Police have criminally charged a second Market Basket employee for alleged sexual misconduct at the company’s New Bedford supermarket.
Juana DeLeon Quinilla, an employee who has chosen to speak publicly under her real name, is accusing a colleague of flashing his penis to her while she cleaned the men’s bathroom and grabbing her butt and genitalia on several occasions.
Quinilla, who is 51, told police she reported these allegations years ago to three different supervisors but saw her concerns brushed away. Last week, a clerk magistrate in the New Bedford District Court deemed the allegations credible enough to open a criminal case there.
“They never believed me,” Quinilla said of the Market Basket managers she went to. She spoke to The Public’s Radio in Spanish, though her primary language is Q’iche, an indigenous language spoken in Guatemala.
Quinilla has been working with the New Bedford Police Department since February to press criminal charges against her coworker — a process she initiated through a local workers rights center that also helped several of her colleagues bring accusations forward against an assistant manager they say sexually harassed them.
In both cases, which are now pending in the New Bedford District Court, female employees at New Bedford’s Market Basket said their supervisors quietly dismissed sexual harassment allegations instead of escalating them through the company’s formal disciplinary procedure or the criminal justice system.
Quinilla and two other employees interviewed by The Public’s Radio, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said this exposed them to months of additional harassment as they continued to work in the same store as the men they accused.
Market Basket has pushed back on elements of the claims, characterizing the situation as a complicated personal conflict that poses an unprecedented challenge for the company as it investigates and responds to the sexual harassment allegations. The company said it takes harassment claims seriously and follows a protocol for investigating them internally.
Market Basket’s response
In the case that preceded Quinilla’s, four young women raised concerns about a 24-year-old assistant manager, Juan Ernesto Tzoc-Lol, they say made lewd comments, touched them inappropriately, and showed one of them pornography at work.
“We brought in an internal investigator to review the complaint,” Market Basket spokesperson Justine Griffin said last month, as Tzoc-Lol’s case entered the court system. “Despite interviewing multiple people, the findings of the investigation were inconclusive but the investigator did determine that the employee violated company policy with some of his behavior.”
Market Basket initially demoted Tzoc-Lol and transferred him to another supermarket. The company later terminated him after The Public’s Radio shared court documents showing police charged the assistant manager with assault, sexual harassment and witness intimidation based on the statements of Market Basket’s employees.
But as Quinilla’s case enters the court system, Market Basket is now saying the recent sexual harassment allegations at its New Bedford store stem from a personal conflict between co-workers.
“There is a group of employees in the New Bedford store who know each other and have had a falling out,” Griffin, the company spokesperson, said in a prepared statement. “They are making all kinds of accusations and cross complaints and escalating to the police and the courts.”
“It is not something we have experienced before,” Griffin continued. “We approach any reported case of harassment by investigating thoroughly and acting on the findings based on the evidence presented and we have done that here. We will not comment on the specifics here because they are confidential personnel matters.”
‘There’s no way he did this’
Both Quinilla and Cosme Matute Hernandez, the man she accused of harassment, continue to work at New Bedford’s Market Basket.
They both appeared in the New Bedford District Court last week for a clerk magistrate’s hearing, a preliminary legal proceeding where a court official evaluates whether police have probable cause to charge the accused with a crime.
Clerk magistrate’s hearings are closed to the public and proceed less formally than other criminal court hearings. Participants are not entitled to receive free legal representation, and both Matute and Quinilla appeared without lawyers.
Matute, who is 57, came to the courthouse with his wife, his daughter, and four supporters from a church in New Bedford where he attends services and occasionally gives sermons as a pastor.
“There’s no way he did this,” Keith Raymond, one of Matute’s fellow congregants at Clifford Union Chapel, said before the hearing. “He’s the most humble man I’ve ever met. He puts me to shame as a Christian. It makes absolutely no sense.”
The clerk magistrate began the hearing without Quinilla, who could not be found in the crowded courthouse hallway where participants are expected to wait.
Matute walked out of the hearing room minutes later, hugging his family and his supporters as he told The Public’s Radio that the clerk magistrate dismissed the charge.
“None of it’s true,” Matute said of the allegations against him, speaking in Spanish. “God knows.”
Asked why Quinilla would falsely accuse him, Matute responded, “I’m going to tell you the same thing I said to the judge: because she has a bad heart. She needs Christ.”
But moments later, a court officer called Matute back into the courthouse to reopen the hearing — Quinilla had shown up after all.
The hearing
Inside the closed hearing room, Quinilla spoke in Q’iche, relying on translation from another coworker who herself is pressing charges in the same court against a Market Basket assistant manager. The Public’s Radio identified the translator in a previous story as Dayana.
Another Market Basket employee, who The Public’s Radio identified as Sofia in a previous story, visited the courthouse to support Quinilla but was not called into the hearing room to give a statement. In an interview outside, Sofia said Matute had also harassed her at work.
“Cosme is a perverted man who comes to my work area every day telling me that he wants to be the father of my son and that I’m his girlfriend, when I’m not his girlfriend and I don’t even know him,” Sofia said.
Clerk Magistrate Patrick Walsh issued a single criminal charge of indecent assault against Matute, who is scheduled to be arraigned on May 15. Matute declined to comment when leaving the courthouse for the second time.
