Under cover of darkness, female janitors face rape and assault

[Sherman A1]

https://www.revealnews.org/article/under-cover-of-darkness-female-janitors-face-rape-and-assault/

It was the isolation that made Erika Morales most wary of her job as a night shift janitor. The solitude had begun to feel like a trap.

Then one fall evening, after everyone else had gone home, she arrived to clean a Bank of America branch. In the binding silence of the empty building, she scrubbed toilets and vacuumed hallways. She’d catch her distorted reflection in the window, though she knew there was only darkness on the other side of the glass.

“There’s no one to ask for help when certain things happened and you screamed,” she said. “No one can hear. And there are certain places where there are no cameras. There’s no sound. There’s nobody.”

During her shift, the only person she’d often come into contact with was her supervisor. It was his job to drive around town to check on Morales and other janitors who worked for a subsidiary of ABM Industries Inc., the largest cleaning company in the country. The janitors he oversaw mostly worked solo, at low-slung offices and health clinics across Bakersfield, in California’s Central Valley.