Personal injury

A former supermarket employee is fighting for workers' compensation. The reason: She says she was raped.

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

It was a little after 11 p.m. on November 17, 1990, "Jane Doe" says, when her supervisor arrived unexpectedly at the Purity Supreme supermarket in Holbrook and ordered the two other employees present to go home.

As he and Doe began to close up, everything seemed fine. But after she locked the cash in the store's safe, Doe says, her supervisor slammed her against the wall, slapped her repeatedly, and raped her on the store manager's desk.

To ensure that she would not tell, he threatened to burn down the house where she lived with her husband and four children if she went to the police, according to Doe.

Doe says she was devastated. She told no one -- not even her husband, who worked at the supermarket with her and two of her children. It wasn't until two months after the incident, when another employee witnessed the supervisor verbally abusing Doe, that Purity Supreme superiors were informed that there might be a problem. And it would be years before she could bring herself to take legal action.

Less than an hour after Purity Supreme management was alerted to the supervisor's behavior, security guards escorted him from the store and an internal investigation was launched. But though Doe told company officials about the rape, she took the case no further when they warned her that her name would be made public. Fearing for her life and the safety of her family, Doe chose to seek help not from an attorney but from her priest.

Eight years later, Doe, who spoke out about her ordeal in a press conference on May 12, is still waiting for justice. In 1994, she attempted to bring criminal charges against her supervisor but was told that she had not presented enough evidence. So she turned to the civil court system, filing a claim of sexual harassment in early 1996; but there, too, she encountered roadblocks.

Now, despite a legal ruling in her favor, Stop & Shop (which bought out Purity Supreme in October of 1995) refuses to pay the damages the state says she is owed. The outcome of her case, however, has fueled a broader debate over a question that could help other victims: how long should workers have to file harassment claims?

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Doe's fear and her resulting hesitation to go public were what sealed her fate. Thirteen months passed before she could tell her husband what had happened, and it took three years of hospitalization, medical attention, and therapy for her to decide she was ready to seek legal redress.

"It took a long time, but I am no longer embarrassed," says the petite 42-year-old, who now works with handicapped children at a local elementary school. "I have finally come to grips with the fact that what happened was not my fault."

But as Doe struggled to overcome her attack, the clock was ticking. On May 3, 1996, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court threw out her sexual harassment claim. The court ruled that her alleged rape by a supervisor must be considered a workers' compensation issue, not a sexual harassment issue, because she didn't report it within six months of the assault.

"The ruling basically states that rape is nothing more than an industrial accident -- the same type of employment risk as slipping on a wet floor. It's ludicrous," says Norman "Mickey" Lazarus, Doe's attorney.

Doe did pursue the case as a workers' compensation issue; she won a victory in November of 1997, when Judge Douglas Bean of the Department of Industrial Accidents heard five days of testimony from Doe and other supermarket employees, as well as from medical doctors and therapists. He concluded that "the employee suffered an industrial injury . . . when the employee's direct supervisor . . . raped her at work."

Doe had not been alone. At least 12 women came forward as victims of her supervisor's sexual harassment; a part-time employee, 16 years old, spoke up about her own sexual assault by the same man, according to Lazarus.

Bean went on to rule that because Purity Supreme did not remove the supervisor from his position despite his known record of sexual harassment, Doe is entitled not only to lost wages but also to compensation for medical costs, psychiatric visits, and attorney's fees. He called for her compensation to be doubled "in light of the employer's serious and willful misconduct."

But Doe's battle is not over: Stop & Shop has appealed the decision. According to Peter Phillipes, general counsel for Stop & Shop Companies Inc. in Quincy, the ruling allowed for too much money to be awarded to Doe.

"Stop & Shop is appealing the workers' compensation decision because it has no cap and awarded the claimant $1 for every $1 she would spend in the future for medical care," says Phillipes. "That's like handing her a blank check."

Doe says the money is not the only issue. "I don't want to see someone else raped repeatedly through the court system," she says. "We need a law that prevents this sort of thing from happening to anyone else."

A bill pending in the Senate Ways and Means Committee would give victims of sexual harassment in the workplace more time to seek legal action. Sponsored by Senator Cheryl Jacques (D-Needham), the measure would extend the statute of limitations for reporting sexual harassment and discrimination at work from six months to three years.

"Jane Doe's story is, unfortunately, not that uncommon," says Jacques. "What people don't understand is that it takes time for victims to overcome the emotional baggage that accompanies a sexual assault. This isn't like breaking a leg at work."

Jacques adds that as the number of sexual harassment cases increases, the need for more flexible laws is growing. According to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, annual complaints have risen from 107 in 1990 to 648 last year.

Under current state law, employees with contract disputes have six years to file a claim. Employees with work-related personal injuries have three years to sue their employers in superior court; people with consumer fraud claims have four years.

"We are not seeking special treatment for plaintiffs in discrimination cases; we are only looking for equity," says Molly Cochran, vice president of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for Women, which supports the bill. "The reality is that six months is often too short a time for a person who has suffered discrimination on the job to learn of her legal rights, assess the amount of damage suffered, find an attorney . . . or to deal with the emotional trauma stemming from the employer's actions."

A spokesperson for the Senate Ways and Means Committee says the bill, which was approved and forwarded by the Judiciary Committee in September of last year, is still being worked on by the committee's legal staff.

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.