Engineer Says IBM Forced Her to Have Sex With Official
An IBM engineer filed suit Friday alleging that her bosses in Santa Monica effectively forced her to have sex with the Pentagon’s leading defense conversion official so the giant computer company might secure millions of dollars in funding.
Veronica Gunther, in her suit filed in Superior Court in Santa Monica, alleged that her bosses threatened to fire her in 1991 and 1992 unless she maintained a sexual relationship with Gary Denman, 54, director of the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA.
Gunther, 35, alleged that “in an act of desperation” in August, 1992, she “went to bed with Dr. Denman in exchange for his promise to get IBM into his funding channel” and that “the very next day, a series of talks began between Dr. Denman and IBM executives.” (Denman has a doctorate in engineering.)
International Business Machines Corp. and two of Gunther’s managers, Ray Blonn and Nancy Green, were named as defendants in the suit. Denman was not.
Repeated efforts to reach Denman, Blonn and Green were unsuccessful. Scott Brooks, a spokesman at IBM’s headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., said the company does not comment on pending litigation. An ARPA spokeswoman, Jan Walker, also declined to comment.
Gunther has been on medical leave from IBM since January, after she twice tried to kill herself while suffering from severe depression, the suit says.
ARPA finances the development of leading-edge technology and has responsibility for selecting companies, universities and community organizations that are receiving defense conversion funding under the $2.5-billion Technology Reinvestment Program.
The program is a cornerstone of the Clinton Administration’s conversion effort, aiming to create so-called dual-use technology that has both military and commercial applications.
When the program announced its first round of awards Oct. 22, IBM was a partner on several winning conversion projects that received a total of $29.5 million. Administration officials stressed that the defense conversion awards were made strictly on the basis of technical merit.
According to the suit, Gunther has two master’s degrees in engineering and formerly worked for Denman when she was a project manager for technology programs at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, in the mid-1980s.
During that time, he “exploited his position of power and authority by seducing her,” the suit alleges.
After Gunther “refused to continue the relationship,” Denman “retaliated by abusing her and degrading and humiliating her,” at times “in front of her co-workers and clients,” according to the suit.
After she joined IBM in 1988, Gunther “was relentlessly pushed to maintain steady contact with Dr. Denman,” particularly after he was named ARPA’s director in 1991, the suit alleges.
The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges that IBM refused to investigate the matter and “condoned the hostile and abusive working conditions which resulted.”
Times staff writer Ralph Vartabedian in Washington contributed to this report.
