No employee should have to endure sexual harassment in the workplace. It's even worse when complaints about it go unanswered.

That's what a Cincinnati doctor is claiming in a lawsuit against Cincinnati Children's Hospital and her boss, also a physician. At a trial proceeding this week, the woman is seeking $3.7 million in damages for alleged sexual harassment and discrimination.

The woman says her boss, who is the director of the critical care division, treated her poorly after she rebuffed unwanted romantic advances. The doctor, who was hired in 2005, also says she was paid less than her male counterparts. She also says the hospital ignored its own policies, including allowing her boss to discriminate against her in favor of another female employee he bought a house with. Her boss also apparently violated hospital policy by living with a subordinate.

It doesn't stop there. The woman says the hospital fired her after she filed the lawsuit, out of retaliation. (Before the trial started, the judge ordered the hospital to re-hire her.) In addition, she says the institution bred a hostile work environment by failing to follow its own policies or respond to her complaints.

According to sources, the woman's attorneys argued at her three-week trial that her boss essentially said or did whatever he wanted, without even considering hospital policy. The hospital, meanwhile, failed to follow its own policies on at least 16 occasions, the attorneys said.

Predictably, the hospital denied the woman's claims and said they were fabricated. The defendants' attorneys also described the woman as being "disconnected from reality."

The trial, held before a judge in the Hamilton County Common Pleas court, should wrap up soon.

Source: Cinncinnati.com, "Doctor seeks $3.7M in suit against Children's," Kimball Perry, 17 May 2011