Three women allege in a lawsuit filed last week that they were sexually harassed by the live-in property manager at their luxury Oakland apartment building and that the building’s owners and management company failed to take appropriate action in response to their complaints.
Two of the women, Deonna “Dee Dee” Thompson and Chloe Shedrick, allege in the suit that the property manager at the Axis apartments used his position in the building to stalk and harass them following brief consensual relationships they broke off last year. The third, Jolie Zahra Drevitch, alleges he blocked her in a stairwell and made an unwanted sexual advance during a building Juneteenth party.
“It’s important to speak up about things like this because you don’t want it to continue,” said Thompson, who moved out of the building earlier this year in response to the alleged harassment.
“I went to work the next day, and I was really anxious and made excuses not to go home,” Drevitch said. She filed a police report after the incident, which Oakland police said remains under investigation. “And I recognized that I didn’t feel safe in my own environment.”
In an email to NBC Bay Area, the property manager strongly denied the allegations and said what’s described in the lawsuit doesn’t accurately reflect his account of the events. He said he intends to contest the women’s claims through the appropriate legal process.
The building’s owners and management company did not respond to NBC Bay Area’s request for comment on the lawsuit.
The women’s attorneys say the allegations go beyond the actions of a single employee.
“They weren’t being taken seriously and my fear for them was that this was going to happen not only to them, but to other tenants,” said Rahman Popal, managing attorney at The Law Firm for Tenant Rights.
“We have photos of text messages and emails, as well as calls, showing the pattern of how this played out,” said Rachel Neff, an associate attorney at the firm. “It wasn’t a one-time incident. This was a prolonged series of events that happened to multiple tenants.”
Deonna “Dee Dee” Thompson
Thompson, a single mother, said safety was her top priority when she was apartment hunting in Oakland last year.
That led her to the Axis apartments. Thompson said she met the manager while touring the building and had a brief consensual relationship with him before she ended it, according to the lawsuit
The lawsuit alleges the situation escalated at a Halloween party in the building last year.
According to the lawsuit, another building employee – who is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit – “grabbed Thompson’s buttocks” without her consent.
“I was just like, ‘Don’t ever put your hands on me again,’” Thompson told NBC Bay Area. “And he didn’t say anything. He was just, I don’t know, so intoxicated.”
The building employee told NBC Bay Area the allegations against him are “100% false.”
The suit alleges the property manager began bombarding Thompson with calls and text messages that same night after she left the party, and that he tried to get into her apartment.
“He just yelled into the phone, ‘Open the door, open the door!’” Thompson said. “And I’m like, no, I’m not opening the door. Like you’re not coming over here.”
The following morning, Thompson said the property manager dropped off flowers at her door, which was captured by her Ring camera.
Over the next month, according to the suit, the manager tracked her movements through the building’s security cameras and left voicemails suggesting “he knew where she was at any given moment.”
Thompson said she decided to move out in March and learned around then that she wasn’t alone.
Chloe Shedrick
During their consensual relationship, the suit alleges the manager would show up to Shedrick’s door – sometimes drunk – and attempt to get inside, even as Shedrick tried drawing boundaries.
The harassing behavior continued months after Shedrick ended the relationship, according to the lawsuit, as the manager continued to knock on Shedrick’s door and used building security cameras to track her movements and “question who she was with.”
Both Thompson and Shedrick said they filed incident reports with the building’s management company about their experiences in the building.
The lawsuit alleges their complaints had to go through the very same property manager they were accusing of harassment.
“I requested that no one on the property read the report since it was about them,” Thompson said. “[The property manager] sent me a text saying, ‘hey, I read your report, can we talk about this?’ I said ‘no.’”
The suit alleges the management company failed to take action and the property manager was still on the job when Joli Zahra Drevitch came forward this summer.
Joli Zahra Drevitch
Drevitch said she had lived at Axis for four years without incident before the encounter with the manager during a Juneteenth party this year.
Drevitch alleges in the suit that the manager aggressively put an arm around her neck during the celebration and pulled her face close to his. Later that night, the lawsuit alleges, she encountered him in a stairwell as she was leaving the party, where he made unwanted sexual advances.
“[The property manager] tried to convince her to enter someone’s apartment with her, claiming he wanted her help to retrieve the ‘jungle juice’ for the party,” the lawsuit alleges.
When Drevitch declined, according to the suit, he tried to block her path.
“In that very moment, he launches his body at me,” said Drevitch, who is a domestic violence survivor, according to the lawsuit. “I swing and take off down the stairwell. I’m shaking when I got down to the second floor. I’m unable to breathe.”
Drevitch said she reported the incident to upper management.
According to the lawsuit, management promised to fire the property manager, but neither the manager nor his employer commented on whether that actually happened when asked by NBC Bay Area.
“The buck stops with ownership,” Popal said. “They hire the management company to provide the rights and safety and security that tenants are entitled to.”
The lawsuit alleges more than a half-dozen civil violations, including sexual harassment and negligence.
