An Iranian research scientist who filed a federal discrimination lawsuit in the United States alleging a co-worker at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) harassed her for nine years because of her ethnicity was awarded more than US$3.8 million in damages on Tuesday, writes Corky Siemaszko for NBC News.

Fariba Moeinpour (62) said she was thrilled with the jury verdict, which was handed down in the Northern District of Alabama, and was ready to restart her life. “Day and night, I was looking for a job, any job, but nobody would hire me because my name was tarnished,” Moeinpour told NBC News. “Now, my good name has been restored.”

UAB, according to the jury verdict, was ordered to pay Moeinpour US$3 million in damages. Mary Jo Cagle, a former UAB data analyst who was identified in the lawsuit as the person who harassed Moeinpour, was ordered to pay her US$500,000 in compensatory damages and US$325,000 more in punitive damages.

Cagle, according to the lawsuit, began harassing Moeinpour almost from the moment she started working for Grubbs at the UAB School of Medicine.

Moeinpour said Cagle taunted her repeatedly, telling her she had a “weird ass” name and to “go back to Iran.”

“Our country does not need your kind,” Cagle said, according to the lawsuit.

Moeinpour said in the lawsuit that the abuse escalated over the years and that Cagle once nearly ran her and her daughter over with a car and later pulled a gun on her “in the UAB parking deck while telling her that this is what ‘we’ do to a ‘sand n-----.’”