April 12, In 2019, Boston University finally fired David Merchant for sexually harassing Willenbring. (The university said it could not substantiate her claims of physical and psychological abuse.) Ms. Merchant issued a statement, which the Journal carried. science He reportedly swore that he had “never” sexually harassed anyone “in Antarctica in 1998 or 1999, or since”. But because of Willenbring, the word became public.
Reeling from the scandal, the National Science Foundation commissioned an external investigation into sexual assault and harassment at Antarctic research facilities. The lengthy report, released in August 2022, contained shocking allegations of assault, stalking and harassment. Former fuel superintendent Britt Berquist had a contract in McMurdo with a company now called Amentum. She supervised a crew of approximately 20 people who performed the hazardous work of handling and cleaning diesel and gasoline fuel tanks. One day in late November 2017, she said, she was sitting at a table next to a man in a senior position at Leidos, the company that manages the Antarctic research station. He groped her in front of her during a staff briefing.
When she told her boss about it, he said he witnessed part of the incident himself. His supervisor reported it to Amentum’s human resources department. “I told HR I never wanted to be near him again. ‘I’m scared of this person,’ says Berquist, ‘and they said, ‘Okay.'”
But in 2020, during another stint with McMurdo Contractors, she was told she would attend weekly virtual meetings with the same senior officials. Berquist needed the job, but she was belittling it to herself. “It was really disgusting and awful having to see his face and hear his stories,” she says. . Why does everyone act like he’s a normal person? ”
The following year, towards the end of nearly three weeks of COVID-19 quarantine with the New Zealand crew, she looked at the manifest for the next flight to Antarctica and noticed the names of senior officials listed there. I saw it. When she called the human resources department to file her complaint, she says she received a persistent response from two officials. One of them was introduced as a spokesperson for the victims.
“I said I didn’t want anything to do with this guy yet, and they said, ‘Well, how do we deal with this?'” Berquist said of his relationship with the two women. She became emotional recalling the conversation with her employer. “I thought they were going to be on my side,” she says. Instead, they kept asking her how scared she was to be near him.
“Ultimately, I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah,'” she says, “and I was like, ‘I don’t feel safe being alone in a room with him!'” she says. After that, her signal went out and she was unable to contact him again. Berquist returned to Antarctica, where he tried to avoid high-ranking officials. However, she eventually relented, as the safety of her team depended on her communicating with him on an almost daily basis.
