[L]isa Senecal had applied for a job at a Stowe tech travel company and engaged in a back and forth with the COO over the course of several months, hoping to land the position of marketing director.
The job at Inntopia, however, never materialized. Instead, Senecal’s dream of working for the company turned into a nightmare in which she says her would-be boss aggressively sexually harassed her during a private meeting.
Senecal says up to that point, her exchanges with Craig DeLuca, the former COO and then president of Inntopia, were professional and friendly. In fact, the job offer started out with a chance meeting in Stowe, where Senecal lives.
She ran into DeLuca in October 2016, and “out of the blue he asked me what I was doing professionally.”
“He told me he’d love to talk to me about a position at Inntopia,” Senecal recalled. “They were looking for someone to lead marketing efforts, and I was at that point looking to move from being an independent contractor to full-time employment somewhere, and I told him I would be interested in talking with him.”
The hiring process went on for several months, Senecal says. There was “one reason after another why finalizing my hiring was delayed.”
After a number of professional meetings, interviews and exchanges, DeLuca set up a meeting at a private location with Senecal on Feb. 8, 2017.
There, DeLuca “turned into a completely different person” and became “sexually aggressive and extremely sexually graphic in what he was saying,” Senecal said in an interview with VTDigger.
DeLuca propositioned her in a “lurid diatribe,” she said, and hinted that her future with Inntopia hinged on her willingness to acquiesce.
Senecal said the Inntopia executive told her that a sexual relationship would not interfere with their professional relationship, and he knew this was possible because he’d done it before. DeLuca excused his behavior with the comment “I’m Italian, you know.”
She said she reminded DeLuca of his role at the company and attempted to rebuff his sexual advances.
“I tried get it to a point where I felt safe,” she said. “I thought I had been able to do that, then he became very physically and sexually aggressive.”
Looking back, Senecal says it was “the most frightening and aggressive experience I have ever had.” More than a year later, she is not comfortable describing the details of what happened.
“At the time that I brought this forward to Inntopia, DeLuca claimed this was a consensual act,” Senecal said. “It absolutely was not.”
A few days after the event, she contacted Scott Labby, an attorney in New York. Labby wrote to Inntopia on March 3, 2017, describing what happened, and put the company on notice that DeLuca had violated federal sexual discrimination law.
Senecal said in her outreach to Inntopia that DeLuca’s conduct was part of a “premeditated liaison” and “was not only unwelcome, it was egregious and extraordinary.”
She says she made an effort to resolve the matter “with as little rancor as possible.” Her demands included an apology from Inntopia and DeLuca, sexual harassment training, a clear reporting system for misconduct and a financial settlement for damages.
Initially, Senecal thought Inntopia would handle the situation professionally, take her concerns seriously and conduct an investigation.
But her hope that the company would take responsibility for what happened quickly dissipated. She was stunned when Inntopia “completely defended” DeLuca.
On March 13, Inntopia countered with what Senecal describes as an “incredible slut-shaming letter saying this is something that I wanted.”
The company said Senecal and DeLuca “were close personal friends” and asserted that she “welcomed and eagerly participated in” what DeLuca had done to her. Officials “hypothesized” that Senecal came forward out of “regret” because she lives “in a small community where Mr. DeLuca also lives, or because Mr. DeLuca is a married man.”
Inntopia officials wrote that the fact that she had shaved her legs signaled her desire and consent. Senecal says she was dressed for a winter hike for the meeting with DeLuca.
“I know companies handle these things poorly, and this happens to women, but I was shocked that in a little town like ours this is the way a company would react to someone in the community,” Senecal said.
Senecal says the company’s attempt “to shame and humiliate me into backing down backfired.” Labby pointed out the “easily provable inaccuracies” in the description provided by Inntopia, and were able to show that DeLuca’s account was “demonstrably untrue.”
Senecal was later told the COO was allowed to handle the company’s response to her complaint, “which is exactly the way the letter read.”
In May 2017, Senecal settled with Inntopia. In addition to an investigation into other possible cases, training and new reporting protocols, one of the conditions of the settlement was a requirement that Inntopia prohibit DeLuca from meeting privately with women on any company business. Senecal was told that prohibition was already in effect during settlement negotiations.
The company broke that promise, Senecal says, when DeLuca was allowed to continue meeting alone with women at Inntopia, including with Alison Miley.
Last month, Miley sued Inntopia and DeLuca for sex discrimination and harassment. Her lawsuit says the former COO repeatedly propositioned her for sex in exchange for employment over a nearly two-year period.
Miley alleges that in one meeting DeLuca locked her in an office and propositioned her for sex. DeLuca even used the same “I’m Italian, you know” line when he tried to seduce Miley, she says.
In her lawsuit, Miley alleges that Trevor Crist, the founder of Inntopia, DeLuca and others at the firm promoted a culture in which sexual harassment was “explicitly condoned, supported, tolerated, forgiven and/or hidden from public view.”
Senecal was outraged to discover that DeLuca had allegedly victimized another woman. “I was assured he been stripped of his role in recruiting and interviewing and was no longer allowed to meet alone with women in or outside the office,” she said.
Neither Crist nor DeLuca have responded to multiple emails and phone calls requesting comment. In a statement issued last month, Crist emphasized that Inntopia has made an effort to hire more women and denied that the company has a culture in which sexual harassment has been allowed to flourish.
The company let DeLuca, now 58, go in 2017.
Crist responded last month to Miley’s allegations, calling them “troubling” and “counter to everything the company stands for.”
“Neither I nor the company would ever condone the type of behavior described in the complaint,” Crist said in a statement at the time.
“Such behavior is an affront to our company values. Inntopia is dedicated to workplace equality, promoting respect among colleagues, and maintaining a safe workplace environment that is free of harassment and discrimination of any kind,” he said.
The statement went on to say the company would investigate claims of misconduct or harassment, take disciplinary action and protect the privacy of victims.
Senecal says the company negotiated to keep DeLuca on as president even after his actions were brought to Crist’s attention, and an Inntopia employee disclosed her name after they had reached a settlement, which included a non-disclosure agreement that applied to Inntopia as well as Senecal.
“Before I agreed to sign, I received multiple assurances that the company had made a thorough investigation that identified no other victims, and that changes were being made to reduce the future risk to women at the company,” Senecal wrote in an online commentary.
Eventually, Miley learned about Senecal’s case. And when Miley shared the details of her experience, Senecal learned that they had eerily similar encounters with DeLuca. It also turns out, both are single mothers. Senecal says they shared “a perceived vulnerability” and he exploited the fact that they needed work to support their families.
Emboldened by Miley’s action in civil court, and disappointed in both Crist’s public statements and DeLuca’s outright denial, Senecal went public with her experience in a piece published Saturday on the Daily Beast.
In that article, she describes the pain of her experience and how it left her feeling “vulnerable, angry, sad, and disgusted.”
“His reaction was different,” Senecal wrote. “First came his email celebrating what he had done as ‘awesome.’ Not long after, he followed with a job offer.” Senecal ignored the offer.
While the fallout for Senecal hasn’t completely gone away, she has found a way forward. At the time, her life was turned upside down.
“It’s been incredibly difficult for my family,” Senecal said. “There are a few conversations I can imagine that are more difficult to have with either your parents or your children. I have an amazingly supportive family, and they have encouraged me to do whatever I felt was the right way, what I felt was the right thing do.”
Her family has supported her decision to speak publicly about her experience. Her teenage sons, she said, “have been mature beyond their years and are exactly the type of young men I hoped they were growing up to be.”
She ceased her job search, and she has poured herself into her new volunteer work with the Vermont Commission on Women, where she has helped to spearhead new sexual harassment legislation that was signed into law last month.
She also recently started a consulting business, The Maren Group, which she formed with Labby. They work with companies to reduce sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. The firm also helps investors evaluate whether companies have taken steps to protect women.
