PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – An Eleanor Slater Hospital employee is accusing the state of workplace discrimination in part because of a decision last year to reinstate a coworker who “stripped her of her responsibility.”

Sharon Sousa, associate director of support services at the state-run hospital, filed the federal lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court of Rhode Island. She’s accusing the R.I. Department of Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals – which oversees Eleanor Slater – of violating state and federal employment protection laws related to discrimination and retaliation.

Sousa “has suffered and will continue to suffer loss of income, severe mental and physical anguish, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and other great harm,” attorney Edward Formisano wrote in the complaint.

He called the state’s actions “grossly negligent, reckless, deliberate, intentional, malicious, deceitful, wanton, willful and/or in bad faith.”

The state and BHDDH are named as the defendants in the lawsuit, but the complaint focuses mostly on the alleged actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Womazetta Jones, along with BHDDH Chief Operating Officer Christopher Feisthamel, whose employment status was called into question last year.

BHDDH spokesperson Randy Edgar declined to comment on the allegations outlined in the complaint.

“As the named defendant in the lawsuit, the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Hospitals and Developmental Disabilities will not...

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