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Iranian-born researcher alleges that a former colleague at the University of Alabama at Birmingham harassed her for nine years because of her ethnicity and even threatened her with a pistol, but the school failed to stop the abuse even after she complained repeatedly.
The woman, Fariba Moeinpour, said in a federal discrimination lawsuit filed in the Northern District of Alabama that Mary Jo Cagle, a data analyst at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, or UAB, taunted her for having a “weird ass” name, called him a “b —-” and repeatedly told him to “go back to Iran”.
“Our country doesn’t need your kind,” Cagle said, according to the lawsuit.
The abuse has escalated over the years, Moeinpour said in the lawsuit, who claims Cagle nearly ran over her and her daughter with a car and then fired a gun at her “in the parking lot of the UAB while telling him that this is what ‘we’ do to a ‘sand n —–.’ ”
Moeinpour said she had complained several times over the nine-year period to UAB’s human resources department and to herself and Cagle’s supervisor Clinton Grubbs about the harassment. Grubbs initially “dismissed his complaints and told him to focus on his job,” according to the lawsuit. When he intervened, Grubbs told Moeinpour that Cagle had threatened him as well, he said. It all came to a head on February 18, 2020, when Moeinpour was fired after an argument with Grubbs over how to deal with Cagle escalated into violence, court documents show.
Responding to a series of questions about Moeinpour’s claims, UAB spokesperson Alicia Rohan said: “UAB is not commenting on pending litigation.”
A woman who answered Cagle’s cell phone number said, “I’m not speaking to anyone at the moment.”
UAB employee relations chief Kelly Mayer and the University of Alabama board of trustees, which oversee the state’s public university system, were also named in the lawsuit. NBC News has contacted the two. NBC News also left a message for Grubbs, who is not named the accused. It was not immediately clear if Grubbs was still working for UAB.
Moeinpour, 59, a naturalized US citizen who emigrated from Iran in 1989, said she has struggled to find another job since being made redundant and surviving with the help of her daughter.
“What happened to me was awful,” she said. “The abuse continued and continued and continued, and no one would help me, not Dr. Grubbs, not the UAB, not anyone. I had to put up with everything, because I am a scientist and I needed this job, because I have a daughter.
Moeinpour, who had worked for another UAB researcher, was transferred to Grubbs lab in February 2011 after finding evidence of tampering and manipulation of data and reported it to the Office of Research Integrity, an agency of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said Grace Starling, one of her attorneys at the Barrett & Farahany law firm in Atlanta.
The lawsuit alleges that Cagle started abusing Moeinpour almost from the time she started working for Grubbs at UAB School of Medicine.
The case was brought to the attention of an associate vice president of UAB in 2012, according to a letter shared with NBC News. In the letter, David Wright, director of the Office of Research Integrity, asked whether Cagle and another lab worker were punishing Moeinpour for being a whistleblower.
Moeinpour claims nothing has changed.
“During the following years, the defendant Cagle continued its campaign of harassment relentlessly,” says the lawsuit. “She told her colleagues that because Ms. Moeinpour is a Middle Eastern woman from Iran, she does not believe in God, that she is stupid and that she hated Ms. Moeinpour’s accent.”
Cagle, according to the lawsuit, spat on the ground as she walked past Moeinpour, urged Grubbs “to get rid of” her and “recruited colleagues to help her harass and mistreat Ms. Moeinpour.”
Moeinpour said in court documents that Grubbs told him he was threatened after telling Cagle she would be fired if she didn’t stop her abusive behavior. “The next day four men came to his house, pushed him against the car and said, ‘This is your second warning. If you do it again, there won’t be any third and left, ”according to the lawsuit.
Grubbs told Moeinpour that “Cagle was in the Mafia” and that he was afraid of her, according to the lawsuit. Subsequently, Moeinpour said, Grubbs refused to discipline Cagle and said if Moeinpour kept trying to complain, it would be his word against his, according to the lawsuit.
Moeinpour said she appealed to Mayer, the director of employee relations, for help, but that “she was ignored, pushed back and on at least one occasion the accused Mayer had her said to go see a psychologist “.
“Despite Ms. Moeinpour’s reports of discrimination to Defendant Mayer of Human Resources and her supervisor, Dr. Grubbs, Defendant Cagle continued to discriminate, harass and make fun of Ms. Moeinpour almost daily because she was from the Middle East and Iran. “, says the costume.
Finally, in February 2020, according to the lawsuit, Moeinpour informed Grubbs that she had called Human Relations and reported that Cagle had threatened her life and that she was also going to tell her supervisor.
“Dr. Grubbs became more and more agitated, said he would lose his job, that they would ask him why he had not reported his complaints and that he would kill himself if that happened,” the lawsuit says. .
Grubbs, according to the lawsuit, had called campus police to arrest Moeinpour “to silence her about the actions of the accused Cagle.”
Moenipour said that when she told Grubbs she had proof that she told him about her abuse allegation against Cagle, Grubbs “grabbed Ms Moeinpour by the chin and knocked her over, cutting her off. face with her fingernails and causing her to bleed, ”the lawsuit said.
“When Ms. Moeinpour fell to the ground, he fell on top of her and held her down,” he said. “In an effort to get him away from her, Mrs. Moeinpour slapped him in the face.”
Moeinpour admitted when police arrived on campus that she beat Grubbs “to try to prevent him from attacking and tampering with her,” according to the lawsuit.
Moeinpour was taken to jail hours later, according to the lawsuit, which indicates that the UAB subsequently fired her “for violating its policy against fighting and absenteeism, although she knows Ms Moeinpour had said that she had been attacked by Grubbs and without questioning him or asking for evidence to back up his claims.
Moeinpour repeated her story in the complaint she filed with the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in August 2020 under her former married name, Fariba Moeinpour Lawsen. She is divorced.
The UAB Police Department’s February 13, 2020 report on domestic violence describes Moeinpour as an ‘out of control’ assailant who slapped Grubbs in the face during an argument.
Grubbs said in the report that the feud was sparked when Moeinpour “went over his head and contacted his supervisor without contacting him first.” The report did not say why Moeinpour did it. Grubbs said he did not want to press charges and that they “had been in a relationship last year”.
Moeinpour told NBC News, “I have never had a romantic relationship with Dr Grubbs.”
Moeinpour, who seeks unspecified damages for “mental and emotional suffering”, became emotional as she recounted her ordeal.
“It has been nine years of angst,” she said.
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