BOSTON, May 30 -- A state agency ruled Tuesday that Northwest Airlines failed to respond to complaints by a female worker at Boston's Logan Airport that she was being sexually harassed by her colleagues right up to her murder in 1992. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination said 'very compelling' evidence from Susan Taraskiewicz's former co-workers confirmed that Northwest management ignored the 27-year-old ramp supervisor's reports of sexually explicit taunts, lewd graffiti and anonymous telephone calls. 'Each witness corroborated the details of her outrageous treatment while she worked as a baggage handler and the fact that when it was brought to the attention of Northwest Airlines, Northwest failed to address the harassment,' Michael Duffy, the head of the commission, told a news conference. The woman's parents filed a discrimination suit against the nation's fourth largest airline last year based on evidence found in their daughter's diary, which recorded almost daily incidents of harassment and detailed her efforts to lodge complaints with the company. Taraskiewitz said Northwest assigned her onorous tasks such as cleaning airline toilets and passed her up for promotion after she began reporting the incidents, which included a fellow employee exposing himself to her and graffiti about her inside airplanes and on her locker. The commission quoted a co-worker as saying Taraskiewitz told the head of Northwest Airlines in Boston a month before her death that she feared for her life because the graffiti depicted a coffin with her name on it. 'This harassment clearly took the heightened form of threat,' said Herbert Holtz, an attorney representing the Taraskiewicz's case.
Holtz said it was the first time the panel had ruled on a complaint filed after the complainant had died. Northwest challenged the complaint, claiming Taraskiewicz failed to report the harassment within six months before her death and the suit was filed more than six months after the diary was found. Northwest Airlines and attorneys for the Taraskiewicz family are scheduled to meet June 25 in an effort to reach an out-of-court settlement. The state investigation did not establish a link between Taraskiewicz and the four Northwest baggage handlers named in her diary as her harassers. All four were among 25 people convicted recently in a $7 million credit card scam based at Logan Airport. One of those involved, Joe Nuzzo, was fired in 1989 for harassing Taraskiewicz but rehired shortly afterwards. Taraskiewicz's murder is unsolved. Her beaten and stabbed body was found in the trunk of her car in September 1992, a day and a half after she left work on a sandwich run for co-workers. Several female Northwest Airlines workers at other airports have complained of sexual harassment, but the Taraskiewicz case was the most serious. Duffy said Northwest's training practices and sexual harassment policies will come under scrutiny as a result of the ruling. (Reported by Andrea McDaniels)
