Lawsuit: Obama admin failing to address rampant sexual abuse in Forest Service

Elisa Lopez-Crowder alleges that she was doing a fire drill in June 2010 when her supervisor, Brian Levine, walked up behind her and pushed her to the ground and held her down with his foot before another firefighter broke it up. She reported the incident on July 29, 2010. The regional office was never contacted and the local human resources department did its own investigation. The criminal division wasn’t contacted and Lopez-Crowder continued to work with Levine.

When Donnelly contacted Vilsack’s office, Vilsack’s office took control of the investigation, Donnelly and Lopez-Crowder told the Daily Caller.

On October 4, 2011, in a meeting in his office, Secretary Vilsack assured a contingent which included Wagoner, Crowder-Lopez, and Donnelly that Levine would be terminated for alleged assault. Levine was terminated months later.

Vilsack did not return TheDC’s request for comment.

Villalvazo, who did not reply to TheDC’s request for comment, was eventually transferred to the Pacific Southwest Regional Office in Vallejo, California in another management role. Donnelly insists that the move was a lateral transfer. Stanton Florea, a media contact for the Pacific Southwest Regional Office of the Forestry Service, also did not respond to an email for comment.

Donnelly told TheDC that the suit will also spotlight Kevin Elliott, the forest supervisor for the Sequoia National Forest in California: “Kevin Elliott has had numerous complaints by female firefighters of assault, sexual harassment, gender harassment, workplace violence, guns in the workplace and drugs in the workplace. He has not properly dealt with these problems and retaliates against the women who report them by false allegations of misconduct/discipline, poor performance ratings, denial of training, verbal abuse, and termination such as with [Alicia] Dabney.”

Elliott did not return a request for comment.

After Dabney came forward and claimed that she was the target of a harassment campaign starting in 2011, Elliott fired her from her job as a firefighter at the Sequoia National Forest. Dabney had complained that a photo was sent around her work place which read “Alicia Dabney is a whore” and that a lewd voicemail was left for her via a colleague’s phone.

LISTEN TO THE VOICEMAIL (NSFW):

Dabney also alleged her supervisor, Tyler Castle — who is still employed by the USDA Forest Service — attempted to rape her before she was able to talk him down in 2012.

Dabney will be one of the lead agents in the new suit.

Jonel Wagoner, another lead agent, has worked with the Forest Service since 1980 and said she’s been on the receiving end of repeated discrimination. She alleges that she’s been constantly subjected to abusive language, forced to take a demotion four times in order to get away from a bad situation, and hasn’t received a promotion since the early 1990s.

She works on the Sequoia National Forest, where Elliott is two levels above her. Wagoner said that at their first meeting, Elliott told her he considered her reputation for activism to be a bad thing.

Wagoner told TheDC that she doesn’t consider herself an activist, but a whistle blower.

Wagoner told TheDC that Elliott retaliated against her after she was included in the 2011 class action suit. He allegedly refused to deal with any of the union business she brought him as the union representative, falsely accused her of missing work, and failed to investigate Wagoner’s allegations that crew members were smoking marijuana on the job.

“He hates me so bad that he retaliates against the people I advocate on behalf of,” Wagoner said.