(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Court-services worker fired after 20,000 text messages are uncovered [1]
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2024-01-08
A residential officer for the state court system cannot collect jobless benefits after being fired for exchanging almost 20,000 text messages with a former prisoner.
State records indicate Brianna Gyrion worked for Iowa’s Seventh Judicial District Court Services program in Scott County until she was fired in August 2023. The program provides probation, parole and residential services for individuals convicted of crimes in eastern Iowa’s Seventh Judicial District.
Since 2018, Gyrion had worked for the program as a residential officer, according to state records, and was tasked with helping clients transition from state or federal institutions by assisting them with housing, employment and other issues.
As part of her job, Gyrion was to meet with clients at least once each week and was barred from entering into a personal relationship – whether romantic, sexual or social – with clients of the program.
According to state records, Seventh Judicial District Court Services program managers learned last August that a client of the program, Terry Kremer, had established some sort of personal relationship with Gyrion. When asked about the situation, Kremer allegedly stated that he would soon be “off paper” – suggesting he’d no longer be a client – and that he and Gyrion were both adults who could make their own choices.
Program officials then examined Kremer’s phone and concluded he was following Gyrion on Snapchat and had contacted her through the messaging program while she was vacationing in Cancun. One of Snapchat’s main features is a function that makes messages inaccessible within seconds of being viewed.
When management questioned Gyrion, she allegedly denied having had any contact with Kremer outside the workplace or through social media. She allegedly indicated that if there was a record of Snapchat conversations with Kremer, they would have involved not her but a friend of hers.
After Seventh Judicial District Court Services obtained phone records for both Gyrion and Kremer, Gyrion continued to deny any communication between the two and offered no explanation for what managers considered an extensive record of communication between the two.
The phone records allegedly showed that over a four-month period there were more than 10,000 text messages sent from Gyrion’s cell phone to Kremer’s cell phone – an average of 83 messages per day. According to the state, the records also indicated Kremer sent more than 9,400 text messages to Gyrion in that same time period.
Two months prior to that discovery, program managers had allegedly talked to Gyrion after learning that she had been providing information to clients through Snapchat, although no discipline was imposed at that time.
After being fired, Gyrion was awarded unemployment and collected $2,328 in benefits.
Seventh Judicial District Court Services appealed the decision on unemployment benefits, which resulted in a hearing before Administrative Law Judge Stephanie Adkisson.
In a recent ruling, Adkisson noted that Gyrion’s “story prior to the suspension and during the investigatory interview is that she had no communications with Mr. Kremer. During the hearing, (her) testimony changed and she admitted to the communications but stated she was only helping a client who had been locked up for many years and testified that there was nothing inappropriate in their relationship or their communications.”
Adkisson noted Kremer was not a client with whom Gyrion had been assigned to work. The phone records, she ruled, “demonstrate that 20,000 text messages over a four-month period indicate a relationship beyond that of an employee assisting a client she was not assigned to work with… Based on the level of communication between (Gyrion) and Mr. Kremer, it is clear they had at the very least a social relationship.”
Adkisson ruled Gyrion’s on-the-job conduct disqualified her from collecting unemployment and ordered that she repay the $2,328 already collected.
Gyrion could not be reached for comment. Seventh Judicial District Court Services Division Manager Brandy Manrique declined to comment on the matter.
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