Several employees at Feed The Children say tensions at the charity’s Oklahoma City headquarters make it traumatic to work there since a judge reinstated ousted directors and gave four fired top executives their jobs back.

"We are in hell,” one employee said of the Christian-based charity.

About 100 Oklahoma City employees this week signed a "no confidence” petition asking those directors and four executives to quit. It states conditions at the charity improved while they were gone.

"During your tenure, Feed The Children maintained an atmosphere and reputation as a brutal workplace filled with infighting, poor business decisions, employee harassment from top-down management and a ghost Board of Directors who offered no governance or oversight,” the petition says.

It is the latest development in a legal struggle for control of the charity that pits President Larry Jones and his wife against most of the charity board’s directors and four executives including his daughter, the general counsel. An Oklahoma County judge overseeing the legal battle got a copy of the "no confidence” petition in the mail Friday. A hearing in the case is set for next week.

Jones in December had six directors removed from the charity’s board after he found out they planned to force him to take a sabbatical. He also had top executives fired. Five directors sued. District Judge Patricia Parrish in February ordered those five reinstated and threw their replacements off the board.

She later explained that her ruling also reinstated the executives. They returned to work in April.

Employees told The Oklahoman some cry at work or go home early because of the stress. One reinstated executive allegedly made an obscene gesture at work toward an employee. The board at an April 16 meeting passed a motion that it "expects full cooperation from all members of management and all employees.”

E-mails spark ire

Employees also have complained directors did not take harsher action against a reinstated executive, internal auditor George Stevens, for improper e-mails at the charity. Stevens, who is a nonvoting director, was suspended for three days. The subject of one Oct. 27 e-mail was PLOT TO KIDNAP OBAMA. It showed a photo of a watermelon under a box propped up by a stick. Another e-mail showed photos of a semi-nude female golfer.

In a statement Friday, Stevens said, "During the recent presidential campaign, I received many political e-mails and I did forward some of them on to others. Some of these e-mails were inappropriate and in poor taste. I realize my error in judgment.”

He said the e-mails’ release to The Oklahoman "violates my reasonable expectation of privacy in my employment records.”