Three women employed by West Virginia University (WVU) Hospitals in the Department of Neurosurgery have agreed to engage in mediation to attempt to resolve their lawsuit against the university and Dr. Charles Rosen, who they claim discriminated against them by creating a hostile, sexually-charged workplace environment. The women – Angela Maset (a nurse), Tiffany Edwards (an administrative secretary) and Elizabeth Hunter Baldwin (a nurse practitioner) – no longer work for the University. They were joined in their sexual harassment suit by Terrence Julien (a professor of neurosurgery), who filed a separate discrimination suit.

According to the three women, Dr. Rosen frequently made offensive remarks, jokes, and comments and made unwanted sexual advances in the form of unprofessional flirtations. They also claim they were unlawfully fired as a result of their decision to file a lawsuit. All of these claims are violations of the West Virginia Human Rights Act.

The University filed a motion to have the suit dismissed because one of the women was no longer employed by WVU, but the judge in the case denied the motion, citing WVU’s own internal investigation which substantiated many of the women’s claims, and the fact that the women were willing to enter into mediation to settle the matter.

There has been some talk of separating Julien’s suit from the others as it is not a sexual harassment suit, but the other plaintiffs asked the judge to postpone that decision until after the mediation, which is scheduled for mid-May.