An investigator at the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) ceased responding to a claimant and lost the claimant’s paperwork, forcing her to refile her disability discrimination complaint, only to be dismissed by the commission for filing an “untimely filing,” according to emails and CHRO records.

Stella Onochie, a teacher at Achievement First in Hartford, submitted a claim to CHRO in June 2024, alleging she had been denied accommodations for her disability, and CHRO Representative Na’eelah Bakari was assigned to her case. 

According to emails, Onochie provided all the required paperwork, bringing the physical copies of her notarized complaint and supplementary documents to CHRO’s office, and Bakari confirmed via email that she had received them. Onochie has a receipt for both the notary and for parking the day she dropped off the paperwork at CHRO’s office.

However, when Onochie reached out again in August of 2024 for an update, she received no response. When she messaged the general CHRO email in November, two CHRO officials emailed Bakari asking her to follow up, and again there was no response. Throughout December, Onochie moved her request for follow-up further up the ladder at CHRO to Capital Region Manager Jose Michael Gonzalez, who was also unable to elicit a response from Bakari.

By January of 2025, Gonzalez emailed Onochie apologizing for the “ongoing communication concerns” with their investigator and indicating he would look into Onochie’s claim himself. He assigned a new investigator; however, they were unable to locate the documents and notarized complaint Onochie had originally submitted six months prior. 

“After speaking with you earlier this morning, I checked in with clerical and determined that we do not have a copy of your notarized affidavit. If you have a copy of the notarized documents, you can send them to this email address,” wrote CHRO Representative Oliver Morris in a January 7, 2025, email. “In the alternative, I have attached the original documents here to be notarized.”

In making an appointment with CHRO, Onochie asked if she could review her other documents submitted in June of 2024. “For example, if my notarized form is missing, I’m not sure if any of the other supplemental documents I dropped off are missing as well. The notarized form and documents were all together in a sealed envelope,” Onochie wrote.

Onochie’s original claim indicated the alleged discrimination took place in January of 2024, meaning she was now past the 300-day statute of limitations for filing a CHRO complaint. 

Onochie claims that during a February in-person meeting with the new investigator she was assured that the “300 day requirement would be waived given CHRO’s involvement in misplacing my original notarized complaint,” according to emails. Onochie says she was allowed to file a new notarized complaint on January 10, 2025.

That complaint appeared to proceed forward, but with further problems; over the course of April 2025, Onochie was not provided with Achievement First’s response, forcing her to, once again, make special requests to be provided the proper documentation. 

Then, in June of 2025, CHRO dismissed her case, citing the 300-day rule, citing the date of her second complaint filing in January of 2025, rather than the first filing in June of 2024.

According to the dismissal, Onochie “fails to state a claim for relief,” when she was “denied a reasonable accommodation by the Respondent,” and “the alleged termination occurred on January 9, 2024, but Complainant did not file her complaint until January 10, 2025, approximately 366 days later. Therefore, the complaint is untimely.”

State open records show Bakari was employed over the course of 2023 and 2024 before leaving the Commission in early January of 2025.

In an interview, Onochie says the whole experience has left her “really depressed,” and having to balance trying to do the right thing in pursuing her claim or having to drop it as it is adversely affecting her mental and emotional well-being.

“It was discouraging because I always believed that if you follow the process, if you follow the protocol and you do things for the most part by the book then you have some kind of recourse,” Onochie said. “When they told me they weren’t going to change their decision I think I ended up having a panic attack, I thought I was having a heart attack. I had to go to urgent care.” 

“I have a family, I have a job, and a husband and children,” Onochie said. “I can’t burn everything down in pursuit of quote-unquote justice.”

Reached for comment, Kimberly Jacobsen, legal director for CHRO, said she could not comment directly on Onochie’s case other than to assert that Onochie filed her claim in January of 2025, and that her claim was dismissed.

“It doesn’t look like we lost any paperwork, I can’t see that,” Jacobsen said when reviewing Onochie’s case file. “If something got lost and it was our fault there are ways to solve that. Generally, we don’t lose a lot of things, but if something got lost and they had proof that something got lost then it wouldn’t be dismissed, we would say agency error, but I can’t say whether that was the case in [Onochie’s] case.”

Onochie is not the first to claim the Commission has mishandled a claim by losing evidence. Theresa Codding claimed the CHRO cycled her through three different investigators, failed to respond to her messages, and subsequently lost all her evidence. The CHRO confirmed that it does not keep statistics on lost evidence.

Similarly, David Madeiros filed a complaint against the CHRO for deleting his emails regarding a complaint without reading them and mistakenly sending the complaint and supporting documents to the wrong state official.

According to their latest annual report, the CHRO received 2,439 complaints during fiscal year 2024, 242 of which were denial of public accommodation, which Onochie’s claim would likely fall under. The Commission also closed 2,218 complaints during that time period and moved forward on 151 complaints, finding reasonable cause or certifying them for public hearing. 

A previous audit by the Connecticut Auditors of Public Accounts found the Commission had not met statutory deadlines in the processing of claims, but auditors also noted – and CHRO officials responded – that the audited period was during the pandemic when staff were trying to adjust to conducting business online. 

It also found the CHRO did not have sufficient information technology in place for processing such a huge number of claims, and “operates in a paper-oriented environment with a focus on individual case management rather than process management,” the auditors wrote. Jacobsen indicated that since the pandemic, the CHRO no longer uses paper records and operates electronically.

Stella says that although she was released from jurisdiction and can pursue her claim in superior court, she is having difficulty finding an attorney. 

She also states that she may be allowed to plead her case to the legal team at CHRO and present her proof that she filed her claim in a timely manner, something she says she shouldn’t have to do because they already have the proof. Under statute, CHRO legal counsel shall grant or reject a request for reconsideration within 90 days of dismissal.

“You guys have all the proof, you guys have all the emails from the representative at CHRO saying I have physical receipt of your paperwork,” Onochie said. “The director told me I have to go through that process. It’s discouraging.”

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