According to a new lawsuit, an airport security guard was subjected to constant sexual harassment and even forced to watch her colleagues have sex on security cameras.
LaDonna Powell, who worked for Allied Universal Security Services at JFK from 2012 to 2016, said that she was she was “presented with a choice: have sex with male supervisors and get ahead, or refuse and be relentlessly harassed and retaliated against,” according to her lawsuit.
She claimed that her “harrowing” experience included being “repeatedly forced to stand by as her supervisors watched her colleagues have sex in security booths via closed circuit television cameras,” being “present while her supervisors watched videos of female security guards performing oral sex on male supervisors,” and being questioned on her own sexual prowess.
She also claimed that, in 2014, her boss had called her into the office to ask, “How much further do you want to go (at Allied)? … There are things you can do to get where you want to go.”
What’s more, Powell, who is black, said that the N-word was continually used in her presence.
Powell said that she tried to report the harassment as well as an allegation that a female coworker had been raped by two coworkers, but her complaints were ignored.
Now, she is filing suit, claiming that she was fired in 2016 in retaliation for her complaints.