"PHA was run like a fiefdom, requiring tithing, obeisance and fealty," Wasser wrote in an e-mail to The Inquirer. "Not following the command means banishment."
Beleaguered staffers say they often felt trapped with nowhere to turn.
One woman even told a friend, "I would pray that one day he'd hit me because then someone would pay attention. No one pays attention to verbal abuse."
They worried that any complaint to human resources would find its way to Greene.
Certainly, the HR department had an odd notion about how to protect employees.
In a sexual-harassment case filed in 2004, a female finance manager who complained about Greene's "inappropriate" touching and profanity said an HR manager had told her not to take it personally. "That's just how things are at PHA."
The manager eventually received a $98,000 settlement payment from PHA, the agency revealed last week.
"When you went to human resources to log a complaint, the door was slammed in your face," a junior staffer said.
Added a senior manager: "If you're groped by him, you don't know where to go."
Indeed, one top executive close to Greene acknowledged that when he fielded complaints, he told workers to either tough it out or quit.
"If the verbal abuse is too great," he said he would tell them, "you need to leave."
Tellingly, the agency's "integrity officer" - the official in charge of ferreting out wrongdoing by PHA police officers - ended up facing retaliation herself, according to two former PHA employees with knowledge of the case.
After the integrity official, attorney Nancy Hartsough, rebuffed advances from Greene, she, too, ended up in a new assignment - managing PHA's cars and trucks from a Grays Ferry facility, the former employees said.
They said Greene had ordered Hartsough to join him for dinner and drinks at restaurants in Fairmount, ostensibly to talk about work, and then made inappropriate comments.
Once, Greene put his arm around her and said, "If you weren't married, you'd be going home with me tonight."
When Greene arranged a business trip to Ocean City, Md., and ordered Hartsough's booking changed so she would be in his hotel, she invited her husband along to avoid being alone with Greene, she told colleagues.
It was shortly after that Maryland trip that Greene transferred her. Hartsough later quit PHA.
Reached for comment Friday, Hartsough said she did not want to talk about the incident.
Whether it be to Grays Ferry or to a North Philadelphia project, this sort of banishment was a topic of gallows humor within PHA.
"We used to call it 'The Greene Mile.' That's the last stop before they get rid of you," said another former agency worker.
The reference is to the 1999 movie in which the Green Mile was the corridor leading to the execution chamber.
It's time for PHA to get its house in order. Karen Heller, A2.
Who'll shape PHA's future? Nutter or Street. Currents, C1.
Editorial, C4.
Contact staff writer Jennifer Lin at 215-854-5659 or jlin@phillynews.com.
Contributing this article were Inquirer staff writers Mark Fazlollah, Nathan Gorenstein, Christopher K. Hepp, Jeff Shields, John Shiffman, and John Sullivan.
