A longtime volunteer with the United Farm Workers claims in a new lawsuit that Cesar Chavez, the civil rights leader, raped her one night in the 1970s at the union’s headquarters in central California.
The woman’s suit, filed last week in state court in California, accuses nonprofit groups affiliated with the Chavez family and the U.F.W. of negligence, sexual harassment and violations of state civil rights laws. It appears to be the first such suit of its kind since an investigation by The New York Times published in March found compelling evidence that Mr. Chavez had sexually abused, assaulted and harassed underage girls and adult women as he built the most influential farmworkers union in the United States.
The suit illustrates the legal and financial risks faced by groups with ties to Mr. Chavez in the aftermath of the revelations, particularly as California has in recent years extended the statute of limitations for victims of sexual assault to file civil lawsuits to include assaults that occurred decades ago.
California allows victims to sue not only perpetrators but also institutions that knew or should have known about abuse. Other women, some of whom have made their accusations against Mr. Chavez public, say they are also considering legal action.
The Cesar Chavez Foundation, one of the nonprofits that was named in the lawsuit, said in a statement that it had only recently become aware of it. “We are reviewing with our legal counsel and will respond in a way that stays true to our mission and values,” the statement said.
The other nonprofit that was sued, the U.F.W. Foundation, which is a separate organization from the farmworkers union itself, did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the U.F.W. declined to comment.
In the lawsuit, which the woman filed anonymously as Jane Doe, she describes a previously unreported attack by Mr. Chavez in 1973. The woman, whose family lived and worked in Mr. Chavez’s compound for years, has spoken to The Times repeatedly over the last five years, and told her story on the condition that she not be named for fear of retaliation against her and her family.
She is the second woman to publicly accuse Mr. Chavez of raping them when they were adults. The other is Dolores Huerta, his U.F.W. co-founder and one of the most prominent Latina activists in the country. Ms. Huerta, 96, told The Times that Mr. Chavez had sexually assaulted her in a car in Delano, Calif., in the winter of 1966 and had previously pressured her into having sex with him in a hotel room in 1960.
Two other women, Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, said he had molested and assaulted them when they were underage from around 1972 to 1977, starting at the ages of 12 and 13.
The accusations by Ms. Huerta and the others earlier this year set off a national reckoning over the legacy of Mr. Chavez, who became one of the most significant Latino figures in American history and who died in 1993 at 66. California has renamed the state holiday known as Cesar Chavez Day to Farmworkers Day, as officials around the country removed Mr. Chavez’s name from schools and streets, and covered or took down murals and statues bearing his likeness from college campuses and local parks.
As part of its response to the allegations, the U.F.W. announced that it was establishing a system for women to tell their stories of abuse and to start a process of reconciliation between the union and survivors. The union began a partnership with two organizations to offer survivors confidential counseling and a 24-hour bilingual crisis line. The crisis line has received calls, but a representative of one of the groups declined to say more for confidentiality reasons.
The U.F.W. Foundation is a nonprofit group that was originally called the National Farm Workers Health Group, which Mr. Chavez helped lead when it was first founded in the 1970s. The foundation now is an advocate for farmworkers and immigrants, and provides legal services for immigrants in California.
The Cesar Chavez Foundation was founded in 1966 by Mr. Chavez as the National Farm Workers Service Center. The organization, which later changed its name and expanded its mission beyond assisting farmworkers and their families, now operates Spanish-language radio stations, develops affordable housing and provides educational programs for schoolchildren in the Southwest. In its most recent federal tax filing, the nonprofit foundation listed assets of more than $260 million and revenue in 2024 of more than $40 million.
Earlier this year, the Chavez foundation issued a statement describing the allegations against Mr. Chavez as shocking and painful, and telling survivors that they believed them, honored their courage and were “very sorry for the harm you have carried in the shadows for so long.” The group has said it has been working with leaders in the field of sexual abuse and engaging in a “necessary conversation” about the organization’s identity.
The woman who filed the lawsuit said in interviews and in court documents that the assault happened around her birthday in early 1973 when she was living, along with dozens of others, at La Paz, the mountain compound near Bakersfield that was the headquarters of the U.F.W.
Her husband, a longtime Chavez ally, was working on union business in the nearby town of Delano. Her friends and colleagues threw her a birthday party in La Paz’s communal kitchen. At the party, Mr. Chavez began making sexual advances, she said. He kept giving her wine, she said, and asked her if she would let him in if he visited later that night. She said she told him no.
She eventually left the party and went to her home, she said. As she approached, she saw one of Mr. Chavez’s bodyguards outside on the steps. “The chief’s inside,” she recalled the guard telling her.
In her bedroom, she said Mr. Chavez forced himself on her and pulled her onto the bed. She said she felt powerless because of Mr. Chavez’s role as an authority figure for her family.
“He took my pants down, and that was it,” the woman said in an interview in 2023. “I didn’t have sense of self to push back.”
Her account was corroborated in interviews with people she had confided in years ago. A friend of the woman said that when he worked with her in 1994 or 1995, she told him that Mr. Chavez had sexually assaulted her and that she was still struggling to cope with the emotional trauma. Elements of the woman’s story also were consistent with emails she had written to a historian in the early 2000s.
The woman described a second episode a few years later at Mr. Chavez’s house in which she said she felt manipulated to have sexual contact with him again.
The episodes, she said, have haunted her for more than 50 years. Her struggle over whether and how to speak out has been a lingering issue in her life and has aggravated her health problems. She said she has battled thoughts of suicide over the years and tried to take her own life in 1979.
Her suit, filed in Superior Court in Kern County, the home of La Paz, seeks unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial.
The suit accuses the Chavez and U.F.W. foundations of failing to properly supervise Mr. Chavez as her landlord and her employer and of failing to prevent him from behaving in what the lawsuit describes as “an abusive, rogue and inappropriate manner.”
The suit claims that the defendants were aware of Mr. Chavez’s abuse of girls and women but hid evidence of his misconduct to prevent the wrongdoing from becoming public. It alleges that a pattern of exposing women to sexual abuse, concealing complaints and failing to take corrective action violated a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating based on gender and other characteristics.
“Our client wasn’t the first and she wasn’t the last,” said V. James DeSimone, who is representing the woman pro bono along with the law firm led by the Los Angeles lawyer Mike Arias. “She does not want her legacy to be that she took down the U.F.W. She wants her legacy to be she’s one of the people who demanded accountability so that women in this generation don’t have to go through the same abuse.”
Miriam Jordan contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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