Broken silence by David Forbes April 23, 2018

For years, activists asserted prominent artist Jonas Gerard used cash and intimidating legal tactics to silence allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. Documents and a former employee’s story reveal what that looks like

Above: Protesters from the Asheville Survivors Coalition, which has focused on claims of abuse perpetrated by Jonas Gerard, holding a banner in Pack Square. Photo from ASC.

[Warning: The following story contains graphic accounts detailing claims of sexual abuse and harassment]

The document is five pages long, its language both formal and intimidating. In return for $50,000, it reads, a woman who claims she was sexually abused by her employer is forbidden from speaking about the allegations to anyone besides her husband. She’s forbidden from going to law enforcement, she’s forbidden from talking to the press, to former co-workers, even to family and friends. If she or her husband speak out, they’re warned, they’ll lose $20,000 every time they do so.

The top of the settlement carries the name of the man seeking this enforced silence: Jonas Gerard.

Gerard is one of the most well-known artists in Asheville. As tourism’s boomed and gentrification’s exploded he’s made a fortune, his work repeatedly marketed as one of the River Arts District’s main attractions. He has two studio locations and his paintings have been displayed in prominent areas all over town: public schools, non-profits, businesses, the chamber of commerce, even the airport.

But activists have asserted for years that Gerard has a record of repeated sexual harassment and abuse of his employees, one he’s covered up through gag orders, cash settlements and threats. Even statements from Gerard and his spokesperson admit that in just two years, 2014 and 2015, he racked up three EEOC complaints. In 2015 he also faced a sexual battery charge and protesters disrupted a November event he was holding, publicly declaring the details of the charge and other allegations. Gerard’s staff and River Arts District business and property owners demanded they leave and threatened to call the police.

The legal document, directed at yet another employee who claims she was abused around the same time period, contains what’s known as a non-disclosure agreement, legally binding the signer to not talk about certain information. While they’re used in a variety of circumstances, NDAs are often employed as a method for silencing people speaking out about workplace abuses. One reason it took decades for some of the numerous allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein to emerge, for example, was that his lawyers aggressively used such “settlement agreements” to threaten any survivor.

The Blade has obtained the original, un-redacted non-disclosure agreement, as well as a corroborating email from an attorney employed by Gerard to deliver the document and pressure the former employee to sign. The Blade also interviewed her at length and she agreed to speak under condition of anonymity.

What these documents show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that Gerard was willing to pay considerable sums of money to keep allegations of sexual abuse from going public, a silence he sought to protect by using a draconian gag order that threatened a former employee and her partner with financial ruin if they ever spoke negatively about him. In this case, the former survivor didn’t sign.

The document, and the former employee’s claims of horrific abuse by Gerard, were initially brought to light by the Asheville Survivors’ Coalition, an “ad-hoc” group “of community members supporting survivors of sexual assault and harassment.”

Asheville’s low wages and weak labor protections, combined with the harsh cultural pressure against criticizing local business owners, create an environment ripe for abuse, and the issue’s erupted into the public eye before. In a time when sexual harassment by men in positions of power is under increasing scrutiny, including in our city, the group has re-ignited public protest against Gerard. ASC has called for a boycott of his business, publicized survivors’ allegations, demanded his artwork be removed and that local institutions eject him. They assert that “we are done with the culture of exploitation and silence. We will not let it stand.”

‘I said no’

When she first applied to work at Jonas Gerard’s studio, the woman who would later be the target of that NDA had no idea what she would encounter. She was an artist as well, and had just heard that Gerard was supposedly one of the city’s most successful in that field. She started working for him in 2012, handing out wine and snacks and acting as an assistant during events like the River Stroll.

But she’s an experienced salesperson, she recalled to the Blade, and as she quickly got to know the business, that’s the position she applied for. But despite numerous qualifications, she was repeatedly turned down, something she found strange at the time. Eventually, in early 2014, she left the job to work elsewhere.

Then she ran into Gerard about six months later while shopping. She said he mentioned that multiple employees had left after sexual harassment allegations, which he assured her were false. After this meeting she applied for, and got, the sales job she’d sought for years.

In retrospect, she tells the Blade, “I felt brainwashed” by Gerard, recalling that he often paired praise and feigned affection with violating personal and professional boundaries.

She helped train the new sales team at the understaffed business but remembers that, the way Gerard ran operations, she was often separated from many of the other employees, working alone in the studio. In many cases, she says, “I just didn’t know” about his actions towards them.

The former employee remembers that “I did everything except framing,” frequently selling paintings and bringing in solid pay from commissions. During this time, she says, Gerard would cook her dinner at his apartment, buy her groceries and even painted her nude several times. He would also, she claims, increasingly touch her in inappropriate ways, asserting it was part of his creative process.

“One day he finally took it too far,” she says in an account published by ASC. “He was asking me to do something to him and I said no. I must have said no at least 10 times. He was pushing my head down over and over again. He made me give him a blow job, not once but twice and acted like we were making love or something even after I said No. After this horrible ordeal was over he said something that finally, finally took my blinders off.”

She remembers Gerard told her not to tell his girlfriend or her husband.

The survivor went home, “really, really disgusted” and took a shower, repeatedly scrubbing herself. She went in to her job the rest of the week, but worked at different locations where she wouldn’t see him. Eventually, when he pressured her, she says she told him about the damage done by his actions. In reply, she recalls that Gerard said “you’ve always been my ‘yes girl.'” She left the job shortly after, saying she told the other women who worked there what had happened to her.

During the years she worked there, she remembers, Gerard’s business had about “80 percent turnover,” much of it related to his harassment. She tells the Blade that after her abuse multiple other employees left.

She considered pressing charges, but had little faith in the legal system, so “I didn’t feel like I could go to court.” She was especially worried about the odds given Gerard’s wealth and habit of intimidating former employees. Out of work and fearing what a prolonged court battle would do to her family, she verbally agreed for Gerard to pay her $50,000 and, in return, claimed she wouldn’t go to WLOS or the police.

But there was a catch, one that hit months later. Rather than have the $50,000 considered compensation for damage, distress or injuries, Gerard claimed it was income paid to her and issued her a 1099 (the tax form used for freelance or other income that doesn’t have payroll tax deducted from it) sticking her with a massive tax bill. By that point, the survivor recalls, she had used much of the funds to pay off debts and help her family, and the news came as a sickening shock.

NDA

So in early 2016 she says she angrily approached her former employer (who had, it’s worth remembering, just faced legal charges for a separate claim of sexual battery) to ask why his business was hitting her with a tax bill for the damage he’d done.

In response, she received an email from Jonathan Yarbrough, an attorney for Constangy, Brooks, Smith and Prophete, a firm with a long history of representing employers against union organizing and abuse allegations [full disclosure: during my time at Mountain Xpress the same firm was hired by the publisher to attack the union effort there — D.F.].

The email read:

It is my understanding that you have recently contacted Jonas Gerard Fine Art in an attempt to have a 1099 issued to you reversed. The 1099 was properly issued under federal tax laws due to payment of certain sums to you as settlement for claims you were threatening to make against Mr. Gerard and the gallery. The terms of the settlement included complete confidentiality. It is my understanding that you breached the confidentiality agreement you had with my clients shortly after receiving the funds and that you are threatening to do so again. Rather than pursue this matter further legally, my client is willing to reverse the 1099 issued to you in exchange for your execution of the attached release agreement and your compliance with the terms of the release agreement. Please return the executed original of this agreement to my attention at the address below by close of business March 1, 2016. Once received, Mr. Gerard will cause the accountant for JGFA to reverse the 1099. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Attached to Yarbrough’s email is a non-disclosure agreement. It claims that if she will agree to never press charges, file a lawsuit or even talk to any party besides her husband about Gerard’s alleged actions, “the aforementioned settlement will be considered to have been paid…for personal physical injuries, sickness and emotional distress originating from and allegedly brought about by Gerard” during her employment and she wouldn’t owe any taxes.

There was more. The agreement would have prohibited her from pursuing any penalties for Gerard under federal, state or local law, with a promise that she would never “swear out any criminal charge to the magistrate or any other law enforcement official relating to her time or employment with JGFA and against Jonas Gerard.”

Both she and her husband would even be prohibited from ever speaking “in a derogatory manner” about Gerard or his business. She could only speak about the settlement to her accountant, to government agencies or if specifically required to in a court of law. Otherwise, if she or her spouse ever spoke about either the document or her account of what happened to her during her time working at Gerard’s business, he “will be entitled to liquidated damages…in the amount of $20,000 for every occurrence.”

The survivor was outraged. After consulting her own legal counsel, she remembers that she was advised not to sign the agreement, as at this stage it wouldn’t actually guarantee that she still wouldn’t owe taxes on the $50,000.

In the end, she says, she was forced to leave Asheville and move out of state shortly after. She’s continued with her art and work, but says she’s still paying $400 a month on the tax bill Gerard hit her with. Now, she tells the Blade she wants to speak out to warn others and try to bring some measure of justice.

“I’m trying not to let this be the end.”

Truth and consequences

At least in Asheville it hasn’t been, though only due to local activists relentlessly pressing the issue and former employees such as her being willing to speak out publicly about their allegations.

I covered the 2015 protest, back when Gerard was still facing criminal charges and saw business and property owners from the RAD literally close ranks around him to push out protesters.

Now ASC’s efforts, and those of the survivors and locals who are pushing back against Gerard, are having some impact. ASC’s first public statement was signed by some local notable artists and activists who have joined the push. In December, protesters gathered outside his business. Multiple institutions and businesses have agreed to remove his art, though some pieces still remain up in prominent locations like the Asheville Regional Airport and the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce.

In response to the December protest Gerard issued a statement, claiming that the anger against him was just held by “a small group of people within our community” and he had “a spirit of hope for true listening on both sides, and with an eye toward healing, reconciliation and a desire for harmony.”

The statement referred dismissively to the discrimination complaints and the 2015 criminal charge:

Several years ago, some EEOC charges were filed against my gallery by former employees, in the same way that hundreds of thousands of similar charges are filed through the EEOC against business in the U.S. One former employee, in addition to filing an EEOC charge, also filed criminal charges against me at the same time. All of those charges were resolved through the EEOC’s mediation process or through the complainants own private attorneys…the signs in last weeks protest stated ‘Remove the Gag Orders.’ Please understand no gag orders exist.

As for his own actions, in the statement Gerard denied allegations of assault and claimed his age as an excuse for “things I have said and done in past years that I’m not proud of today. For those things, I wish to share my most sincere apology to anyone hurt by my actions. Mistakes were made several years ago, lessons were learned and since that time I have been singularly focused on becoming a better person.”

Despite Gerard’s claim that “no gag orders exist,” it’s hard to imagine what other term describes a document threatening a former employee and her spouse with financial and legal ruin if they even mention claims of Gerard’s abuse to their family, friends, activists or the press.

Meanwhile, the public pressure against Gerard continues. The latest effort is a petition started by ASC to get him removed from the River Arts District Artists Association, where he remains a member. The group’s statement asserts that “the time for silence has passed.”

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