Ingalls supervisor terrorized women with sexual acts, comments and threats, lawsuit says
Huntington Ingalls Industries and contractor NSC Technologies ignored pleas for help from women on a cleaning crew who claimed a supervisor at the Pascagoula shipyard masturbated in front of them, coerced one of them to have sex or lose her job, groped them and made crude, sexually explicit comments, a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Alabama, accuses Huntington Ingalls Industries and NSC of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sexual harassment in the workplace or retaliation against anyone who reports it. The EEOC notified both companies of the violations in May 2021, the lawsuits says.
The women worked for NSC on the cleaning crew of a Coast Guard ship at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, the lawsuit says, where they were harassed by Huntington Ingalls supervisor Patrick Dingle.
The EEOC filed the lawsuit only after the agency was unable to reach an acceptable agreement with the companies to remedy the unlawful practices, the lawsuit says. The EEOC is asking presiding U.S. District Judge Kristi K. DuBose to order the companies and their employees to stop sexual harassment and retaliation, and adopt policies and training programs that will prevent it in the future.
The EEOC is also asking for punitive damage against the companies for “malicious and reckless conduct,” back pay and compensation for the women’s financial losses, and compensation for their emotional suffering and humiliation. The lawsuit does not indicate how many women were harassed but details harassment against two specific women and others on the cleaning crew of a Coast Guard ship at Ingalls.
Repeated sexual harassment claimed
Dingle sexually harassed the women from September 2017 until May 2018, the lawsuit says. It describes repeated vulgar comments he made to the women about their bodies and sex. He also groped the women, exposed himself and masturbated in front of them, the lawsuit says.
He forced one woman to have sex with him in November 2017 in a ship washroom by threatening her job, the lawsuit says. Multiple times a day, he made sexual comments to her, including, “You look so fine in those jeans.” He masturbated in front of her on at least three occasions, the lawsuit says.
Dingle sought out the women “when they were working alone or working only with other females whom he had previously harassed so he could touch them or make sexual comments without interference.”
When the women knew they would have to work around Dingle, they would ask their immediate supervisor with NSC to accompany them for protection. The lawsuit says the supervisor, James Willis, a lead cleaning crew member at the shipyard, was “well aware” of the harassment.
When the woman forced to have sex with Dingle to keep her job reported what had happened to Willis, the lawsuit says he responded, “Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do to keep your job.”
Women ignored when work violations reported, lawsuit says
Willis did report the woman’s complaint to NSC branch manager Ty Collard but he took no action. Instead, Collard said his concern was keeping NSC’s contract with Huntington Ingalls, the lawsuit says.
In April 2018, a second woman was fired after she refused to have sex with Dingle, the lawsuit says. The woman reported the harassment and termination to NSC recruiter Alexandria Rucker, the lawsuit says.
“Rucker acknowledged that she knew other female employees had made similar complaints but that there was nothing she could do and emphasized that (the woman) should not do anything that would cause NSC to lose its contract with HI,” the lawsuit says.
Seeing that NSC would do nothing to protect her, the lawsuit says, the woman called the Huntington Ingalls hotline later in April 2018. The woman forced to have sex with Dingle also called the hotline to report the harassment, then placed several followup calls.
Dingle then threatened one of the women who had reported him, saying she would lose her life if he lost his job.
Huntington Ingalls “permitted Dingle to continue to work around . . . female employees, which allowed him to continue harassing them and gave him the opportunity to threaten (one woman’s) life,” the lawsuit says.
Although the lawsuit names two of the women it says were threatened with their jobs if they did not have sex, the Sun Herald does not identify victims or potential victims of sexual violations without their permission.
NSC closed its office in Mobile this week, said a woman who identified herself to the Sun Herald as company branch manager in Jacksonville. Neither NSC nor Ingalls Shipbuilding has responded to the Sun Herald’s request for comments on the lawsuit.
This story was originally published October 4, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
