Lawsuit says corrections employee fired for reporting issues

Oct. 8—Veronica Bernal Martin's attorney describes the longtime New Mexico Department of Corrections employee as "a true believer" — someone committed to returning inmates to society in better shape than when they arrived at prison.

She had worked for the department for more than a decade when she was promoted to unit manger at Springer Correctional Center in 2019.

Martin jumped at the chance to put her master's degree in public administration to good use, attorney Ryan Villa said Friday, though it meant moving her family hundreds of miles from the Las Cruces area to the tiny town of Springer near the Colorado border.

"She was absolutely committed to the goal of rehabilitating these women in Springer. It was sort of her life's work," Villa said. "She was climbing the ladder, and she really felt she could accomplish a lot of things and help these women better their lives and make the community safer."

Today, the 45-year-old mother of four is struggling to recover from a stroke and is locked in a bitter legal battle with the state after being fired — in retaliation, Villa claims, for reporting the hostile and misogynistic conditions she encountered at the women's prison.

"No woman should be treated as inferior to their male counterparts, have to witness her female colleagues undermined, demeaned, and sexually harassed, or have to go to work every day in a hostile work environment," Villa wrote in the Whistleblower Protection Act lawsuit he filed on Martin's behalf in state District Court.

"When a woman complains to her employer that she and her colleagues are experiencing gender discrimination and sexual harassment in a hostile workplace it's the employer's responsibility to investigate those claims and to protect the women reporting from retaliation," the complaint continued. "Here, Ms. Bernal Martin's employer did exactly the opposite: they retaliated against her."

Allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation are nothing new at Springer. But in the past, they've largely come from inmates.

Nearly a dozen women have filed lawsuits since 2018, alleging they were sexually assaulted while incarcerated at the facility. They contend officials fostered an environment that emboldened guards to exploit them with impunity and made them afraid to report the alleged abuse.

The state has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle several complaints and paid contract attorneys hundreds of thousands more to fight the cases in court. At least five are still pending.

Corrections Department spokeswoman Carmelina Hart acknowledged receiving a request for comment for this story but did not provide a comment Friday.

Martin was excited when she first settled her family into a trailer on Springer Correctional Center grounds, her lawsuit says. But within a month or so of starting her new job, she began to receive reports from inmates about abuse of authority and retaliation by correctional staff.

She reported her concerns to Warden Marianna Vigil and Maj. Robert Gonzales, but as the months passed, she experienced sex discrimination and harassment herself and witnessed other female staff members being harassed and humiliated by Gonzales, Martin says in her lawsuit.

Gonzales and Vigil both have been named as defendants in five lawsuits filed by inmates accusing them of failing to properly supervise corrections employees in a way that kept inmates from harm.

In November 2019, Martin complained to officials higher up the chain of command, including former Deputy Director of Adult Prisons German Franco, about an incident in which she claims Gonzales cursed at a female employee.

Director of Adult Prisons John Gay showed up at Springer three days later, the lawsuit says. But instead of investigating the conditions Martin reported, the lawsuit says he placed her on administrative leave and officials began investigating fabricated misconduct allegations made against her as a pretext for her eventual firing.

"She was walked off prison grounds. Her family was uprooted and forced to leave their home on prison grounds and move back to southern New Mexico," the lawsuit says.

Prior to her reports, Martin's lawsuit says, she had never been the subject of investigation or discipline in her career.

After filing written reports about gender discrimination at Springer, she became the subject of three separate investigations, including one that accused her of creating a hostile workplace for Gonzales and another investigation into allegations she had coerced a female inmate into making a complaint about her mistreatment by a guard, according to the lawsuit.

Martin filed a gender discrimination and retaliation complaint with the New Mexico Human Rights Bureau in December 2019, her lawsuit says.

And on May 14, 2020, she emailed then Director of Adult Prisons Gary Maciel and Corrections Secretary Alisha Tafoya Lucero for help.

"I am being wrongly accused and not expecting you to believe me but rather fully investigate all those involved," she wrote in the email. "I am respectfully requesting that I and all those involved be polygraphed."

In the email, Martin added she felt she was being retaliated against for reporting Gonzales and begged officials to investigate her claims.

"At the end of the day I have no regrets and know that regardless [of] the outcome I did the right thing," she wrote.

"On a personal note, I am depressed, I fought so hard to be a Unit Manager up north," she wrote. "I was so scared to be a Unit Manager. I wanted to be a good boss and a fair leader. This was my dream and it only lasted eight months."

The lawsuit says Tafoya Lucero took no action to protect Martin or respond to her complaints.

Martin was officially terminated in July 2020, her lawsuit says.

In June 2021, the New Mexico Human Rights Bureau issued a probable-cause determination, concluding she had been retaliated against and that the investigations against her and her termination were "pre-textual," according to the lawsuit.

Martin appealed her firing to the State Personnel Office, Villa said. In May 2022, the department agreed to reinstate her to a Unit Manager position at Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility — were she had originally worked — as part of a negotiated settlement in her case.

Martin asked during negotiations that her benefits be restored as if she had never been fired, Villa said. The state refused to grant that request, the lawyer added, but Martin agreed to the settlement because she was eager to get back to work.

Less than two weeks after she returned to work in late May, Villa said, Martin suffered a stroke.

The disability insurance she had prior to her firing had not been restored, Villa said, meaning she's without an income while she attempts to recover.

"Now her family is in dire financial stress because she can't work and she doesn't have that disability policy that she lost because of this wrongful termination," Villa said.

Martin's case is scheduled to go to trial in March.

She's seeking an unspecified amount of actual, compensatory and special damages, including two times her back pay with interest, and reinstatement of her benefits.