Golf Journal

Steiff assistant marketing manager Jane Collins accuses company's CEO Martin Frechen of relentless, aggressive sexual advances - including 2004 rape in his wife's car; despite Collins' repeated pleas to her superiors about Frechen's behavior, Steiff refused to investigate charges or discipline its CEO

NEW YORK, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Shattering the warm and fuzzy image that has sustained German toymaker Steiff GmbH for over a century, a longtime Steiff employee has brought a lawsuit against the company's chief executive officer, accusing him of a five-year campaign of sexual harassment and intimidation, including outright sexual assault in the passenger seat of his wife's car.

The complaint, filed in New York State Supreme Court, details a pattern of uninvited and unwelcome hounding by Martin Frechen, 40, CEO of Steiff since 2006 and previously chief executive of the company's North American operations, where the alleged harassment began two years earlier.

The claims have been brought by Jane Collins, now 32, who began working at Steiff in 2000 as a temporary receptionist and has since risen to become an assistant marketing manager, responsible for creating custom special products for some of the company's largest customer retail accounts in the U.S. Ironically, Ms. Collins was at one time Mr. Frechen's executive assistant, considering him both a mentor and a friend.

In addition to the lawsuit, Ms. Collins has filed a separate complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination - Steiff's U.S. operations are based in Raynham, Mass., outside Boston.

The claims are in striking contrast to the public image of Mr. Frechen, who serves as the human face of Steiff, regularly posing with the company's adorable stuffed animals at toy shows and in the media. In addition to alleging that the CEO stalked and propositioned her personally, Ms. Collins recounts numerous instances where Mr. Frechen made sexually-charged comments in front of groups of employees, as well as discussing visits to strip clubs.

As if her CEO's behavior was not disturbing enough, Ms. Collins further charges that her appeals for help to Steiff's current head of U.S. operations, James Pitocco, were dismissed, minimized, or met with unhelpful suggestions such as to modify her appearance or avoid wearing "cute dresses."

Upon learning of Ms. Collins' distress at having to work with her former boss when he returned to the U.S. as companywide CEO, Mr. Pitocco allegedly responded, "Don't tell me any more -- the less I know the better." Mr. Pitocco, 51, is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit, as is Steiff's U.S. operations, Steiff North America Inc.

Steiff, headquartered in Giengen, Germany, was founded in 1880 by Margarete Steiff, an enterprising dressmaker with a love of children, whose very first creation was an elephant-shaped pincushion made of felt. The company remains private and family-owned by a small group of shareholders, including Margarete Steiff's heirs.

Steiff today manufactures an extensive line of high-quality stuffed animals -- elephants, tigers, giraffes, lions, monkeys and, best-known of all, variations of the iconic Steiff Teddy bear. All of its branded animals carry the company's well-known "button in ear", and Steiff also sells animal key chains and other trinkets. In addition to its worldwide reputation for distinctive and high-priced toys treasured by collectors as well as children, Steiff is revered in its native Germany. Its motto: "Only the best is good enough for children."

Despite its worldwide renown, Steiff remains a small, close-knit company with only a handful of full-time employees in the U.S., plus a larger number of sales representatives. A number of incidents cited in Ms. Collins' complaint took place in New York City and are subject to New York State and City human rights laws.

Steiff also does substantial business in New York through its sales to major retailers and toy shops, as well as its regular appearances at the annual Toy Fair Show each February. Indeed, to ensure that Mr. Frechen would be personally served in the U.S., he received service of Ms. Collins' pending complaint while visiting FAO Schwarz's flagship store on Fifth Avenue, recently purchased by Toys "R" Us.

Ms. Collins and Mr. Frechen both worked at the company's Raynham, Mass. facility from 2000 to 2004, when he returned to Germany to join another company. That opportunity apparently did not last long and Mr. Frechen was soon back at Steiff, this time as chief executive of the entire firm.

Although Mr. Frechen's new position was based in Germany, the long distance allegedly did not prevent him from calling Ms. Collins repeatedly and, during his periodic business trips to the U.S., pursuing and harassing her as he had done prior to his departure.

From Executive Assistant to Victim

Ms. Collins, who resides in Fall River, Mass. and holds an associate's degree in early childhood education, was originally hired at Steiff's Raynham facility in 2000 as a receptionist and company phone operator. Significantly, she notes, she never received an employee handbook and has never been aware of such a document existing at Steiff, including any protocols for reporting and responding to complaints of sexual harassment.

When Mr. Frechen arrived with his family in 2002 to become CEO of Steiff North America Inc., Ms. Collins was reassigned as his executive assistant. In Ms. Collins' current position as assistant marketing manager, she is a liaison to many of the company's major retail accounts and shares responsibility for product development, advertising materials and communications between the company's German and American offices. She has received consistently positive reviews and commendations for her dedication and work, as well as merit-based bonuses.

According to her complaint, Ms. Collins' and Mr. Frechen's relationship was thoroughly professional until he began preparing to return to Germany in 2004 to join another company outside the toy industry. The professional demeanor Mr. Frechen had maintained with his executive assistant completely disintegrated in September 2004, Ms. Collins' complaint alleges, as the time approached for him to leave both the U.S. and Steiff.

Misconduct at Hotel, Assault in a Shipping Container

Outlined in the complaint, Mr. Frechen first tried to make sexual contact with Ms. Collins in 2004 during a Steiff corporate event in a Plymouth, Mass. hotel where Steiff employees were staying. After asking her to accompany him to his room to retrieve some papers, Mr. Frechen confided in Ms. Collins that his wife and young son were out shopping. He then hugged and forcefully attempted to kiss Ms. Collins, which she resisted. According to Ms. Collins, Mr. Frechen's only comment on his sudden pass at her was that this was their "goodbye," as they would no longer be working together; beyond that, he neither apologized nor explained his actions.

Later that evening, Mr. Frechen approached Ms. Collins at a hotel event and invited her to meet him behind a nearby gas station, which she also refused. The exchange was overheard by one of Ms. Collins' colleagues, whom she later asked to accompany her when she left the hotel out of apprehension over Mr. Frechen's intentions.

Ms. Collins claims that her boss's overtures grew far more aggressive days later, as Mr. Frechen made final preparations to return his family's possessions to Germany. After asking Ms. Collins to arrange for a shipping container to transport his wife's car, a Volkswagen Golf, to Europe, Mr. Frechen invited Ms. Collins to lunch, to which she reluctantly agreed.

Instead of heading to a nearby diner, Mr. Frechen drove to a warehouse where the shipping container was located, under the pretext of determining if the car would fit inside. According to the complaint, once the car was enclosed in the storage unit, Mr. Frechen shut the container door, returned to the car and, suddenly positioning himself on top of Ms. Collins, raped her. As he fumbled with his trousers and tried to undress her, he maneuvered to push the passenger seat back to the prone position. Ms. Collins fiercely resisted the much stronger Mr. Frechen, who repeatedly told her, "It is okay." Bizarrely, after raping Ms. Collins, Mr. Frechen confessed to her that it was the first time he had cheated on his wife.

Too fearful of the consequences to report the incident, Ms. Collins began keeping a journal shortly after the assault in an effort to clear her thinking and calm her nerves. Her earliest entries explain in part her hesitancy about informing on Mr. Frechen either to the police or to anyone at Steiff. "Even if I tell anyone no one will believe me," Ms. Collins wrote on October 22, 2004, shortly after the attack in the storage container. "I am so scared I will lose my job. I need to put food on my table."

Five years later, in an interview, Ms. Collins reflects back on her decision: "I was a single mom at the time and I simply couldn't afford to lose this job. He wasn't just my boss, he was the head of the company. It's only more recently that I've come to accept the fact that he raped me. Before, I had put it out of my mind because I thought there was nothing I could do and he was leaving the country."

Continued Harassment - New Boss Shrugs His Shoulders

Mr. Frechen continued to call Ms. Collins from Germany, and she allowed herself to discuss her promotion to assistant marketing manager with him. After he invited her to meet him in Boston on one of his business trips, however, she decided to stop taking his calls completely.

Mr. Pitocco, then newly installed as CEO of Steiff's U.S. operations, noticed Ms. Collins' reticence about talking to her former boss. After learning some details of Mr. Frechen's harassment of Ms. Collins, Mr. Pitocco failed to initiate an investigation; indeed, Ms. Collins claims he strove to separate himself from any responsibility over the matter.

On another occasion, Ms. Collins claims that Mr. Pitocco pressured her to accompany Mr. Frechen on a shopping excursion during one of his U.S. visits. According to Ms. Collins, Mr. Frechen insisted she carry his shopping bags to his hotel room, whereupon he pulled her inside, though she was able to get away without further incident.

Significantly, Ms. Collins claims that Mr. Pitocco never informed her that she could safely report Mr. Frechen's misconduct without fear of retaliation. In fact, the company appeared to have no codified expectations for employee behavior or protocols for reporting harassment at all. The complaint states that Steiff, despite "earning millions of dollars annually in the U.S., made zero annual investment in the training of its employees in the recognition and reporting of sexual harassment in the workplace."

Company's Heritage Undermined

Ms. Collins's attorney, Christopher Brennan of the New York law firm of Ziegler, Ziegler & Associates LLP, says, "Steiff is a company with a long and proud heritage and an exalted status in the toy industry. It is astounding that a business whose principal products are meant to evoke joy and comfort would exhibit such a lack of sensitivity and accountability to issues raised by a loyal and hard-working employee, especially given the egregious nature of Ms. Collins' allegations and the number of occasions on which she tried to inform her direct supervisors that there was a problem with Mr. Frechen. Steiff was founded by a woman, but sadly a culture of chauvinism and permissiveness has allowed the harassment and degradation of a female employee who once loved and believed in the company."

Mr. Frechen has made semi-annual business trips to the U.S. for toy fairs and strategic meetings over the last several years, endeavoring to see Ms. Collins on each occasion and resuming his aggressive and suggestive posture toward her.

This past February, while the company's employees stayed at New York's Crowne Plaza Hotel during the annual Toy Fair, Mr. Frechen constantly phoned Ms. Collins' room and hounded her in person with requests for her to have drinks with him. At one point Mr. Frechen grabbed Ms. Collins' cell phone and used it to call his own mobile phone, thereby programming her number into his phone. He later followed her off a hotel elevator, asking about her boyfriend and whether she would consider having sex outside that relationship. According to Ms. Collins, Mr. Frechen then called her a "scaredy cat" because of her continued reluctance to meet with him alone.

Ms. Collins told Mr. Pitocco about the latest pressure she felt from Mr. Frechen during Toy Fair. Once again Mr. Pitocco brushed aside her concerns, dismissing them as overblown. When she asked him to keep Mr. Frechen out late in the evening so that he would not have time to proposition her, Mr. Pitocco replied that he would not "cover" for her.

Ms. Collins wrote in her journal about her boss's cavalier attitude over her concerns: "I would like to know what Jim [Pitocco] thinks, I have been telling him all along to keep [Mr. Frechen] away from me. Why does he only laugh it off?"

For Ms. Collins, it became clear that her future with the company was bleak.

Fundamental Workplace Protections Lacking

Frustrated by the lack of results from her repeated discussions with Mr. Pitocco, Ms. Collins ultimately reported Mr. Frechen's harassment to the Steiff head of human resources in the U.S., who asked her to record the events on paper. Still, an investigation was not initiated until Ms. Collins took the step of obtaining legal counsel.

When a female member of the Steiff family -- and one of the company's shareholders -- became aware of Ms. Collins' report of sexual harassment, she contacted Ms. Collins to offer sympathy and support. "Be prepared that ignorance of material makes people be unsupportive," the woman wrote in an e-mail. "There will be people who...are afraid to be as strong as you...or are so old fashioned they can't grasp that standing up is the only thing to do." However, Ms. Collins says that once she had retained a lawyer, the Steiff family member stopped speaking to her about her claims.

Ms. Collins said in a recent interview, "After I made a written report of the sexual harassment, I asked an employee of the company based in Germany if Martin had sexually harassed her also. She told me yes. My colleague confided that for years Martin had pressured her to have sex with him and she was repeatedly required to rebuff his advances. My colleague asked me how I knew she was being harassed also, and I told her that there was something in her face when I saw Martin around her. She said he tried the same thing with her, over there. Like her, I tried for so long to get him to stop, but he wouldn't listen and no one at the company helped me. I loved it here and I was ready to spend my whole career at Steiff, but my love for the company was completely taken from me."

Through her action, Ms. Collins is asking the court to ensure that Steiff take steps to end its violations of New York State and City human rights laws, and to ensure that any further harassment by Mr. Frechen cease. She is also seeking compensatory and punitive damages stemming from Mr. Frechen's actions and from the company's negligent hiring and retention of its two chief executives.

"It saddens me to bring a formal action against Steiff," Ms. Collins says. "I have spent nearly the last nine years of my life here and cannot easily imagine working anywhere else. I adore the company's line of Teddy Bears and have made lifelong friends with many of my colleagues. Unfortunately, I felt I was preyed upon by the one person I should have been able to trust and look up to the most. His ongoing behavior -- and the company's unwillingness to take any actions in response to my complaints -- left me no choice but to retain Ziegler, Ziegler & Associates on my behalf to file suit, in hopes that Steiff's workplace culture can once again reflect the wonderful image of the company's products."

Note: Located in New York City, Ziegler, Ziegler & Associates LLP is a boutique law firm that maintains a strong focus representing women and minorities who are victims of employment discrimination and/or sexual harassment in the workplace. For more, visit: www.zieglerlaw.com.

Christopher Brennan, 212-319-7600 brennan@zza.net

SOURCE Ziegler, Ziegler & Associates LLP