Police later told the woman Madeira had offered Marshall an ultimatum to resign or be fired, she said.
Centre County Commissioner Jon Eich said Friday he had not yet seen the lawsuit. He added the District Attorney is an independently elected official and is responsible for personnel matters within his own office.
"We have oversight over his budget," Eich said. "He has oversight over his personnel."
Eich added he hoped Centre County eventually would be dropped from the list of defendants.
