Daniel Wolfram
The case has turned into a nightmare for a civilian engineer who was raped on board a ship.
A nightmarish story has emerged on board a Navy ship where a woman serving in the maritime branch of the US military as an engineer was raped by one of her captains.
The woman sued, hoping to get justice and some peace of mind after more than four years of pain and suffering.
However, the judge threw the case out on the grounds that it was a job-related matter.
Rape handled as workplace injury
Elsie Dominguez filed a lawsuit after reporting that her ship captain entered her room and raped her in December 2021 aboard the USNS Carson City.
A federal judge has dismissed the case. The court ruled that the rape must be handled as a workers’ comp complaint under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act because she was raped in a bed aboard a Navy transport ship and therefore on active duty.
“I’ve lost a lot of sleep, I’ve lost a lot of friends who didn’t agree with what I was doing in coming forward,” Dominguez said to the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes. “I learned that I had to set a precedent legally so that this could be used in the future.”
Her lawyer, Christine Dunn, rejected treating rape as a work injury. “That is very different from being raped in your sleep in your bed. That should not be workers’ comp,” Dunn said.
Struggling to recover
Elsie Dominguez lived in the dorm and slept in the same bed where she was allegedly raped for almost two years after it occurred.
At the same time, getting care proved difficult. Therapy sessions were hard to come by for Dominguez, since state licensing laws kept her from receiving care on a regular basis because she was living on the ship.
“I wasn’t afforded the chance to be on land and to just walk into a therapist’s office,” Dominguez said.
She took a year off with no pay to get away from it all, which paused her health coverage. “That year was also me trying to find myself and a way to keep moving forward,” Dominguez said.
A lonely return
Yamil Sanchez Padilla, the captain who allegedly raped Elsie, went on paid leave during an investigation by the Coast Guard and NCIS. Criminal charges were withdrawn when he ultimately gave up his professional license to avoid an administrative hearing.
Dunn said fighting back helps make “a dent in the institutional indifference” facing workers. “Things don’t change unless someone’s willing to fight, and, no, we didn’t ultimately have a success here, but I think every time someone like Elsie is brave enough to raise their hand and fight injustice, it makes a difference,” Dunn said.
Now working on another Navy ship, Dominguez says the case has prevented her from having meaningful workplace relationships with her colleagues. She even claims that a man learned about her case independently and told her he “wished he didn’t know these things about her.”
“There’s less opportunity for any type of bonding or camaraderie,” she said. “It’s a lonelier world than it already was.”
