Security officer alleges sexual harassment, retaliation at PRTC transit center
Prince William County VA April 21 2018 All Isabel Isenberg wanted out of her job as a security guard at a Prince William County bus facility was respect.
But after she told her superiors that one of her co-workers touched her inappropriately last year, she felt ignored and humiliated.
“I respected them, and it’s ridiculous that they didn’t respect me back,” Isenberg said.
Isenberg, a 21-year-old from Manassas, worked for about six months last year at the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission’s transit center in Woodbridge. She didn’t work directly for PRTC, the county’s commuter and local bus service, but was instead employed by a contractor, Stafford-based Eris Security.
But Isenberg says she spent the vast majority of her time working with PRTC’s employees, including one man who, she says, repeatedly grabbed her legs and breasts on Dec. 11.
“I was in shock,” Isenberg said. “I couldn’t believe what had just happened.”
Isenberg says she reported the incident to human resources officials at both PRTC and Eris, but she’s not aware that anything ever came of their respective investigations into the matter. She says Eris officials told her they were powerless to reprimand a PRTC employee, while PRTC barely told her anything.
Eris terminated Isenberg a month later, informing her that PRTC asked that she be removed from her position.
PRTC spokeswoman Christine Rodrigo wrote in an email to InsideNoVa that the agency “thoroughly investigated” Isenberg’s assault allegation and addressed it through PRTC’s human resource process. She also denied that Isenberg’s firing had anything to do with the incident, chalking it up to problems with Isenberg’s job performance.
Emails obtained by InsideNoVa indicate that officials at PRTC were concerned before the incident that Isenberg needed more training for the job, but they don’t reveal any specific performance issues being raised until three days after Isenberg reported the incident.
Isenberg says she never heard from anyone at PRTC or Eris about issues with her performance. She’s also frustrated that PRTC apparently didn’t reprimand her alleged assailant, even though he supervises other employees. Rodrigo would not address how the agency handled the matter, but current PRTC employees confirmed that the man was not fired or suspended.
Isenberg does not want the man she’s accusing to lose his job and also doesn’t want to press criminal charges against him, so InsideNoVa is not identifying the employee. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Isenberg did not seek media attention about the incident. After InsideNoVa learned independently about Isenberg’s firing and contacted her, she agreed to share this story to shed light on PRTC’s response to her accusations.
“I just don’t want this to happen again,” Isenberg said. “This is not just for me.”
Isenberg’s allegations are the first to involve sexual assault or harassment at PRTC, but she is far from the only current or former employee to speak about working conditions at the agency in recent months. The bus service recently received the results of an independent investigation into some of its management practices, while a review of charges of racial discrimination in the agency’s restructuring plans is still ongoing.
Isenberg says she joined Eris in the summer, after a few years bouncing around odd jobs following her graduation from Osbourn High School.
Founded in 2004, the company has a Dumfries office and holds some security contracts with federal agencies, according to information on the Small Business Administration’s website. Andrea Czeck, the company’s president and CEO, did not respond to a request for comment about this incident.
The company had been providing security at the PRTC’s Woodbridge transit center just off I-95 since April 2012. Isenberg says her duties largely consisted of making sure nothing went awry as commuters boarded buses in the early morning — the most she would do is call county police if anything looked amiss or someone had vandalized PRTC property.
Isenberg says she was friendly with many PRTC employees, though she had just met the man in question when Dec. 11 rolled around. She was preparing to leave at the end of her shift, about 1:30 p.m., and she was chatting with this man in a private office, out of the view of other employees.
Although the conversation was initially pleasant, Isenberg says, he touched her leg several times, uninvited. As she stood up to leave, she says, he grabbed her chest, and she quickly left the office.
“I grabbed my things and left right away,” Isenberg said.
She says she was so disturbed by the encounter that she mentioned it to her mother, who confirmed that her daughter described the incident to her that day.
The next morning, Isenberg says, she told several of her co-workers at PRTC about the incident, and they encouraged her to contact human resources. Two current PRTC employees, who both requested anonymity, confirmed that Isenberg told them about the incident.
“She was very disturbed,” one employee said. “And she was letting people know.”
Isenberg wrote an email at 8:08 a.m. on Dec. 12 to a PRTC employee with whom she regularly interacted, according to a copy she provided to InsideNoVa, and he then called the organization’s HR department. Isenberg says she also contacted Ashley Hon, her supervisor at Eris, about the matter, and even called the county police department’s non-emergency line. She ultimately decided against filing criminal charges. Hon declined to comment for this article.
A few days later, Isenberg says, she met with PRTC’s head of human resources, Marsha Reid. Isenberg says that Reid told her that the man called the incident a “misunderstanding,” and believed Isenberg was interested in him romantically.
Isenberg forcefully disputes that assertion, noting that she is engaged and believes that she was in no way sending the man any signals she was interested in him.
Rodrigo wouldn’t address Isenberg’s account of the meeting, saying the agency “will not comment further on PRTC human resource matters.”
As far as Isenberg could tell, the man was never disciplined, and three current PRTC employees confirmed that the man was never suspended or spent time away from the office. Isenberg says she never met with anyone else from PRTC about the incident, and Hon later told her that there was nothing that Eris could do to help her.
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