Dave Marlon, CEO of CrossRoads of Southern Nevada, poses for a photo before checking on homeless people living in flood control tunnels near Harmon Avenue and Paradise Road Saturday, Oct. 24, 2020. Marlon makes monthly trips to the tunnels, he said. CrossRoads of Southern Nevada is drug and alcohol addiction treatment center.
Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021 | 3:30 p.m.
The CEO of an addiction recovery center in Las Vegas is stepping down after his former executive assistant filed a lawsuit last week detailing months of alleged sexual abuse and harassment while they worked together.
David Marlon of CrossRoads of Southern Nevada is accused of “numerous acts of sexual violence, physical violence, mental torture, harassment, humiliation, retaliation, threats, and fear,” according to a complaint filed last week in Clark County District Court.
“We have a zero tolerance harassment policy and will continue to provide a safe environment for our employees,” the organization wrote in a Tuesday statement. “We want to ensure the public, county and all our valued partners that can expect the same level of service and care for the important population we are serving in our community.”
Marlon, in an interview last week with the Sun, denied all allegations and claimed he is being extorted by the plaintiff. Marlon also claimed the plaintiff has used methamphetamine throughout the 20 years he has known her, including during her employment.
“Her lawsuit is a fabrication, and its sole purpose is really extortion and harming my efforts in helping her and other addicts to come clean and sober, as well as our efforts to reduce homelessness,” Marlon said. “It’s an extortion attempt from an active user.”
What first started as uncomfortable text messages turned into beatings with a paddle, emblazoned with the word “slut,” according to the complaint. Those whippings produced bruises, which the 57-year-old Marlon boldly took photos of, the complaint indicates.
Gahyne Doahe, a pseudonym for the 44-year-old plaintiff, claims the abuse began her first day of work, when she received a text message from Marlon saying that she “came dangerously close to being brutally raped with your face pushed into the desk on your first day of work,” attorney Jenny Foley wrote in the complaint. Foley shared these texts and others in the lawsuit with the Sun.
Marlon is prominent in the addiction recovery community, serving a board member for HELP of Southern Nevada and the Las Vegas Rescue Mission, both homeless outreach organizations. He is also as president of the Southern Nevada Association of Addiction Professionals and helped create Mission High School, a high school geared toward addiction recovery.
He’s also worked to secure millions in grants and funding from Clark County for CrossRoads.
“It is a work of fiction, replete with provably false allegations set in a salacious narrative solely intended by her to harm David Marlon’s reputation as a leader in the treatment of addiction,” wrote Dominic Gentile, Marlon’s attorney, in an email to the Sun. “We will debunk it in court with proof of its falsehoods and also who put her up to it.”
Doahe said she took the job in April because she assumed she would be safe under the direction of someone who works in the recovery field and was also formerly an addict.
But starting on her first day at work, Marlon sent her threatening messages, gave her unwanted comments, humiliated her and physically beat her before raping her multiple times over the next few months, Doahe alleges.
The 40-page complaint details how it was the plaintiff’s job to “take a certain pose” on command. “When Marlon instructed plaintiff to ‘assume the position,’ she was to stand with her legs shoulder width apart, with her hands on a desk, table, or, if nothing else was available, a wall,” the complaint reads.
It continued, “shortly thereafter, Marlon began striking Plaintiff’s buttocks with his hand when he would instruct her to “assume the position.”
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that this doesn’t happen to another girl,” Doahe said in an interview with the Sun.
Doahe said she filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in June after allegedly being raped. She also filed a report with Metro Police, which told the Sun it could not “confirm nor deny” the record exists because it is an active investigation.
Attorneys for both parties said the sides first tried to settle in mediation, but when talks broke down, Marlon filed an extortion complaint against Doahe. That complaint is sealed, and Gentile could not detail the claims.
Doahe said she was previously a patient at CrossRoads and sober for nearly 22 months until October, when she drank for the first time during the mediation process. Foley denied her client used meth.
Doahe also said she sought counseling upon leaving the job and attends multiple weekly meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous, which allows her to stay sober, she said.
“I had never so much has been spanked, pushed by a boyfriend,” she said. “I had never met any kind of abuse in my entire 43 years at the time. I’m damaged (now), to say the least."
