OHSU Sued by Former Employee Who Says His Supervisor, a Porn Director, Harassed Him

A former employee sued Oregon Health & Science University today, alleging that the institution didn’t protect him from a supervisor who harassed him. The details of the complaint are among the more eyebrow-raising in recent memory: The former employee alleges his supervisor in the respiratory department sent a glitter bomb to his house, wrote poetry about torturing patients, and produced violent pornographic videos under the name “Allen Dusk.”

Troy Winslow, who worked as a pediatric respiratory therapist at OHSU from 2020 to 2024, alleges that his supervisor, David Quitmeyer, sought to unnerve him after Winslow complained about Quitmeyer’s lax safety protocols, misogyny, and his intimidation of employees who participated in union activities.

OHSU failed to deal with Quitmeyer and two other supervisors who retaliated against Winslow and his co-plaintiff, Hagop “Jack” Kharikian, despite multiple warnings about the mismanagement, the complaint says. It names OHSU and Quitmeyer, who no longer works at the university medical center, along with respiratory supervisors Admir Beganovic and Krista Kolarik, who remain on the job. It also names former head of human resources Qiana Williams, who left OHSU under pressure earlier this year.

“Plaintiffs both blew the whistle on unlawful activity, including sex discrimination, gender pay discrimination, mismanagement of funds, patient safety issues, threats of violence, intimidation, and that a member of management was creating rape/murder pornography and writing poems about stalking, torturing, and massacring nurses and patients on ‘Hospital Hill,’” the complaint says.

Winslow and Kharikian seek a jury trial, alleging free speech retaliation, violation of due process, family leave discrimination, negligent supervision, interference with rights to medical leave, and a host of other violations. The seek unspecified damages.

Among the plaintiffs’ attorneys are Greg and Jason Kafoury at Kafoury & McDougal, a firm that handles personal injury.

An OHSU spokesperson said the university doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Quitmeyer didn’t immediately return a phone message or one sent through social media.

The complaint is the latest public embarrassment for a human resources department that has been the subject of scrutiny for much of the past year.

The details are as follows: Winslow went to work at OHSU’s respiratory care department in February 2020. In June 2022, OHSU granted him an accommodation for psychological trauma from the birth of his twins and his wife’s life-threatening hemorrhaging during childbirth, the complaint says. As part of the accommodation, OHSU exempted Winslow from work in the labor and delivery unit and the neonatal ICU.

Later that year, Winslow wrote an anonymous letter to leaders of OHSU’s foundation describing lax safety, pay inequity, and a misogynistic culture in the pediatric respiratory unit—conditions created, he said, by Quitmeyer. He also alleged Quitmeyer had a hobby of filming porn videos that included murder and rape, the complaint says.

In December 2022, Winslow and other union members posted flyers at OHSU’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital describing Quitmeyer’s alleged safety lapses, misogyny, and history of sexist statements.

Three days later, the complaint says, Quitmeyer sent a late-night email to the respiratory care department describing “painting (his) brains on the wall with a shotgun.” He would “be on campus a few days next week.”

Winslow says he opened the email at work on Christmas Day and alerted OHSU administration and the public safety office. During announcements to the department two days later, Beganovic, one of the supervisors, said that OHSU “stands behind Quitmeyer and supports him fully,” the complaint says.

That same day, Quitmeyer messaged colleagues about a “weird email” that he said contained threatening language. It came from an email with Winslow’s Instagram name spelled backward and was an attempt to impersonate Winslow, the complaint says.

OHSU put Quitmeyer on leave in January 2023. Soon after, Winslow says he received an envelope with no return address, postmarked in Florida, that contained “copious amounts of glitter” and a drawing of a raised middle finger. The next day, another staffer who had been critical of Quitmeyer received a similar glitter bomb with a letter saying “Karma is a bitch and so are you,” the complaint says.

On Jan. 9, Winslow says, he sent a formal complaint to OHSU’s leadership team and board of directors describing his original complaints about Quitmeyer and the harassment that followed.

Winslow included a poem he said was written by Quitmeyer under the pseudonym “Allen Dusk,” that describes a doctor and “[t]he patients he had all tortured, the nurses he had all killed, all in the name of medicine, while perfecting his skills.” It featured “gallons of innocent blood” that were “spilled and swept away through an old, rusty drain.”

OHSU general counsel April Cuprill Comas confirmed receipt of Winslow’s complaint on Jan. 12, 2023, the complaint says.

A week later, Kharikian and 14 of his colleagues sent a letter to OHSU administration detailing mismanagement of their department and the toxic work environment under Quitmeyer, the complaint says.

On Feb. 9, a female employee who had signed the letter got a package at her desk containing a chocolate dildo. The message “EAT A DICK” was scrawled on the inside of the box, the complaint says.

The harassment continued, the complaint says, and Winslow was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety, “all largely connected to the retaliation and harassment against him for speaking out against Defendant Quitmeyer.”

Winslow took protected leave to recover. That April, OHSU’s Office of Civil Rights Investigations and Compliance told him that it would not investigate Quitmeyer unless Quitmeyer returned to work.

In July 2023, Winslow says he learned that Beganovic would be direct supervisor. Soon after, Beganovic began emailing Winslow, ordering him to attend one-on-one meetings, but he didn’t tell Winslow where they were to be held or whether Winslow’s high-acuity patients would be covered, the complaint says.

Winslow says he missed a meeting with Beganovic on Aug. 15, 2023, while caring for a child with traumatic respiratory bleeding. Beganovic and Kolarik put Winslow on paid leave that afternoon and had OHSU police escort him out of the building, the complaint says.

Beganovic allowed Winslow to return to work that October but revoked his accommodation for the trauma from the birth of his twins, according to the complaint. Winslow kept the accommodation, but Kolarik assigned him to a nightshift position, “an extremely difficult schedule for a worker with two young children at home,” the complaint says.

Winslow took leave again, and, on March 8 of this year, Kolarik put him on unpaid leave pending termination “without providing any reason,” the complaint says.

Winslow says he wore tape over his mouth, in protest, to a pre-dismissal hearing held March 15, while a union representative “detailed the retaliatory campaign waged by Defendants OHSU, Beganovic, and Kolarik,” the complaint says.

Winslow was fired that day, the complaint says. He says he hasn’t been able to find another job because his former supervisors continue to badmouth him within the medical community.

“Specifically, one Oregon hospital canceled plaintiff Winslow’s job interview without explanation, and plaintiff Winslow has not been offered job positions at other hospitals after the interviewers mentioned that they had spoken to defendant Beganovic,” the complaint says.