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In July, however,
Lloyd-Jenkins would be suspended for 30 days, 10 without
pay. In a letter dated July 11, Lloyd-Jenkins was informed
by Board of Commissioners President Pete Gerken that the
10-day punishment was “for failure of good behavior in your
job duties.” The nature of the failure was not explained in
the letter. And in more than four years on the job, says
Lloyd-Jenkins, she had never been informed that her
performance was ever less than satisfactory. However, the
timing of the suspension did coincide with media reports
earlier that week that misrepresented what Lloyd-Jenkins
knew and when she knew about her husband’s activities.
The letter indicated that
Lloyd-Jenkins was to return to work on July 31 but that
return was pre-empted by another letter from Gerken dated
July 28 placing her on “paid administrative leave effective
Monday July 31, 2017.”
On November 28,
Lloyd-Jenkins received her latest communication in this
matter ending her employment with the county.
Lloyd-Jenkins’ involvement
in these proceedings began on the night of March 29, 2017
when she was contacted by phone by a woman claiming
knowledge of inappropriate behavior involving her husband.
Upon returning the call, she was asked to meet immediately
that night at a local pizza place
Once there she met the
caller who had requested the meeting. The caller was the
guardian, as she explained, of a teen-aged girl. The
guardian informed Lloyd-Jenkins of the inappropriate
relationship between her husband and the girl and also
informed her of the fact that numerous texts, sent between
Cordell Jenkins and the girl, would confirm those
allegations. Lloyd-Jenkins was only told about the texts,
not shown them.
Lloyd-Jenkins called her
husband immediately and he arrived within minutes. Once
there, he vehemently denied the allegations to his wife and
the girl’s guardian. At an impasse, the parties agreed to
meet the next afternoon to further discuss the matter.
The next day, however, the
guardian called Lloyd-Jenkins during the mid-afternoon, to
inform her that law enforcement officials had been called by
a third party. Cordell Jenkins was arrested on April 7 and
accused of paying two minor girls for sex and soliciting
nude photographs and videos from them – he has been charged
with two federal counts of sex trafficking of a minor and
one count each of production of child pornography and
receipt of child pornography. He has remained in custody
since his arrest.
The key moment so far in
the ongoing investigation occurred on July 6 during a
pretrial hearing into the Cordell Jenkins case. At that time
the FBI agent testified, accurately according to Lloyd
Jenkins: “that Laura Lloyd Jenkins found out the nature of
the text messages and called Mr. Cordell Jenkins.”
That testimony, however,
was misrepresented in a July 6 article in the local daily
newspaper which reported that the agent testified “the
guardian of a 17-year-old girl showed her the girl’s cell
phone and the racy text messages that indicated Mr. Jenkins
had been paying the girl for sex.”
The Blade continued the
misrepresentation in a subsequent article and reported that
“The guardian showed Ms. Lloyd Jenkins the teenager’s cell
phone which contained explicit text messages indicating Mr.
Jenkins paid the girl to have sex.”
Again, this is not what
the agent said during his testimony, but by now the damage
had been done to Lloyd Jenkins’ career and reputation. The
sins of her husband had been visited upon her. In all, four
times between July 6 and August 1, the local daily
misrepresented the testimony of the FBI agent, stating, for
example, on August 1 that “a judge heard the testimony of an
FBI agent who said that Ms. Lloyd-Jenkins knew about her
husband’s alleged crimes.” The agent, in fact, offered no
such testimony.
A local television
statement compounded the misrepresentations, reporting on
July 7 that Lloyd-Jenkins had “resigned from her post at
Lucas County Children’s Services after lying about her
knowledge of child sex trafficking.”
The misrepresentation of
Lloyd-Jenkins’ actions was also the result of reports of the
testimony given during the July 6 hearing when the FBI agent
told of searching Lloyd-Jenkins’ cell phone and discovering
Google searches for companion air travel, as well as
possible charges for the alleged crimes – leading to
government testimony that Lloyd-Jenkins considered leaving
the country and taking her husband with her.
However, these Google
searches, conducted in the immediate aftermath of
Lloyd-Jenkins’ father’s massive stroke on April 4, days
after her husband’s issues had come to light, were solely
for her own travel – as the designated travel companion of a
friend who was an employee of a major U.S. airline. No one
else can use the privilege other than Lloyd-Jenkins.
Searches for possible charges related to the allegations
against her husband began on March 30, the day she was
notified that law enforcement had been notified.
Other than her initial
statement to the FBI in April – when she voluntarily
provided access to her phone - she has not been contacted at
all by law enforcement officials regarding this case.
She was placed on unpaid
suspension by the Lucas County Commissioners on July 11,
2017 in a letter calling it a “disciplinary suspension for
30 days, of which ten days will be without pay.” And
although the letter does not specify the infraction, the
timing of the action, not coincidentally, occurred just
after the newspaper articles which declared Lloyd-Jenkins
guilty by association. When asked why the commissioners
waited until that time to suspend Lloyd-Jenkins, Gerken told
The Truth that “it was the collective decision of the
board.”
According to Lloyd
Jenkins, she never saw the text messages and, given the
denial by her husband and the brief time before law
enforcement was made aware of the allegations – within mere
hours of Lloyd Jenkins’ hearing of the accusations, she had
none of the facts necessary to make such a report. Indeed,
Lloyd-Jenkins states that she has been taken unaware that
there was difficulty in the couple’s marriage.
Lloyd Jenkins, a
California native, moved to Toledo in February 2013 and
assumed her job at the County at that time and joined her
husband whom she had married in 2010. As administrator, she
served as the chief operating officer and was the first
African American and first female to do so. To move to
Toledo, she left her position as principal administrative
analyst for a large urban county in California. She earned
her undergraduate degree in business administration and a
masters in strategic management – both from California State
University, Hayward.
In April 2014, she joined
the board of Lucas County Children Services, becoming
secretary of that board in March 2015. She took a leave of
absence from the board in April 2017 following the
indictment in U.S. District Court of her husband. While on
the leave of absence, near the end of May, says
Lloyd-Jenkins, she was contacted by the LCCS board president
and invited to return to her seat – informing her that her
eligibility to be a board member, given the charges against
her husband, had been clarified. Lloyd-Jenkins put off the
decision to return and later resigned from the Board in
July.
The LCCS then provided
training to its board members on their mandatory duty to
report suspected incidences of child abuse and neglect in
May – after Lloyd-Jenkins’ leave of absence. In her three
years on the Board, says Lloyd-Jenkins, she not only had
never received such training but she also had never been
informed that she was a mandatory reporter.
Indeed, one long-time
former board member, Pete Culp, says that in his seven years
of service on the Board, he never received training for
mandatory reporting nor did he know that he was, in fact, a
designated mandatory reporter.
When Lloyd-Jenkins
received the second letter dated July 28 placing her on paid
administrative leave, there began an ongoing discussion
about the status of her employment. On November 17 she
received a letter from the president of the Board of
Commissioners informing her that “your status of paid
administrative leave is continued… effective Friday,
November 24, 2017, until further notice.”
Further notice arrived on
November 28, ending her employment with the county and, once
again, no explanation was forthcoming about the reason for
the disciplinary action. She was only informed that she did
“not have civil service protection and serve[d] at the
discretion of the appointing authority.” |
