A former Washington County sheriff’s deputy who exposed sexual harassment within her department but then was fired alleges in a new federal lawsuit that her union provided more zealous defense of its male members than the women it represented in discipline cases.

Angela Branford said she was fired in June for not admitting she accessed a database last year for a friend’s domestic violence case, and the union wouldn’t challenge her termination.

But, she said, male deputies weren’t fired after they had sex on duty or harassed colleagues, including her.

She's seeking $1.5 million for discrimination.

Officers from the Washington County Police Officers Association, who are named as defendants, didn’t immediately return calls for comment.

According to the suit, Branford was fired June 18 for not being truthful about having accessed a commercial database for a friend in the fall of 2017. She had accessed the TransUnion TLO database, which aggregates phone and address records, as well as Social Security numbers and employment records, according to the suit. TransUnion isn’t a law enforcement database, the suit says.

Branford says in the suit that she didn’t remember searching the records when she was first questioned by internal affairs investigators and had been experiencing panic attacks from her mistreatment at the Sheriff’s Office.

When she asked the Washington County Police Officers Association to challenge her firing, its executive board voted not to.

“Their actions were motivated by intentional sex discrimination,’’ Branford’s lawyer, Daniel Snyder, wrote in the lawsuit.

Branford’s suit cites investigations of other male deputies, including one accused of having sex on duty and who was demoted but not fired. Another deputy, Justin Ulrich, received a brief suspension after he crudely suggested that Branford have sex with him in her van at work in 2016, the suit says.

Branford says the union’s failure to back her up ignored that she was victim of a crime, had been subjected to sexual harassment on the job and suffered from panic attacks and memory problems since her strangulation by another colleague.

In April 2015, Deputy Jonathan Christensen was fired after Branford reported that he had arrived at her home the month before while he was on duty wearing his uniform and gun and shoved her against the wall, pulled her hair and choked her, demanding that she continue their sexual relationship.

Christensen was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to one count each of coercion, strangulation and official misconduct in Washington County Circuit Court.

A separate federal lawsuit Branford filed last year is pending in court. It accuses the Washington County Sheriff’s Office of regularly subjecting her and other female employees to sexual harassment and retaliating against them for reporting it.

The Sheriff’s Office contends in court papers that it has acted promptly to investigate any reported harassment and appropriately disciplines employees who violate office policies.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian