
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, December 12, 1993                   TAG: 9312120043
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

WOMAN: ABUSE AGGRAVATED LUPUS CASE WILL TEST CIVIL RIGHTS ACT, WHICH NOW

Magdalena Petrucelli's lupus had been in remission for five years - until 14 days after she accused her boss at a U.S. Army base in Texas of sexually harassing her.

Now, crippled by the potentially fatal disease, Petrucelli is among the first women taking claims of discrimination-caused disease to federal court under a new law that awards damages for physical harm from sexual harassment.

"This is a tragic example of the very real physical results of what discrimination can do to a person," said Ellen Vargas of the National Women's Law Center. "We never heard about this before, because the law didn't allow it."

In 1991, the Civil Rights Act was amended to award damages as well as lost wages to women who proved harassment. As the first cases from that change filter into court, doctors are stepping up efforts to prove harassment causes disease.

"There is convincing evidence that harassment represents a serious threat to women's health," said Dr. Louise Fitzgerald of the University of Illinois.

Petrucelli's case began last year when she complained about her supervisor, who had been demoted for sexually harassing several employees three years earlier at the Fort Hood, Texas, Army base.

Petrucelli was a sales clerk at Fort Hood's post exchange. In a complaint filed with the Army and Air Force Exchange Service in September 1992, she said Lawrence Perry twice touched her buttocks and once grabbed her around the waist.

Her lupus, a disease in which the immune system attacks the body, returned two weeks after she filed the complaint. Her kidneys are failing; her pancreas, liver, gall bladder and joints are damaged; and she has come close to death, her doctors say.

Last month, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service ruled that Perry did harass Petrucelli, that the stress aggravated her lupus, and that the agency "failed to avoid liability by taking immediate and appropriate corrective action."

It awarded her $63,000 in damages, most for medical bills.

But Petrucelli's lawyers say she deserves $300,000 - the maximum the Civil Rights Act allows - because her medical bills are approaching $90,000 already. They plan to file suit in U.S. District Court in Waco, Texas, next week.

The Army and Air Force Exchange Service refused comment. Perry, a retired Army sergeant, was fired but is appealing and has denied ever touching Petrucelli in a sexual manner.

Doctors say stress can initiate depression, headaches, weight loss and problems with sleeping and digestion, plus contribute to heart attack and other diseases, including lupus. In fact, doctors routinely advise lupus patients to avoid stress.

But proving stress is responsible for a disease's return, or whether it would have returned anyway, is tricky, Fitzgerald acknowledged.

by CNB