"Our country does not need your kind," Fariba Moeinpour says she was told.An Iranian-born research scientist alleges that a former University of Alabama at Birmingham co-worker harassed her for nine years because of her ethnicity and even threatened her with a pistol but that the school failed to stop the abuse even after she repeatedly complained.
“What happened to me was awful,” she said. “The abuse just continued and continued and continued, and nobody would help me, not Dr. Grubbs, not UAB, not anybody. I had to tolerate everything, because I am a scientist and I needed this job, because I have a daughter.” Cagle, the lawsuit says, spat on the ground while passing Moeinpour, urged Grubbs “to get rid of” her and “recruited fellow employees to help her in harassing and abusing Ms. Moeinpour.”
“Despite Ms. Moeinpour’s reports of discrimination to Defendant Mayer in Human Resources and to her supervisor, Dr. Grubbs, Defendant Cagle continued to discriminate, harass, and mock Ms. Moeinpour on a near-daily basis because she was Middle Eastern and from Iran,” the suit says. Moenipour said that when she told Grubbs that she had proof that she had told him about her allegation of abuse against Cagle, Grubbs “grabbed Ms. Moeinpour by the chin and knocked her down, cutting her face with his nails and causing her to bleed,” the lawsuit says.