Former employees sue Pacific Office Automation CEO alleging serial sexual assault

Douglas Pitassi, the CEO of one of the nation’s largest office equipment suppliers, faces a lawsuit by two former employees of the Oregon-based company who allege that he repeatedly sexually assaulted and harassed them.

In a highly unusual twist, a Multnomah County judge has allowed the lawsuit to proceed, for now, with designated fictitious names for the two plaintiffs, as well as the defendants, Pitassi and the company he has led for 17 years, Pacific Office Automation, in Beaverton.

The ruling came after Pitassi had already been named in open court during a hearing attended remotely by The Oregonian/OregonLive. Moreover, the public court record contains biographical facts that point directly to Pitassi.

The news organization is naming both defendants due to the strong public interest in allegations against a corporate executive and a company with 1,350 employees in 10 states and nearly a half-billion dollars in annual revenues.

The case also plays out amid a national debate over allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment by powerful executives.

Pacific Office Automation is among Oregon’s largest privately held businesses.

Pitassi, 62, of West Linn, “vehemently denies” the accusations in court filings.

Reached by phone Tuesday, Pitassi declined comment.

“You’re going to have to go through my attorneys,” he said before hanging up.

Andrew R. Salgado, general counsel for the company, released a statement on behalf of Pitassi and Pacific Office Automation, strongly denying what he said were “false and unsupported allegations.”

Salgado said the employees never filed complaints to the company while employed there, but the company investigated the allegations regardless and found “no evidence to corroborate these claims.”

“In fact, we are confident this lawsuit will expose evidence that directly contradicts the claims,” Salgado said, adding that the company and Pitassi “look forward to vigorously defending themselves, and being fully exonerated, in court.”

Barbara C. Long, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, declined to comment.

The order granting anonymity to Pitassi and his company raises questions about Oregon’s constitutionally protected open courts system, which says “no court shall be secret.” Sexual abuse victims have long been allowed to file suit under initials, but rarely do courts allow fictitious names for defendants.

Pitassi has waged a legal battle to shield his identity, citing personal and professional privacy concerns, including a desire to protect his wife and family, as well as his work relationships and reputation.

Lawyers for the two men suing Pitassi pushed for transparency in the case -- and so has the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association.

Attorney Ashley L. Vaughn, who filed a legal brief on behalf of the lawyers association, said withholding Pitassi’s name “is extraordinary and unwarranted in a case where he is only concerned about reputational harm.”

“Granting the request will set a dangerous precedent in Oregon jurisprudence and deviate sharply from national norms,” Vaughn wrote. “It would also run afoul of access to justice principles and constitutional public right of access guarantees.”

Vaughn wrote that the public has a “compelling interest” in the identification of defendants, particularly in a case involving “allegations of sexual harassment and violence against a prominent local businessman and local business.”

Earlier this spring Multnomah County Circuit Judge Christopher Marshall granted Pitassi’s request, noting that the question of anonymity could be revisited as the case moves ahead. Marshall serves as chief civil judge for the county.

Multiple judges have presided over various hearings in the case since it was filed last year. At the outset, Judge Judith Matarazzo, the county court’s presiding judge, also allowed the case to move forward with pseudonyms.

The lawsuit includes references that make clear Pitassi is the defendant.

It says the defendant was arrested on allegations of sexually abusing two boys who attended the Portland-area high school where he was a teacher. He pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor.

The suit notes that the case was the subject of three stories in The Oregonian. The Oregonian’s digitized archive from 1987 includes three articles that identify Pitassi and the criminal case.

The accusations drew notice because he was a Centennial High School teacher; he was accused of touching the genitals of two underage students. Pitassi, then 25, served five years of probation, Oregon Department of Corrections records show.

He subsequently lost his teaching job. The Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission said it has no records on the matter.

According to court records, Pitassi was not required to register as a sex offender.

His effort in 1995 to have the convictions set aside was unsuccessful.

Two years after his sexual abuse conviction -- while he was on probation -- he was hired by Pacific Office Automation.

CLAIM: COMPANY DIDN’T STOP ABUSE

The lawsuit by the two men was originally filed last year. It alleges the abuse extends beyond the plaintiffs and was well-known among company managers.

The suit says Pacific Office Automation “knowingly allowed, permitted, and encouraged” Pitassi’s alleged sexual assaults of both men. Pitassi became president in 2007.

According to the lawsuit, one of the men said the abuse began in late 2014 and continued through 2022; the other said the abuse began in 2018 and continued into the next year.

Pitassi has not been charged with a crime; it is unclear if the men reported the alleged offenses to law enforcement.

In 2019, Beaverton police did receive a report from a Pacific Office Automation employee about an alleged sexual assault by Pitassi that took place in Lake Shasta, California, that year. The man who made the report did not witness what happened; he told police he learned about it from another employee.

According to the police report, obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request, the man alleged that a male employee drank too much and passed out on the trip and was “taken up to the bedroom of a houseboat by Pitassi” where he sexually assaulted the man.

The report went nowhere. The Beaverton police officer wrote that he closed the case because the report was based on hearsay and the alleged victim was not identified.

Salgado, Pacific Office Automation’s general counsel, provided The Oregonian/OregonLive with a statement signed by the alleged victim stating the account detailed in the police report is false. The statement was signed on Oct. 4, 2022.

The men suing Pitassi and the company said they were hired right out of college and worked in sales.

One of them seeks $10 million in damages; the other $2.5 million.

Neither work at Pacific Office Automation now.

One said Pitassi gave him career advice and training and “paid the bar tab and partook in the festivities at local bars after the monthly sales meetings.” The man saw Pitassi as a “mentor and friend.”

Part of the job entailed socializing and drinking alcohol with Pitassi outside of work, the man alleged.

According to the lawsuit, he recalled multiple instances of alleged abuse, including after a 2014 sales meeting at Punchbowl Social in Portland, where he and Pitassi had a shot of alcohol. The man said he lost “track of space and time” after the drink and recalled later waking up in a hotel room with Pitassi, “having no memory of how he got there, and feeling physically helpless.”

The lawsuit alleges Pitassi began to undress the man and perform oral sex on him without his consent. He recalled hearing Pitassi tell him “it’s OK” before he lost consciousness, the lawsuit says.

He said nothing about the alleged assault after that, opting instead to keep “his head down” and advance at work.

The man detailed other alleged instances of losing consciousness after drinking with Pitassi and ending up in hotel rooms with his boss. Once he awoke to find Pitassi masturbating to pornography on the man’s phone.

In a March 2016 work trip to Lake Tahoe, the man alleged he awoke to Pitassi “touching his genitals”; the lawsuit says the man froze “while the sexual assault continued.”

In a work trip to Costa Rica that year, he alleged Pitassi “encouraged and participated in heavy drinking” and later “crawled into bed” with him and touched his genitals.

“A knock at the door stopped the sexual assault from continuing to occur,” the lawsuit states.

ANOTHER EMPLOYEE ALLEGES ABUSE

The other plaintiff said he, too, saw Pitassi as a trusted mentor and assumed he “had his best interests at heart,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit accuses Pitassi of using his “power and influence” to sexually assault and sexually harass the second plaintiff on about 20 occasions beginning in the fall of 2018. He described Pitassi grabbing his buttocks and draping his arm around him.

According to the lawsuit, Pitassi often inquired about the man’s sexual orientation, stating “you’re kind of gay, right.” The plaintiff identifies as a heterosexual man, the lawsuit states.

During a 2019 sales event in Portland that involved excessive alcohol consumption, the man alleged Pitassi invited him to join him in Las Vegas and offered to pay for drugs, alcohol and a prostitute if the man would allow Pitassi to touch his genitals while the man had sex with a prostitute.

The man was “stunned” and began looking for another job, the lawsuit states.

Pacific Office Automation sells and leases printers and copiers, and also contracts with businesses for various office technology services. Those include computer maintenance, online security, software management, video surveillance, property management and even electric vehicle charging.

The company courts clients in its heavily male industry with ads on sports talk radio and at college and pro games. It has high-profile marketing deals with several local sports teams and events.

Like many marketing organizations, Pacific Office Automation regularly gathers its sales personnel at big corporate events to rally enthusiasm for its products, motivate staff and lay out the company’s promotional strategy.

The company brought 400 employees to the Oregon Convention Center in January and treated them to performances of Broadway showtunes. The company’s major suppliers attended, too, with motivational talks by other CEOs.

Oregonian/OregonLive reporters Maxine Bernstein and Mike Rogoway contributed to this report.

-- Noelle Crombie is an enterprise reporter with a focus on criminal justice. Reach her at 503-276-7184; ncrombie@oregonian.

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