Former Gadsden Co. Jail employee claim sexual harassment on the job

Latonya Lodman says when she came to work at the Gadsden County Jail, she was harassed by her supervisor, Robert Barkley, on a daily basis.
Published: Aug. 3, 2022 at 9:21 PM EDT

GADSDEN, Fla. (WCTV) - A former Gadsden County sheriff’s office employee is suing, claiming sexual harassment on the job.

Latonya Lodman says when she came to work at the Gadsden County Jail, she was harassed by her supervisor, Robert Barkley, on a daily basis.

“He used to make it feel like nobody’s gonna believe me and I had to endure that for a whole year before I had the courage to say I’m tired of coming to work and being harassed,” Lodman said.

Lodman was a pretrial release manager at the GCJ from May 2020 until Sep. 2021.

During that time, she says Barkley consistently made sexual advances and touched her inappropriately.

“Monday through Friday..it was hell for me,” Lodman said. “It went from his hand being on my lower back to he grabbing me and just feeling on me, walking behind me hitting me on my buttocks, rubbing on me trying to kiss me, trying to hug me, all this at work.”

After reporting it to Human Resources and following up, Lodman says her office was moved from the GCJ to Sheriff’s Office, but she says that wasn’t enough.

“Everybody was talking about it and I just felt so alone and I kinda felt embarrassed and it seemed like my nerves got even worse with me coming there after the fact,” Lodman said. “So I had to resign because there wasn’t anybody there to protect me.”

During the time of her filing the complaint before she ultimately resigned, Lodman says the Sheriff never spoke with her to address her concerns.

WCTV reached out to Barkley’s attorney, the Sheriff and the attorney for Gadsden County, but all declined to comment.

Lodman says by moving forward with the lawsuit, she just wants to make sure everyone invloved is held responsible to prevent this from happening again.

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