The FBI has agreed to pay more than $22 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging female recruits were singled out for dismissal in training and routinely harassed by instructors with sexually charged comments about their breast size, false allegations of infidelity and the need to take contraception “to control their moods.”
The payout to 34 women dismissed from the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, Virginia, still subject to approval by a federal judge, would rank among the biggest lawsuit settlements in the history of the bureau.
“These problems are pervasive within the FBI and the attitudes that created them were learned at the academy,” said David J. Shaffer, the lawyer for the women. “This case will make important major changes in these attitudes.”
Another said that an instructor leered at her and stared at her chest, “sometimes while licking his lips.”
Gross.
Hopefully this class action suit will lead to some cultural change within the agency, which is often the most difficult thing to change in any organization.
I’d like to see it lead to some personnel changes at the agency, because that’s where cultural change starts
