3 JBLM food workers reported sexual harassment. Then they were targeted, lawsuit claims
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- Three JBLM food service workers filed a federal sexual harassment lawsuit.
- The Tacoma women claim they were abused by a supervisor at the Army hospital.
- The women allege they were retaliated against for reporting their supervisor's behavior.
Three Tacoma women say they faced a campaign of retaliation from higher-ups after reporting a supervisor for sexual assault and harassment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s Madigan Army Medical Center, where they prepared and served meals.
One woman is still employed in the hospital’s Nutrition Care Division but two others left their jobs due to a hostile work environment that followed the women’s disclosures that their first-line supervisor had subjected them to inappropriate touching and comments, according to a federal lawsuit.
The suit, filed June 26 in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, claims that the supervisor grabbed one woman’s breasts, slapped another woman’s buttocks and told another woman plating a meal for a customer, “you’re making my apron hard,” among other inappropriate behaviors. After reporting the fellow civilian worker to Army criminal investigators, the women allege they faced harassment and bullying from the Nutrition Care Division’s leadership, including military and civilian personnel.
“One of the things that this highlights for me is, when individuals come forward and make reports of sexual harassment and sexual abuse, the tendency to protect the unit, to protect the perpetrator is still ever present (in the military),” attorney Michael McNeil, who is representing the plaintiffs, said in an interview Tuesday. “And I think that’s what we see here and that needs to change.”
The suit names the U.S. Department of Defense and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in his official capacity, as defendants and seeks to hold them liable for claims of sex-based discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environment and disparate treatment. The Defense Department did not respond to a message from The News Tribune seeking a response to the allegations.
A spokesperson for Madigan Army Medical Center, which isn’t named as a defendant in the suit, didn’t immediately return a message offering an opportunity to comment Tuesday.
The three women began working in the Nutrition Care Division, which the complaint says has more than 60 employees, in 2020 or 2021. The sexual assault or harassment from their supervisor started as early as 2020, according to the suit. The News Tribune generally doesn’t name alleged victims of sex abuse and isn’t naming the supervisor because he isn’t named as a defendant in the civil case and there’s no indication he was charged with any crimes.
The plaintiff still employed at the military hospital became aware in late 2020 that the supervisor had previously sexually harassed other women in the division, causing some to resign, according to the lawsuit.
After she and the two other plaintiffs were interviewed by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division about their own experiences, the supervisor was placed on paid administrative leave for a week in April 2022 but then allowed to return to work and continue supervising the women, the suit said.
That same month, one woman alleged she was informed by Army investigators that they determined the supervisor was “guilty,” according to the suit. Still, he was simply moved to a different shift and the women continued to regularly see him and interact with him, the suit said.
All the while, the supervisor allegedly tried to make the women uncomfortable or intimidate them, or acted disrespectfully toward them, until he was again placed on paid administrative leave in May 2022 pending a separate investigation by the Nutrition Care Division, according to the suit.
It isn’t clear from the legal complaint what became of the investigation. The filing notes that he was on paid administrative leave until 2024. McNeil said that he only knows that the supervisor no longer works there and that additional details about his departure wouldn’t be learned until attorneys can investigate further as part of the case’s proceedings.
The supervisor had claimed that the women fabricated the allegations in an effort to set him up, the suit said, and alleged that one woman had come onto him and he was reciprocating her flirtatious behavior. The woman denied his account, the suit said.
Between May 2022 and 2024, the plaintiffs say they were retaliated against and subjected to a hostile work environment and disparate treatment for reporting their claims against their supervisor.
“He had a lot of friends within the leadership of the Nutrition Care Division,” McNeil said. “My take on it is, when the allegations came out, a lot of people, including the leadership, didn’t think they were very serious.”
Upset over the claims, division leaders sought to make the plaintiffs quit and manufactured a negative record on each to try to fire them, according to McNeil.
Their work performances were inaccurately called into question, their opportunities for promotions were stonewalled or threatened, they were unnecessarily admonished for taking days off for medical reasons and faced other targeting treatment, the suit said.
The suit, which demands a jury trial, seeks unspecified damages, legal fees and other relief deemed appropriate by the court.
