Nicole Ybarra received an urgent request from Leesville Mayor Rick Allen. He needed to meet that evening at city hall with Ybarra and the other city council members. The public was not invited.
Before the six council members and Allen filed into the empty council chamber, the mayor of the small town near the Texas border asked everyone to leave behind their cell phones, Ybarra said.
Allen quickly got to the point: he and the city manager had just returned from a mediation session in Baton Rouge and needed the council at its next meeting to approve the settlement of a lawsuit filed by what he described as two disgruntled city employees. Allen said a court gag order prevented him from discussing the details with the council or the public, Ybarra recounted in a recent interview.
Several days later, at a regularly scheduled meeting on Sept. 14, 2020, the council approved the settlement without divulging the explosive allegations in the lawsuit: that Allen had a sexual relationship with a city employee who was demoted twice after the relationship ended and rehired a manager who she said had previously sexually harassed her — and then the sexual harassment resumed…