RIVERSIDE, Calif. (CN) - Female long-haul truck drivers must carry weapons to fend off sexual assaults by co-drivers because CRST Expedited trucking ignores their complaints, women claim in a federal class action.
Lead plaintiffs Cathy Sellars, Claudia Lopez and Leslie Fortune sued CRST Expedited in Federal Court on Monday, in a lengthy complaint alleging discrimination and retaliation.
Sexual assaults of female CRST drivers are so pervasive that others in the trucking industry joke that the acronym, which stands for Cedar Rapids Steel Transport, also stands for "Constantly Raping Student Truckers," according to the lawsuit.
The women's attorney Joshua Friedman told Courthouse News that CRST has been ignoring complaints of sexual harassment for more than a decade.
"There have been allegations of rapes, sexual assaults, and assaults with weapons. Many women say they have taken to carrying knives and Tasers to defend themselves," Friedman said in an interview.
"Our client Leslie Fortune had to sleep with knives under her pillow and refer to them to get her co-driver to leave her alone. Another client had to have a screwdriver," co-counsel Giselle Schuetz added on the conference call.
The attorneys said CRST's response to the allegations is "really beyond troubling."
Based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, CRST Expedited is a subsidiary of CRTS International.
The plaintiffs say male drivers constantly make offensive sexual remarks to female drivers, comment on their bodies, proposition them for sex and sexually assault them - and CRST does nothing to stop it.
As a result, women "have to fend off or worry about rape by their trainer, while enduring express threats of being failed, while being objectified and told to perform sex acts," according to the 74-page complaint.
Training costs thousands of dollars, but CRST will forgive the debt if a trainee signs an eight-month contract to drive for the company. If she is sexually assaulted during training or before her contract ends, she must endure the abuse for the sake of her job, report it to deaf ears, or quit and have to repay her training costs, according to the complaint.
"When female drivers refuse to have sex with them, male drivers retaliate, including but not limited to by kidnapping them, kicking them off shared trucks, making false reports of misconduct, threatening them with weapons, beating them or threatening beatings, spreading rumors they are prostitutes, preventing them from contacting CRST for assistance, and refusing to assist them with work-related tasks," the complaint states.
The women say CRST gives lip service to their complaints and deliberately conducts inadequate, biased investigations that find nothing happened - so the women have been forced to carry weapons.
CRST does not discipline men accused of harassment or sexual assault, according to the complaint. It merely classifies them as "no females," an appealable designation forbidding them from driving with a woman for six months.
But women who make complaints are forced to leave the truck even if they were driving it first, and have to wait without pay until someone from the company comes to pick them up, which can take as long as a week, the complaint states.
Friedman called CRST's no-females policy "astounding."
"It's a matter of logic. If you don't make factual findings on sexual assault allegations, what is the basis for a trainer's ability to appeal?" he asked.