A former associate professor for Yale University's Department of Spanish and Portuguese has filed a federal lawsuit claiming nonstop sexual harassment and crude comments were aimed at her and others by the department's acting chairman.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. district court in New Haven, Susan Byrne claims Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria's alleged behavior was repeatedly ignored by the department's chair and another professor within the department. To make matters worse, Byrne alleges, top Yale officials knew there was a pattern of discrimination within that department and did nothing about it. The lawsuit alleges violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act.

Sexual harassment, intimidation and bullying by Echevarria, the 21-page lawsuit asserts, included him playing with “the hair of undergraduate and graduate students on multiple occasions” to more severe alleged abuse such as making “multiple unsavory comments about the body parts of several female members of the department” to telling Byrne after hip replacement surgery he was looking forward to returning to his “favorite kind of sex, standing up” to directing her to sit in what he called his “love couch” in his office.