They reported sexual harassment. Then the retaliation began

Harassment of women in the Forest Service has been a problem for years. As far back as 1972, women have joined together to file class action complaints and lawsuits about gender discrimination and sexual harassment. More recently, in 2016, a congressional hearing was held to address the problem within the Forest Service’s California workforce, which had also been the focus of previous complaints. The PBS NewsHour investigated what’s happened since then, and found the problem goes much deeper. In interviews with 34 current and former U.S. Forest Service women, spanning 13 states, the women described a workplace that remains hostile to female employees. They complained of a pattern of gender discrimination, bullying, sexual harassment and assault by crew members and supervisors. Three women said they were raped after-hours by co-workers or interagency firefighters while working for the Forest Service. Many women alleged retaliation after reporting these incidents. The retaliation they described took different forms: verbal threats, bullying notes, duties stripped, negative performance reviews, and demotions. Myers applied to work another season with the Forest Service and said she received interest from several states, but not Oregon, where she reported the abuse. ‘It’s like I’m on some Oregon blacklist, the Oregon #MeToo blacklist,” she said. Some women interviewed said they never reported the harassment for fear of retaliation. In a survey of nearly 2,000 Forest Service employees in California, conducted by the USDA Office of Inspector General last summer, the majority of respondents said they knew of the agency’s “zero tolerance” policy for harassment. But the survey, released in February 2018, also showed that most who experienced harassment did not report it, either because they didn’t trust the reporting process, didn’t believe that the process would be confidential, or feared a negative impact on their job...more