A city employee was so ashamed of being sterile – a source of humiliation in her native Nigerian culture – that she lied about being sick to get time off while a surrogate gave birth to her daughter, court papers charge.
Henrietta Nabulele-Osakue, who moved to the US from Nigeria as a teen, has been demoted from a $106,000-a-year management position with the Board of Education Retirement System to a $26,000-a-year clerical job with the Education Department.
She was also suspended for two months without pay after she was accused of lying about why she needed sick time.
“Her and her husband’s failure to have a child has created conflict with her husband’s family in Nigeria,” Administrative Judge John Spooner wrote in court papers.
“Her husband’s parents have urged their son to divorce [her] and demand repayment of her dowry on the grounds that she was barren.”
Under federal law governing maternity leave, Nabulele-Osakue would have been entitled to much of the nine weeks she took off, if she had disclosed the circumstances of the birth.
Her husband, John, said his wife of 31 years, who has worked for the city for 18 years, “didn’t steal a penny.”
His wife acknowledged she “tried to conceal some of the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s birth,” the court papers said.
The judge acknowledged that Nabulele-Osakue’s aim was “clearly not to steal pay but rather to protect her and her daughter’s privacy.”
But he said she must be penalized for misusing time off.