A lesbian firefighter is suing her former employer, saying that she was sexually harassed on the job because she’s gay and then terminated in retaliation for reporting the sexual harassment.
Kira Castellon says in her suit that she joined Arbor Hose Company 1 in New Jersey in 2015 and was the only female firefighter there. She said that she was out at work as well.
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In September 2016, after she got a promotion, she said that a male coworker harassed her, kissed her, and groped her “on an almost daily basis” until January 2019.
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The lawsuit says that the coworker “thrust his pelvis into [her] from all directions as his way of saying hello and goodbye.”
“I’ll make you straight again,” Castellon says the male coworker once told her.
She got surgery at one point and returned to work in crutches, and the man kept on thrusting his pelvis into her so that it was hard “to stay upright as he groped her and thrust his pelvis into her rear-end.”
The firefighter alleges that the harassment was “open and notorious which became widely known throughout the firehouse”
Castellon reported the harassment but said that the fire department did nothing.
She was fired in October of 2019 after she used the fire department’s tax exemption ID to make purchases at a Sam’s Club. She says that the purchases were for the fire department, but the department said that they were personal and fired her over it. She says that it was actually retaliation for reporting sexual harassment.
