Chief engineer sues Maersk for wrongful firing in Midshipman X rape probe

A chief engineer who worked on the AP Moller-Maersk ship at the centre of a high-profile rape case alleges he was a victim of a “pretext firing” aimed at shifting attention away from the company’s sexual assault and harassment policies.

Filomeno Gaylan filed a lawsuit in a US federal court in New York against the company’s Maersk Line Ltd arm, alleging wrongful termination.

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He also accused the company and his union, the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association (MEBA), of violating a collective bargaining agreement. He is seeking at least $300,000 in damages.

Gaylan was serving on the 6,000-ceu Alliance Fairfax (built 2005) at the time of the 2019 incident that led a cadet known as Midshipman X, who later revealed herself as Hope Hicks, to accuse another engineer of raping her while she was a 19-year-old US Merchant Marine Academy student serving her sea year on the Maersk Line Ltd-chartered vessel.

The ship’s chief engineer since 2015, Gaylan was one of five people fired over the allegations. He was one of three who were sacked for violating the company’s alcohol policy, while the other two were fired for not cooperating with the investigation.

But the seafarer claimed in the lawsuit that he did not drink at any time on board the vessel and that he was avoiding alcohol generally because of a medical condition. Nor did he see any drinking at the time of the incident.

Maersk Line Ltd sees the firing differently, explaining that Gaylan was the senior engineer in the department where Hicks was an engine cadet and was a direct supervisor of her alleged assailant.

Gaylan’s Chalos & Co lawyers said in court papers that an anonymous blog post by Hicks in October 2021 was the first indication of her allegations of sexual assault by the ship’s first engineer.

TradeWinds has reported that the alleged assailant has since been named in public documents as Edgar Sison, who is facing US Coast Guard proceedings for alcohol violations and who could not be reached for this story.

In the post, Hicks alleged that she was raped by the 60-year-old first engineer after she was pressured into drinking with her shipmates during sea year, the period in which the academy’s students are put on ships to gain crucial on board experience.

US and Maersk probes

Her blog post under the pseudonym Midshipman X sparked investigations by the Coast Guard and Maersk Line Ltd in which Gaylan was interviewed.

Gaylan’s lawyers, Michael Chalos and Briton Sparkman, wrote that in those interviews, the chief engineer recounted what he witnessed on the day of the alleged rape.

He said he went to Sison’s office after hearing loud noises and smelling cigar smoke. He found the crewman with the ship’s second engineers telling “sea stories”. Gaylan told investigators that he then saw Hicks and another crewman enter the office with what appeared to be two bottles of alcohol and put them on a table. But he did not see anyone drinking or appear intoxicated.

Gaylan also said he saw Hicks made an “inappropriate sexual advance” on Sison, who rebuffed it before Hicks was pulled away by another crewman, according to the lawsuit.

“Upon seeing this inappropriate behaviour, the plaintiff ordered everyone at the gathering back to their cabins and he reprimanded the first assistant engineer for the inappropriate conduct he observed,” Gaylan’s lawyers said, using another term for first engineer.

“The participants at the gathering went back to their respective cabins as ordered. The plaintiff observed nothing further that evening and was unaware of any subsequent alleged sexual assault until the female cadet wrote her anonymous blog almost two years later.”

The description of the events in Gaylan’s lawsuit are in sharp contrast to Hicks’ account, as well as Maersk Line Ltd’s description of what happened.

“Gaylan’s allegations about me are disgusting, obviously self-serving and completely false,” Hicks told TradeWinds. “Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me that he would launch malicious attacks against a sexual assault survivor in an attempt to protect his friend and his own job.”

As TradeWinds has reported, Hicks was the only woman on the US-flag vessel when she served as an engine cadet. In her 2022 lawsuit against Maersk Line Ltd, which has since been settled, she described a workplace at sea in which she frequently saw heavy drinking. On the day of the alleged rape, she said she felt compelled to obey senior officers and took as many as 10 shots before the assault took place.

Maersk Line Ltd said Gaylan was fired because he failed to stop alcohol abuse by mariners in his presence and under his direct supervision, and failed to report it to the company.

“Despite Maersk Line Ltd’s strict policy of no alcohol on board, he was present in the first assistant engineer’s stateroom when alcohol was being consumed by all of the vessel’s licensed engineers, along with both US Merchant Marine Academy cadets, which is a violation of company policy,” the company said in a statement provided to TradeWinds.

“Hope Hicks in her lawsuit said she was afraid to report her assault to Gaylan because the top four officers were ‘like best friends’.”

‘Pretext firing’

In Gaylan’s lawsuit, Chalos and Sparkman wrote that Maersk Line Ltd fired the chief engineer in a February 2022 letter listing the alcohol violations for which a crew member may be discharged, without explaining which provision he had run foul of.

“The wrongful termination of the plaintiff was, in fact, a ‘pretext firing’ and was not related to any violation of Maersk’s drug and alcohol policy, but rather, for Maersk to avoid a governmental investigation into its sexual harassment policies and (lack of) enforcement thereof and a potential additional fine by the … Coast Guard,” they wrote.

And they alleged that Maersk Line Ltd declined to accept Gaylan’s grievance filed in January 2023 because it was not delivered in time.

The mariner alleged that Maersk Line Ltd and MEBA, which has a collective bargaining agreement with the company to provide engineers to its US-flag ships, did not inform him of the time limit while he was cooperating with the investigation. MEBA did not immediately respond to TradeWinds’ request for comment and has not filed an answer in the case.

Gaylan also alleged that the union refused to file a grievance under the agreement’s requirements. His lawyers said he was in the Philippines during the Covid-19 lockdown without reliable access to the internet and was suffering from depression, even though MEBA told him it would lodge the grievance. Chalos and Sparkman wrote that these factors should qualify as “extenuating circumstances” allowed under the union contract.

“Defendants have wrongfully, unreasonably, arbitrarily and in bad faith failed to act upon plaintiff’s grievance,” Chalos and Sparkman wrote.