Caseworker suspended for sexual harassment

WARREN -- A Trumbull County Jobs and Family Services caseworker has been suspended for sexually harassing a college student working under him.
Wednesday, county commissioners voted to suspend Joe Mintus, 55, for 30 days. The action comes after a pre-disciplinary hearing, said JFS director Tom Mahoney.
Mahoney said Mintus, who has worked at the department for 23 years, made inappropriate comments and gave unwanted attention and gifts to a younger female employee.
The woman was employed for the summer to monitor high school students in the department's summer work-experience program, Mahoney said.
He said the victim did not alert department administrators to the harassment until after her summer job ended.
"I only wish I or other managers of this agency would have known about this from the first occurrence so we could have stopped you," Mahoney wrote in a disciplinary letter for Mintus' personnel file.