Stillwater mayor sued for sexual harassment

STILLWATER — In a lawsuit filed in Payne County Tuesday, Stillwater Mayor Roger McMillian is accused of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and favoritism to those who accept sexual advancements by two former employees and one current employee of the Stillwater branch of The Bank, N.A., where McMillian is president.

The three women claim the bank environment is perceived as hostile by some female employees, that McMillian frequently made derogatory and sexually explicit slurs and jokes about the bodies and dress of female customers and young attractive applicants to the bank.

The suit also alleges that McMillian wanted to send a particularly attractive female employee to an OSU booth for new accounts, "because college boys would love looking at her body, and she could get them to come to the bank's booth."

The women also allege that McMillian allowed and encouraged sexually explicit e-mails to be exchanged among employees and that he encouraged bank employees to have a naked swimming party at a coworkers house.

When the women reported their complaints to the CEO of the McAlester-based bank, CEO Greg Brown told one of the women that he found the allegations "hard to believe," and would have to dismiss the complaint unless other employees called him, the document said.

Although he said he had not actually seen the lawsuit Thursday morning, McMillian says he believes the allegations to be false, because they were made previously to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he said investigated the situation and found no violations of federal discrimination laws.

Contributing: The Associated Press.