An investigation into sexual harassment allegations by an Arcadia City Council member against a council colleague has determined the charges were unsubstantiated.
Councilwoman Sharon Kwan, however, stands by the formal complaint she filed alleging misogynistic misconduct by Councilman David Fu, claiming the investigation was biased in Fu’s favor.
At the end of the March 3 council meeting, Fu spoke about the investigation’s conclusion “as a matter of personal privilege.”
Despite city officials requesting “that confidentiality be maintained on this issue, either member Kwan or her friends have publicized everywhere that they can that she initiated a harassment claim against me with the city,” Fu said. “As this matter is clearly now a public issue, I have, up until now maintained my silence because of the direction to maintain confidentiality. But … I will now address this issue.”
The city’s investigator, Debra Reilly of Reilly Workplace Investigations in Encinitas, notified Fu on Feb. 27 “that the investigation had been closed, and there was found that none of Sharon’s allegations against me were sustained,” he said. “This is the same way you could say that they were found to be false.”
Kwan said during the March 3 meeting that the investigation’s finding of unsubstantiated allegations “is not accurate, and I do not believe it was fair.”
She told HeySoCal.com the only people interviewed were the four other council members, Fu’s wife and City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto.
Former Councilwoman April Verlato said she witnessed the alleged harassment but was not interviewed.
“There’s a lot of problems with the City Council, and I also think there’s a lot of problems with the investigation,” Kwan said March 3, declining to say much more and citing the city’s request to keep details of the investigation confidential.
In an interview with HeySoCal.com, she alleged Fu on multiple occasions stood so close to her that she could feel his breath, stood behind her and whispered in her ear comments that included requests for her to “be a good girl,” along with “lingering touches” on her shoulders and back that she said “were very inappropriate, and I did not appreciate them.”
Fu recalled Kwan “never said anything to me that I had done anything, mistreated her, been impolite or that anything about me was discomforting to her.”
He pointed to a May 2025 debate over the Arcadia council’s 2028 Olympics committee in which Fu took exception to Kwan’s observation that female and bilingual members would be better appointments. The two traded accusations of sexism that continued through the end of the month.
According to Fu, then-Mayor Kwan “made further allegations to me, to the city. But that point then, her complaints had morphed into sexual harassment allegations,” he said. “Again, nothing like this ever occurred, but it did not prevent Sharon from making those allegations.
“When I was interviewed by the investigator, the investigator told me that Sharon had complained that I had saved seats for her at meetings, that I had taken selfies with her, that I had texted her too many times and that I was not nice to her during meetings. I explained to the investigator that when we attend public events, the host organization saves seats for us. And because there are five of us, they save five seats,” Fu continued. “Now sometimes the seat next to me is open. Generally speaking, other members of this council won’t sit next to Sharon because they don’t like her and they don’t trust her. But I was trying to be Sharon’s friend. I’d never made that point, and we were attempting to be engaging in collegial behavior. But I said I never saved any seats for Sharon.”
Fu said he showed Reilly a text string in which Kwan “had invited herself to come and sit next to me. The investigator said, ‘Well, she invited herself to sit next to you.’ And I said, ‘Exactly.’ I looked at my text history with Sharon, and I saw maybe seven text messages between me and Sharon over the approximately one year that I had come to know her at all. I don’t believe that that’s a lot of text messages. I never said anything that was improper. I never said anything that was forward. I never said anything which was controversial in nature or sexual in nature.”
Kwan said Fu’s alleged harassing behavior was intended to intimidate her in order to limit her remarks in opposition to council budget decisions, including city employee compensation agreements that she opposed.
“All the things that he was doing to me, it was not that he was trying to be friends with me, he was advancing something,” she said. “Do you want to be friends with someone and then tell them to be a ‘good girl’? Do you want to be friends with somebody and have those lingering touches? Do you want to be friends with someone and then get so close and make them feel so uncomfortable? That’s not being friends. When people are friends, you talk with a distance, there’s of boundary of how you can talk to a person, there’s that personal space, and everything is violated.”
Kwan said after she filed the complaint, the alleged harassing behaviors stopped but Fu’s affection turned to hostility.
“The lingering touch, the rubbing behind my back and the standing so close to me for me to feel his breath and telling me to be a ‘good girl,’ those stopped. But he didn’t stop the condescending language. It got worse. After I filed (the complaint), then the retaliation comes with verbal attacks. He became so hostile, so defensive on everything that happened … in every meeting.”
According to Kwan, she became disenchanted with the formal complaint process when Reilly told her she would interview the other council members, Fu’s wife and the city manager.
“I immediately responded, I said, ‘These are all his best friends, and the wife too? Nobody’s wife is going to say, ‘Oh, my husband did this,’ right? I was shocked and told her that’s not fair.”
Kwan sensed the outcome of the investigation was a foregone conclusion.
“I said, ‘What is the point of this?'” Kwan recalled, to which the investigator replied, “‘There’s nothing much you can do, we just tell him to stop. That’s it.'”
The Arcadia City Clerk’s Office denied a request for the investigation report, citing California law that makes it “exempt from disclosure under the attorney-client privilege and attorney work product doctrine.”
Fu and Reilly did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Updated April 1, 2026, 1:50 p.m.