Dirty Old Man
A homeless 16-year-old exposed a dark chapter in Monterey County political history
Dusan Petrovic was one of those guys who seemed perpetually ancient, like a leathered tortoise. He was a babbling geezer when I first covered him as a reporter back in the early 1980s, and he was a skeezy old man when he was convicted of a sex crime in 1990. He died in 1992 at the age of 80.
I am reminded of Dusan Petrovic after hearing news this week that justice was served on the previous occupant of the White House. Like the former president, Petrovic was a deviant in a position of power. Petrovic had also assumed that his power allowed him to get away with every horrible thing he did. And he also howled like a toddler when the justice system finally did its duty on behalf of civil society.
After years of Petrovic’s apparent predatory behavior as a longtime member of the county Board of Supervisors, it took a 16-year-old homeless girl to get him prosecuted.
Petrovic’s death closed a dark chapter in Monterey County’s political history. His case was a disgraceful problem, mishandled by virtually everyone who could have stopped him and led to a reckoning that reformed the county’s workforce policies.
Dusan Petrovic was a well-educated aristocrat from Yugoslavia who spent four years in a German prison camp before coming to Monterey County to work for what was then known as the Army Language School at the Monterey Presidio.
He somehow ended up in King City, where he was elected mayor. And then he represented South County on the Board of Supervisors for 16 years.
From what I observed as a professional observer from the press bench, Petrovic was the weak link during a colorful era of county politics.
For the most part, supervisors back in the 80s seemed intelligent and diligent — even if they were being dragged away in handcuffs or getting caught with their pants around their ankles. Petrovic was a pontificating gasbag, prone to meandering speeches when he wasn't snoring on the board dais and drooling on his agenda packet.
His constituents seemed to like him okay, especially if they weren’t paying close attention. Petrovic was good for ribbon cuttings and civic club functions, an obedient lapdog for South County’s farming interests. He exuded a sort of an old-country, grandfatherly charm.
His charm certainly wasn't harmless. For years courthouse reporters had heard rumors that Dusan might be a lecherous old weirdo. The women working the supervisors’ clerk’s office made it a policy to avoid being alone for fear of getting cornered by Petrovic.
In 1990, Petrovic invited the 16-year-old girl into his King City office after she showed up with a problem. She thought this seemingly harmless old man might be able to help her resolve the public housing issue she was having. She didn’t get the help she was looking for. Instead, she had to fight off what turned out to be a creepy old lech.
The girl managed to extricate herself from his office, but she was pissed. She marched down to the police station and told an officer what had just happened to her. The next day, officers outfitted her with a hidden recording device and sent her back into his office. The recorded transcript is icky, to say the least. Officers stood outside Petrovic’s office and listened in while the girl told him she felt violated during her previous visit.
“I very much want to be friends with you,” Petrovic told her. “Don’t complain or talk to anyone.”
Police barged into the office and arrested the county supervisor. He was transported to the county jail in Salinas, and he was released after posting bail.
As a criminal defendant, Petrovic might have best been described as injudiciously defiant. He pissed and moaned out loud about how government prosecutors were picking on him. It was all a big set up. Dark forces were out to get him. Petrovic whimpered and whined about how law enforcement had treated him like a criminal. He snarled at his victims and once told a prosecuting investigator he should be “boiled in oil.”
Does this all sound familiar?
These days, shameless deviant freaks can get elected president, but voters and political hacks wanted nothing to do with the likes of Petrovic in 1990. So Petrovic’s political legacy suffered an immediate Hindbenburg, as rickety old gasbags tend to do.
The case against him was nauseating. Several victims were county employees. Others were high school girls he hired to work in his King City office. Prosecutors claimed he either molested or harassed at least 24 women while he served on the Board of Supervisors. Police found porn in the desk drawers of his office.
Among the victims were other young women he lured into his office from welfare lines in the King City office on the pretext that he could help them. The threatened to exert his power if the county employees he tried to molest spoke up. Victims called him a “dirty old man” and a “pervert,” and they described desperate efforts to keep Petrovic from grabbing them inappropriately.
An investigator wrote that Petrovic fit the profile of “a child molester who focuses on young adolescent females between the ages of 15 and 18.”
When the evidence mounted and more women and girls came forward, Petrovic resigned from the board. The timing was weird. He had been chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and he was up for reelection in just a couple of months. Defiantly, he refused to pull his name off the ballot, even after he resigned from the board.
With all the evidence coming from different alleged victims, prosecutors decided to pursue the one case they knew would result in a quick conviction, the crime against the 16-year-old victim.
It didn’t take long for a jury to find Petrovic guilty of misdemeanor sexual battery for groping the young mother. Even then, he continued to run for reelection in a race he lost to a fellow named Tom Perkins. The results weren’t even close. Perkins picked up nearly 80 percent of the vote.
Two months later, in January 1991, Petrovic appeared in court again for sentencing. The proceedings felt like a circus. Petrovic was defiant, petulant. He acted as though he had been the aggrieved party. Many of his victims showed up in court, emotional but eager to have their day in court. A couple of them testified. At one point, Petrovic turned to the victims and said he wouldn’t apologize to most of them because he didn’t “hurt” them. He argued with the judge. He whined about the prosecutors, whined about the press coverage. His attorneys couldn’t keep him quiet.
In the end, a judge sentenced him to home confinement for a measly 100 days and to three years probation.
The prosecutor and victims expressed deep disappointment with the relatively light sentence. “I only want him to say, ‘I’m sorry I abused my power. I hurt many women. I hurt my family,’” said Ann Hill, the deputy district attorney. But Petrovic refused.
The fallout from the conviction shook county government. It appeared that nearly everybody within spitting distance of Petrovic was complicit by turning a blind eye to what he was doing.
Investigators determined that county administrators and fellow supervisors were aware of Petrovic’s behavior, some of them for at least 10 years before the 16-year-old blew the whistle. Some of the women had reported Petrovic’s advances directly to their superiors, to other county elected officials, and even to county lawyers, but nothing was done.
Once justice was served and while Petrovic was serving his sentence, many of his victims banded together to form a loose organization called “Monterey County Employees for Equality.” They eventually convinced supervisors to change county ordinances that ultimately strengthened rules governing workplace behavior.
Petrovic died on May 25, 1992, at his home in Walnut Creek, where he moved after his conviction. The county eventually spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle claims filed by his victims.
Illustration: Dusan Petrovic, ca. 1990
I have to say I never heard the term "deviant freak" used to describe a politician, but I like it a lot, especially when applied to a certain national political figure.