Two women were subjected to a bombardment of offensive gender-based remarks after they began working at an Abilene facility in mid-2006, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has concluded.

As a result, the EEOC filed a lawsuit this week, claiming a branch manager for B&E Industries — acting as Spirit Stop in Abilene — subjected 22-year-old Jennifer Larsen and 24-year-old Michelle McRae to sexual harassment while on the job.

The two women, according to the EEOC, were addressed daily with gender-demeaning remarks.

The EEOC claims the Arlington-based company, which manufactures and markets customized booster items for high schools, took no action to stop the behavior or discipline the manager after Larsen and McRae complained.

A top official with B & E Industries disputed the allegations.

“Although B&E Industries has not been served with the lawsuit, it denies that a hostile work environment existed at its Abilene facility, which has been closed since October 2007,” said Bill Hughes, chief financial officer for the company.

Hughes said B&E Industries is an equal opportunity employer that “does not tolerate unlawful discrimination or harassment of any kind.”

“B&E has established a complaint procedure whereby employees are encouraged to notify the company of any unlawful conduct -- and B&E was not informed of the conduct alleged in the complaint,” Hughes said. “The former employees mentioned did not make any complaints until after their employment was terminated. Because the EEOC has never provided the company the opportunity to respond to these allegations, the company believes that it will be exonerated once the true facts are brought to light through the impartial judicial process.”

While the EEOC notes the undisclosed manager still works for the company in a “managerial capacity,” Hughes said that isn’t the case at all.

“Among other factual inaccuracies, the mentioned manager is no longer an employee of B&E Industries,” Hughes said.

Filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas’s Abilene Division, the EEOC suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages. According to the EEOC, the suit took other steps after investigating the claims and before filing the suit, including attempting to reach a “voluntary settlement” with the company.

“The remarks that these young ladies were subjected to were not only lascivious but also disgusting and totally derogatory toward women,” said Toby Costas, EEOC supervisory trial attorney, in a release. “These words violate the prohibition against sex harassment in the workplace and exemplify a hostile work environment.”

According to the lawsuit, the company has engaged in unlawful employment practices at its Abilene location by subjecting the two women “to a hostile work environment based upon their gender.”

“The result of the foregoing practices has been to deprive Jennifer Larsen and Michelle McRae of equal employment opportunities because of their gender,” the EEOC suit states, adding that the “unlawful employment practices” were “intentional” and “done with malice or with reckless indifference” to the two women’s federally protected rights.

The lawsuit calls for the company to stop permitting such behavior, to provide equal opportunity opportunities for the two women, and to pay them for “past and future non-pecuniary losses resulting from the unlawful employment practices ... and the pain, suffering, inconvenience, mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life, in amounts to be determined at trial.”