The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming that a farm in Lincoln County allowed men to sexually harass the female seasonal harvesters and maintained a hostile work environment for women.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Portland, accuses County Fair Farm in Jefferson of ignoring complaints by a longtime seasonal worker, Aurora Del Rosario Clemente Arpaiz, and other female workers that they had been groped against their will by a male supervisor or male workers and repeatedly propositioned for sex on the job.

The EEOC said in an eight-page complaint that it sued on behalf of Arpaiz and other female farm workers after sending County Fair Farm a letter in August trying to settle the matter out of court. The two sides could not reach an agreement.

“Our investigation revealed there was sexual harassment (against women at the farm) as far back as 2003,” said Sara Smolik, an attorney for the commission’s regional office in Boston. “There were other women besides Ms. Arpaiz who were victims of unwanted sexual harassment but not identical to the harassment she experienced.”

The EEOC is a federal agency that enforces employment laws that prohibit discrimination against any employee based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information.

Smolik said that, as in all of its cases, the commission notified County Fair Farm after an investigation that it found cause to believe that the sexual harassment had occurred as Arpaiz described it.

“We invited them to conciliate. The conciliation efforts were not successful,” Smolik said. She said she couldn’t describe those efforts because they were confidential by law.

Arpaiz worked for the farm seasonally from 2007 until she quit in November 2012, after complaining repeatedly about sexual harassment and telling her employer that “she could not take the harassment any longer,” the EEOC said in the lawsuit.

The commission has demanded an unspecified amount of money from the farm for back pay for Arpaiz and other farm workers, compensation for emotional pain and suffering, and punitive damages.

Its complaint says: “During the 2012 growing season, Arpaiz’s supervisor slapped Arpaiz on the buttocks and frequently propositioned her for sex. This included sending Arpaiz graphic text messages describing sexual acts he wanted to perform on her. Arpaiz rejected these advances and told her supervisor not to touch her. … At night, her supervisor would often stand or sit outside the door of Arpaiz’s trailer and stare; Arpaiz would lock herself inside, refusing to let him in and afraid to leave the trailer herself.”

The complaint says that after she complained to management at the farm, the harassment by her male co-workers and her supervisor increased.

“This included referring to her as a ‘cry baby’ and telling her to ‘stop causing trouble.’ On one occasion … Arpaiz’s male co-workers abandoned her at a shopping center half an hour away from the farm, without means of getting back to the farm, in an effort to punish her for her complaints,” the lawsuit says.

A woman who answered the phone at County Fair Farm referred comment to the owner, Andy Williamson, but said Williamson was unavailable and she did not have a phone number for him. It was not immediately clear if County Fair Farm is represented by a lawyer.