A maintenance worker is preparing to sue the City of San Antonio over allegations of sexual harassment and assault by her supervisors.
Maria Villegas was joined by her attorney, Lynn Ellenberger, as she spoke with KENS 5.
“The bullying, the assault, the sexual harassment … it’s too much,” Villegas said.
Villegas is a maintenance worker for the City of San Antonio. She says the problems began after she was transferred to the Henry B. González Convention Center in March 2021.
“The supervisors would talk down to me,” she said. “I felt it was mostly women. They would say, ‘Go do this,’ and, ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ I felt uncomfortable, but I tolerated it because I needed the work. The job was my bread and butter.”
On August 13, 2021, Villegas says she was walking down a hallway with two supervisors when a third came out of his office.
“We walked by his office, and he came out,” Villegas said. “He said, ‘Where are you all going?’ The supervisors next to me said, ‘Oh, we are going to do that task you told us to do.’ I turn around. Me and the other supervisor are walking forward when he comes up behind me and he pulls my hair. I just see the ceiling and I hear like a click on my neck. I keep walking, but he brought me back to another world.”
Villegas says she is a domestic violence survivor.
After the incident, Villegas says she went up the chain of command and reported the supervisor who yanked her hair. She says the incident was caught on surveillance camera, but she claims her complaints were not taken seriously, so she went to the police.
Court documents show the supervisor was charged with Assault – Bodily Injury. A judge granted Villegas a no-contact order, and the case is set to go to trial on March 28. However, Villegas says the supervisor is still employed at the convention center.
Just two months later, she says there was another incident with a different supervisor.
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