TL;DR Summary
Southern California Medical Center, a community clinic meant to serve low-income patients, became the site of severe sexual harassment and assault allegations against its chief medical officer, Dr. Mohammad Rasekhi. Former executive Omar Kader accused Rasekhi of repeated sexual misconduct spanning several years, coupled with retaliation from senior leadership when he resisted or attempted to report the abuse. The story exposed how corporate power structures, cloaked under nonprofit or healthcare missions, can silence victims through coercion, forced arbitration, and institutional neglect.
What follows is a detailed examination of how systemic deregulation, corporate incentives, and the misuse of arbitration mechanisms perpetuate harm.
Inside the Allegations: Corporate Misconduct
The Southern California Medical Center hired Omar Kader in 2016 as chief financial officer, later promoting him to chief operating officer. Between 2018 and 2022, Kader endured multiple instances of sexual harassment and assault by Dr. Mohammad Rasekhi, the clinic’s chief medical officer.
The assaults began with inappropriate comments about Kader’s appearance and escalated into forced sexual acts. Threats of termination kept Kader silent, illustrating the imbalance of power and the weaponization of employment dependence.
By 2019, Kader had signed an arbitration agreement that required all employment disputes to be resolved privately, a common corporate tactic to prevent public exposure. The incidents continued through February 2022, extending into the period after Congress passed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, which rendered such agreements unenforceable for these cases.
In May 2022, Kader finally filed a formal complaint with California’s civil rights authorities, initiating legal action that revealed years of unchecked abuse. The appellate court later affirmed that the arbitration clause was invalid because the “dispute” did not arise until the formal complaint was made.
Timeline of Events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 2016 | Kader hired as CFO at Southern California Medical Center |
| May 2018 | First arbitration agreement signed (not contested) |
| July 2018 | First instance of sexual harassment by Dr. Rasekhi |
| Nov 18, 2018 | Forced sexual act by Rasekhi |
| Apr 17, 2019 | Second forced sexual act |
| Jun 25, 2019 | New arbitration agreement signed |
| 2019–2022 | Eight further incidents of sexual harassment and assault |
| Jul 2021 | Retaliation begins from CEO Sheila Busheri |
| Mar 3, 2022 | Ending Forced Arbitration Act becomes law |
| Mar 16, 2022 | Final assault incident |
| May 2022 | Complaint filed with Civil Rights Department |
| May 27, 2022 | Lawsuit filed against Southern California Medical Center and officials |
| Feb 2023 | Trial court denies arbitration; decision upheld on appeal |
Regulatory Capture & Loopholes
The case demonstrates how arbitration agreements (once tools for commercial efficiency) became shields for abuse. Southern California Medical Center, despite operating in healthcare, used private contracts to strip employees of public recourse. This practice flourished in an era of deregulation where corporate-friendly legal frameworks prioritize expediency and cost reduction over justice.
Forced arbitration clauses thrive under neoliberal deregulation, where laws are written to favor employer discretion. Regulators rarely intervene until media or legal exposure forces accountability. In this case, Kader’s inability to seek redress through internal channels exemplified how compliance systems exist in form but fail in function.
Profit-Maximization at All Costs
Though a nonprofit entity, the Center reflected profit-driven behaviors common across private sectors. Executive priorities revolved around institutional protection, reputational control, and financial stability over ethical governance or employee safety. When Kader resisted Rasekhi’s advances and raised objections about discriminatory hiring, management retaliated with demotions, pay cuts, and false accusations.
In capitalist structures, even nonprofit institutions operate under the same incentive systems that reward silence and penalize resistance. Leadership acted in defense of hierarchy, not humanity. The arbitration clause, the retaliation, and the institutional neglect were all methods of preserving control and minimizing liability.
The Economic Fallout
The costs of such misconduct extend beyond individual trauma. Retaliation led to reduced productivity, disrupted leadership, and loss of organizational credibility. The Center’s legal battles diverted resources away from patient care, the very purpose of its existence. Every dollar spent defending executives against credible harassment claims represents a transfer of value from public service to private protectionism.
This pattern mirrors a broader economic decay under neoliberal capitalism: corporate governance structures treat harm as an expense, not a crisis. The absence of public oversight allows such losses to compound, with patients, taxpayers, and workers paying the price.
Environmental & Public Health Risks
Though the case focuses on sexual misconduct, it highlights a deeper public health danger: when institutions meant to protect health tolerate internal abuse, they erode trust in medical systems. A clinic built to serve marginalized patients becomes compromised when its leadership embodies exploitation. Workplace cultures that tolerate harassment often breed neglect across safety, hygiene, and patient well-being an unspoken but systemic health risk.
Exploitation of Workers
Kader’s experience is emblematic of workplace exploitation under hierarchical systems. The combination of power imbalance, retaliation, and coercive silence demonstrates how modern workplaces institutionalize subservience. The fear of job loss operated as a control mechanism. When employees internalize this fear, corporate hierarchies become totalizing systems that suppress dissent and normalize abuse.
This case illustrates how “at-will” employment, weak labor protections, and the privatization of justice merge to produce conditions ripe for exploitation. The employer’s use of arbitration compounded this, transforming a system of accountability into a fortress against transparency.
Community Impact: Local Lives Undermined
Southern California Medical Center serves uninsured and low-income patients. When leadership engages in criminal misconduct, the harm radiates outward. Patients lose access to stable care. Employees face toxic conditions that reduce quality and morale. Communities relying on the clinic’s mission inherit the consequences of its dysfunction. The betrayal of trust deepens social inequality, as vulnerable populations lose faith in institutions that claim to serve them.
The PR Machine: Corporate Spin Tactics
The Center’s leadership denied knowledge of any complaints and submitted declarations portraying harmony between executives. This corporate script (denial, deflection, and appeals to loyalty) follows a familiar pattern in reputation management. Text messages of support from subordinates, extracted under coercive hierarchies, were presented as evidence of consent. Such tactics aim to construct plausible deniability, reframing abuse as misunderstanding.
Public relations strategies of this kind are standard within late-stage capitalism, where image replaces accountability. The organization’s silence and procedural defenses reveal a structural reliance on obfuscation.
Wealth Disparity & Corporate Greed
The executives’ actions show how corporate power reproduces inequality even in nonprofit environments. Those at the top accumulate authority without oversight, while workers bear the emotional and economic costs of subservience. In this case, a medical institution (nominally serving the poor) protected its executives at the expense of justice. This hypocrisy exposes how neoliberal capitalism has blurred the moral distinction between private profit and public service.
Global Parallels: A Pattern of Predation
Across industries, from finance to healthcare, arbitration has been the preferred weapon against accountability. Multinational corporations use similar tools to conceal labor abuses, environmental violations, and sexual misconduct. The Southern California Medical Center case fits this global pattern of corporate predation, where procedural devices replace ethical governance. The phenomenon is not an accident of law; it is the logical outcome of decades of deregulation.
Corporate Accountability Fails the Public
The court’s decision to uphold the invalidation of arbitration is a small victory for accountability, but the broader system remains intact. Executives face no criminal charges within the ruling. The institution continues operating, insulated by bureaucracy. Even when legal progress occurs, it often comes too late for victims, after years of harm and silence. Corporate accountability, as structured under current law, functions less as deterrence and more as ritualized containment.
Legal Minimalism: Doing Just Enough to Stay Plausibly Legal
Southern California Medical Center exemplified the minimalist compliance that characterizes neoliberal institutions. It maintained legal paperwork, arbitration clauses, and procedural safeguards, yet these mechanisms existed to shield, not protect. Compliance, in this context, becomes branding… a way to project legitimacy while enabling abuse. The institution met the form of legality while violating its ethical substance.
How Capitalism Exploits Delay: The Strategic Use of Time
Kader’s case underscores how delay itself serves corporate interests. Years passed between the first assault and legal recognition. Each procedural motion (especially the effort to enforce arbitration) extended harm and drained resources. Time becomes a currency of control; the longer justice is deferred, the greater the institutional advantage. Under capitalist logic, delay functions as strategy, not inefficiency.
The Language of Legitimacy: How Courts Frame Harm
The judicial process described the events through sanitized legal vocabulary. Words like “dispute,” “claim,” “arbitration.” Such terminology strips moral gravity from lived violence. The abstraction of human suffering into procedural language allows institutions to appear neutral while perpetuating injustice. This depersonalization is central to neoliberal governance, which values order over empathy and legality over morality.
Monetizing Harm: When Victimization Becomes a Revenue Model
Even as the Center faced legal risk, its financial model remained intact. The cost of settlements, legal fees, and public image repair were absorbed as operating expenses. In late-stage capitalism, harm itself becomes monetized. Institutions factor abuse into their budgets, treating justice as a financial variable rather than a moral imperative.
Profiting from Complexity: When Obscurity Shields Misconduct
Multiple entities (including Modern HR and several board members) were named in the lawsuit, revealing a web of overlapping responsibilities. Such structural complexity is a strategic design. It diffuses liability, making it difficult to assign clear responsibility. Corporate fragmentation is not accidental; it is a defense mechanism that allows organizations to evade moral and legal accountability.
This Is the System Working as Intended
The Southern California Medical Center case is the expected product of a system that privileges institutions over individuals, procedure over protection, and profit over people. When corporations and nonprofits alike use arbitration to conceal wrongdoing, the outcome is not failure by any means! Rather, it is success by neoliberal design. The system operates exactly as intended: efficiently, legally, and immorally.
Conclusion
This case reveals how legal frameworks, administrative silence, and economic incentives converge to perpetuate abuse under capitalism. A healthcare institution meant to heal instead became a site of exploitation. The court’s decision affirms a narrow slice of justice, yet the broader lesson is systemic. Until laws prioritize human dignity over corporate convenience, stories like Omar Kader’s will repeat.
Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?
The lawsuit stands on credible, well-documented allegations supported by legal testimony, multiple incidents, and consistent patterns of retaliation. The court’s affirmation of the arbitration act’s application underscores its seriousness. This case represents a legitimate challenge to the mechanisms that enable workplace abuse.
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- 🛡️ Data Breaches & Privacy Abuses — Misuse and mishandling of personal information.
- 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.
