Ë®¹ûÅÉAV

It's uncertain where every cent of that money goes. The festival, which begins its 42nd season July 7, is one of Cayuga County's biggest tourist attractions. It draws 100,000 people to Fair Haven every summer for turkey legs, jousts and more in a living, breathing 1585 village. Dozens of staff, vendors and actors make that happen, and the festival's ticket sales support all of them.

But one of the people that money supports is the festival's owner of 10 years: Doug Waterbury.

Waterbury, who also owns about 50 rental properties in the Oswego area, is being sued by the Department of Justice for allegedly sexually harassing female tenants and prospective tenants since 1990. The suit says Waterbury coerced them into sex in order to keep or obtain housing, made unwanted sexual contact with them and refused maintenance work if they rejected him, among other allegations.

One woman described in the suit was a teenager when she approached Waterbury about renting one of his units in May 2017. According to the suit, Waterbury locked her in the unit and pushed her onto a couch, where he forced her into "unwelcome and painful sexual intercourse and oral sex" before commanding her not to tell anyone.

The suit, which was filed in April, absorbed a similar complaint filed in August by nonprofit agency CNY Fair Housing and six women, ages 24 to 32. Two women were later added to the complaint.

Two of the women lived together in one of Waterbury's rental units. Though they told him repeatedly that they didn't want to have sex with him, the complaint says he coerced them into it more than 15 times each. If the women didn't have sex with Waterbury, they said, he suggested that he would evict them and their children. Then, when they asked Waterbury to address a broken furnace and a mice infestation, he replied that "the women were not as 'fun' as he wanted them to be, that they were not having sex with him as frequently as he wanted, and that they should not use protection during the sex he demanded from them," the complaint says. The women said Waterbury's behavior caused them "anxiety, fear, emotional distress and significant embarrassment."

Waterbury has filed counterclaims denying the women's allegations and seeking unpaid rent, late fees and reimbursement of his legal expenses from four of them.

Both suits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York on the grounds that Waterbury violated the Fair Housing Act, which protects renters from discrimination based on gender. Waterbury's co-defendants are his wife, Carol, and their companies Ontario Realty and E&A Management. The couple also owns Sylvan Beach Amusement Park on Oneida Lake and  in Lake Placid. The DOJ seeks monetary damages for Waterbury's alleged victims, civil penalties and a court order prohibiting future discrimination. The trial is currently slated to start in April.

No criminal charges have been filed against Waterbury, but the Oswego Police Department has  sexual harassment allegations against him at least three times, according to The Palladium-Times. Neither the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office nor the New York State Police could find any record of investigations into Waterbury's behavior in Cayuga County.

When contacted by Ë®¹ûÅÉAV by phone Tuesday, Waterbury declined comment. His representation at Hancock Estabrook did not respond to a request for comment.

However, before he abruptly hung up, Waterbury did say one thing: Ticket sales for the 2018 season of the Sterling Renaissance Festival are up 25 percent.

It's been a question ever since the lawsuits against Waterbury made headlines across central New York: How will the festival be affected by the alleged behavior of its owner? 

The suits arrived during the #MeToo movement, which has seen  male public figures accused of sexually inappropriate behavior and, as a result, boycotted. Celebrities like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Matt Lauer have had their work shunned by a public no longer willing to support them, and their platforms removed by a media no longer able to associate with them. 

Could the same happen to Waterbury's festival?

When the season begins Saturday, one person who won't be in attendance is Barbara Warren, of Rochester.

It will be the first time in 24 years that Warren hasn't gone. She spent many of those years volunteering at the festival, and singing with a madrigal group there. But Warren has also spent many years counseling victims of rape, and is herself a survivor of it, she said. And that empathy is why Warren cannot in good conscience financially support Waterbury by going back to the festival.

"I know how I would feel if I was one of his victims and someone was still going and giving him money," she said. "I can't do that to the victims."

Supporting Waterbury was hard for Warren to stomach for years before the suits were filed. She's known college-age women — "he always goes after the young girls" — at the festival's food booths and performance spaces who have been harassed by him, she said. She described Waterbury's behavior as an open secret in the festival community. She described him as "evil."

But Warren can understand why others will continue to support the festival. For many, she said, it's "a spiritual home."

Lee Baldwin, of Northwood, New Hampshire, has been attending the festival almost every weekend for 20 years. And she'll continue going, she said, because the festival is bigger than Waterbury.

"(Boycotting the festival) strikes me as cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. I think Doug is egotistical, reprehensible and a really lousy businessman," Baldwin said in an email. "But I also feel that a boycott is only going to hurt the actors, vendors and workers at (the festival), and damage the incomes of surrounding tourist businesses. I believe that the legal system can deal with him."

Baldwin has her own reasons not to support Waterbury: He once hugged her in a way she described as "disturbing." She's also heard stories of him trying to corner women alone, she said.

Mike Meagher, of East Rochester, has heard similar stories. A few women who required housing to work at the festival told him that Waterbury proposed the same sex-for-rent "trades" he allegedly proposed to women in Oswego. Meagher added that Waterbury, a fixture on the festival grounds during the season, was known to loiter around his younger female employees, glaring at them.

But Meagher, who has photographed the festival for almost 20 summers, thinks boycotting it would hurt everyone else there more than Waterbury. Its vendors and artisans pay Waterbury a flat rate to be on the Fair Haven grounds, Meagher said, and make their money directly from attendees. His description of the arrangement matches that of a 2015 filing in Cayuga County Court by a food vendor who claimed Waterbury breached their contract. That vendor paid Waterbury $2,500 to be at the 2015 festival, the filing said. (The vendor and Waterbury later resolved the matter privately.)

"A boycott would really impact them a lot more than Doug," Meagher said of the festival's vendors. "A boycott wouldn't affect him at all."

However, the lawsuit against Waterbury could affect the festival another way. He has a history of money problems: He a $300,000 crowdfunding campaign to open the festival in 2014, only to secure a $285,000 bank loan at the last minute. Later that year, he faced foreclosure by the Cayuga County Treasurer's Office because he owed more than $150,000 in back taxes and the balance of a defaulted small business loan. Waterbury paid off the debts in early 2015. But the legal fees required to defend himself against prosecution by the Department of Justice could rekindle those money problems. Waterbury is currently delinquent in his tax payments to the county by $29,887.93, the treasurer's office said.

Still, if Waterbury's claim about this season's ticket sales is correct, the boycott question may be moot. But it'll be difficult to know for sure. Because Waterbury privately owns the festival, he has no obligation to publicize its attendance statistics. Nor does he have to share them with entities like the Cayuga County Office of Tourism, Executive Director Meg Vanek said.

Vanek also noted that the festival supports many more people than Waterbury, and agreed that it would be "unfortunate to penalize them for something that is alleged." Those people, she continued, aren't just the ones who work at the festival: They're the ones who work at the restaurants, hotels and other businesses in the northern Cayuga County area that benefit from the 100,000 visitors who come there every summer for the festival. That's why her office has promoted the festival to tourists, Vanek said, and will continue to do so.

"Anything negative connected with the festival is a shame because it's a magnet up in the northern part of the county," she said. "There's nothing else like it around here."

Because the festival's reach is so wide, Vanek also wonders how many of its would-be patrons are even aware of the allegations against Waterbury. They've barely been covered by media outside the central New York area, she said. And as the lawsuit against Waterbury continues to make headlines, Vanek hopes the harm to the Sterling Renaissance Festival, and its people, is minimal.

"I hope things are resolved in a good way," she said. "We hope for them and for the Fair Haven area."