Caltech Labor Consultant Enabled Scott Svonkin’s Alleged Abusive Behavior

CalTech University in Pasadena has been embroiled in multiple litigation the past couple years with their employees.

Recently they hired Annie Goldman-Reed as a labor consultant.

This is troubling considering Ms. Goldman-Reed’s history.

On August 19, 2023 ‘BREAKING: CALTECH Hires LAVC Stalker as Labor Consultant’ was published with links, documents and perhaps most damaging – an audio-interview Goldman-Reed gave bragging about her power to gaslight, manipulate, online impersonation and her belief that her job responsibilities as a Dean of Student’s entailed and entitled her to do so. (Audio-interview can also be accessed by clicking on link above).

It also raises the question of who at CalTech recruited and vetted this individual.

But now another interview Annie Goldman-Reed gave to the Los Angeles Daily News raises additional eyebrows at CalTech’s choice.

In July, 2017, Scott Svonkin, then trustee of the Los Angeles Community College District, faced a sanctions vote by the other trustees for alleged abusive and aggressive behavior towards his fellow trustees. Whether these claims had merit or were merely politics remains undetermined.

What is known is that Svonkin had a lengthy and public history of abrasive behavior.

The Daily Breeze | September 12, 2017 | This is a warning to L.A. community college trustee

WeHoVille | July 18, 2017 | Scott Svonkin, Contentious Former WeHo Council Deputy, Accused of Verbally Abusing Fellow College Board Member

LA Weekly | April 7, 2011 | Scott Svonkin's Personality Problem

According to The Daily News, Trustee Andra Hoffman claimed,

“. . .Svonkin had yelled at her in a threatening manner.

During a board meeting last month, she alleged he had leaned into her face and unleashed a verbal tirade about her board votes and political career, forcing the district chancellor to pull him away. She said she’s compiled years of text messages and voicemails as evidence.”

And Annie Goldman-Reed inserted herself into the middle of this situation to enable Svonkin’s behavior giving a statement to the Daily News citing, among other things, her connection to the local labor union.

“The allegations do not strike me as related to governing and seem best suited for mediation,” said Annie Reed, a district employee for 22 years and a representative of Teamsters Local 911. “I don’t ever recall a time, or a place, where he has treated his colleagues poorly.”

Here Goldman-Reed resorted to her self-proclaimed ‘superpower’ of being 'emphatic' and persuasive, to gaslight the public that Ms. Goldman-Reed did not “ever recall a time, or a place, where he has treated his colleagues poorly.”

Trustees Hoffman’s allegations were just that – an accusation that Scott Svonkin had treated his colleagues badly for years, supposedly backed up by years of texts, voicemails and witnesses.

Further Svonkin had been reported on multiple times in the previous seven years in public news-outlets including LA Weekly, for the same behavior as Hoffman accused.

Without being able to review the evidence against Svonkin, it’s impossible to know whether these charges had merit or not. What is known is that Goldman-Reed lied repeatedly to the press and by extension the public to enable him. What is further known is that this is a pattern of behavior Goldman-Reed bragged she has engaged in both in her personal life and at her job at Los Angeles Valley College.

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation and abuse designed to control targets by making them question their perception and memory of reality.

According to Psychology Today’s entry on “Who becomes a gaslighter” (Reviewed and Verified by Psychology Today Staff);

“Those who employ this tactic often have a personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder and psychopathy chief among them. Manipulators have a tendency to present one face to their prey and another to the rest of the world, leading victims to assume that if they ask for help or speak out, no one will believe that they have been manipulated and emotionally abused. Gaslighters typically repeat the tactics across several relationships.

What’s the difference between gaslighting and manipulation?

Manipulation is a key part of gaslighting, but manipulation is a fairly common tactic, and almost anyone is capable of employing it while gaslighting, and gaslighters, are more rare. Children try to manipulate parents at an early age, and marketers aim to manipulate consumers, but gaslighting involves a pattern of abusive behaviors with the intent not just to influence someone, but to control them.”

Given Goldman-Reed’s behavior in this situation of lying to the public, previous reported running smear campaigns against whistleblowers in the Los Angeles Community College District, stalking students after they quit Los Angeles Valley College , and even Goldman-Reed being okay with her husband's attempted hit-and-run on two cyclists and lying to the police in 2016, CalTech employees should consider retaining legal counsel and ask the Board of Trustees for a Public Explanation of Goldman-Reed’s employment.