Here's to the women who didn't bow down

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By MARY JO MELONE

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 6, 2000

One night last week, somebody trashed Sharon Slater's car.

It could have been neighborhood kids who broke her sideview mirror, scratched the door, delivered a few dents.

But when you've blown the whistle on your ex-boss, and your ex-boss is one of those people you're supposed to genuflect before -- Hillsborough County Public Defender Julie Holt -- you wonder.

Then you tell yourself to get a grip. You might have been afraid once. Not now.

"You want to take my job away from me?" Slater said at week's end. "Fine. I'll go wait tables."

Pardon me while I cheer.

Sharon Slater is one of my new heroes. So is Sylvia Gay.

Slater, who was Holt's personal secretary for four years, went public with charges that Holt had used her and other employees for personal errands and campaign work on state time. The State Ethics Commission is now taking a look at Holt.

Gay, a sheriff's record clerk who became a courthouse bailiff, stood her ground when she found Circuit Judge Bob Bonanno skulking in the darkened office of another judge. To challenge Bonanno would be to rattle the cage of his best friend, the man who makes all things stop and start at the courthouse, Chief Judge Dennis Alvarez. His reach into the Sheriff's Office is also long.

Gay filed a report nevertheless. Now investigators are all over the place. And Bonanno's explanation for why he was in the office of the judge Gay is supposed to protect, Greg Holder, keeps changing.

Contrary to what you think, the news business loves hero stories. They're simple, uplifting tales that deliver an "attaboy" to the guy who rescues a kid, a cat or a grown-up in great and lonely distress.

In these stories, the hero has not just guts but muscle. Often he has a badge and a gun. And he is always a he.

You don't hear a lot about the women who do this kind of heavy lifting. You don't hear about them standing up to forces that are political, not physical. In a city as politically cozy as Tampa, those forces can wreck your career, your reputation and your ability to get another job.

You don't hear about them because women are still mostly on the bottom, too vulnerable to stand up, even though their position puts them in place to have the keenest understanding of what's wrong. You can see a lot when you're on the ground, constantly craning your neck.

That's why I tell you about Sharon Slater, now a secretary in the state attorney's office, and Sylvia Gay.

Gay is a civil servant, but just about everyone who works for the state attorney and public defender is an at-will employee. In other words, they can get fired on a whim.

Private lawyers also don't complain, for fear it will hurt their clients or their careers.

"They don't want to rock the boat," said Slater. "Why should they rock the boat?"

This is how even somebody as incompetent as Harry Lee Coe could make it. Yes. People were afraid even of him.

You have to wonder, though, if the wind isn't changing.

Tampa's courthouse is full of women whose names nobody knows. Women like the ones whom Judge Ed Ward hit on, and who finally complained about him. Or like Tara Pisano, another bailiff who reportedly had an affair with still another judge, Gasper Ficarrotta, and worried for her job when they broke up.

The courthouse is full of women with stories to tell. The significance of what Sharon Slater and Sylvia Gay did cannot be lost on them or on their bosses. Tables turn. Power shifts. But fear always tastes the same, bitter and metallic.

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