Work ethics

Two gay women charge Prudential with turning its back to complaints of harassment and discrimination at its Auburn office

by Monica McKenna

It was no mild hate letter. It was beyond vile. And it blew the mind of seasoned detective Robert Lanciault. Mary Clarke and Karan Parkin who brought the letter to his office in the Auburn Police Department last December impressed him as "nice people," but they were obviously affected by it and downright frightened.

Clarke recalled crying after opening it at work. Until then, she had worked in Auburn in the safety of a building in a suburban, professional office park, far from any violence or threats or intimidation.

The letter was signed "Your Fellow Employees," and though it wasn't on official stationery, the author had carefully typed in "The Prudential" at the top so that there would be no doubt.

Clarke told Lanciault that she had immediately called her housemate, Parkin, who was soon reeling with disgust and anger. She, in turn, called her pastor for she, too, had received an identical letter not at the office but at her home, a comfortable Cape Cod in Worcester County, that she and her partner share with Clarke.

And until four days earlier, Lanciault learned, Parkin and Clarke had worked in the same office at the Prudential Insurance Company of America on Midstate Drive.

The letter supposedly had come from fellow workers who over the years had attended retirement parties together and sometimes lunched with Clarke and Parkin. There was no part of their lives untouched by the letter's ranting. "The God stuff really bothered me," says Parkin.

Their size, their looks, their spirituality, their past, their sexual orientation -- Clarke and Parkin are lesbians but not romantically involved with each other -- were attacked. "Good people embraced by the love of God" (the letter read) knew enough buzz words to include most of them in one long paragraph, accusing the two of graphic sexual fantasies and even anti-Semitism.

Whoever had typed it had used a computer for some anonymity but had addressed the envelope by hand. The Auburn police would investigate that, and Prudential officials quickly sought a professional hand-writing analysis.

As vice president for Prudential's public relations in the corporate office in Newark, New Jersey, Bob DeFillippo has never read the hate letter that Clarke and Parkin received, but he is very familiar with the case. He finds the idea that one Prudential employee wrote a hate letter to another reprehensible. "We have zero tolerance for such behavior," DeFillippo says, offering numerous policy statements that Prudential has issued in the past few years to prove that.

But until the author of the letter is found and Prudential closes its own investigation, Clarke and Parkin are left waiting. Then, again, they're used to waiting.

The threat of downsizing had been hanging over their heads for some time. The worldwide company, which uses as its logo the Rock of Gibraltar to emphasize its stability, once had 25,000 agents selling and managing its insurance. It now has 9000 and much smaller support staffs.

The company is currently involved in court-ordered remediation. A class-action suit was settled earlier this year that claimed misleading sales practices had cost policyholders thousands of dollars over a 15-year period. The cost of the suit could be as high as $260 million, according to Prudential documents sent to affected policyholders.

Prudential is suffering, publicity-wise. Its image as a family insurer is tarnished, and the Rock may be crumbling just a bit.

Part 2