Sexual Abuse and Harassment
Many sources of information (books, news articles and school curricula) have discussed what conduct constitutes sexual assault or sexual harassment and what to do about it, including how to protect yourself from the immediate threat or harm, to whom to report and how to cope with any mental distress. Since the focus of this ‘Career Stories Project’ is on real life experiences within individual careers, the broad issues of defining the misconduct and what to do about it, will not be addressed here. The Advisory Panel for this project defers to experts in the field of criminal law and related education and counseling issues. We are comfortable providing definitions and brief, real life experiences as provided to the Editor on a confidential basis.
‘ASSAULT’
The legal definition of assault is “A demonstration of an unlawful intent by one person to inflict immediate injury on the person of another then present; an intentional attempt, by violence, to do an injury to the person of another; an attempt to commit a battery (the unlawful touching of another by the aggressor or by any substance put in motion by the aggressor).
‘HARASSMENT’
The dictionary definition of harassment is “Aggressive pressure or intimidation; systematic and/or continued, unwanted and annoying actions of one party or a group, including threats and demands.” Sexual harassment refers to unwelcome sexual advances, comments of a sexual nature, requests for sexual favors and harassment or comments about an individual’s gender or body, all of which create a hostile work environment.
Editor’s note – Several career storytellers told of events constituting sexual assault or sexual harassment, but each storyteller requested (and the Editor agreed) to not include details of the incidents or identity of the perpetrators since their careers were not affected. Thus, in very general terms, the following are brief, anonymous references to the events, so the reader will have some understanding of the different situations which occurred, while respecting the privacy of the storytellers involved:
- Male high school student sexually assaulted in bed by one of the student’s male teachers who had invited him to spend an overnight in a big city hotel after they attended an entertainment event together; before the assault could be completed, the student wisely developed an escape plan: he claimed sickness and proceeded immediately to the hotel lobby, where he remained until daylight; there was no discussion of the attempt while the teacher drove the student home; the student declined to report the incident to his parents, police or school authorities, out of embarrassment for having been involved but eventually the student fully confided in his friends, none of whom took any action toward the teacher’s accountability (but this occurred before current customs of awareness and accountability).
- Female college freshman was physically touched, without invitation or wish, by a male student; the female promptly departed and initiated a successful transfer to another college, without reporting the incident to police or school authorities but she did inform her parents, who declined to take any action since their daughter was not physically harmed and that specific threat was now resolved by the transfer
- Female, recent college graduate, during her first adult career job, was constantly bothered by an older male manager, who made sexually suggestive remarks despite the female’s clear indications and verbal responses that she was not interested in any non-business relationship; without making an internal business complaint about the situation, the female requested, and was permitted, to transfer to a different business location, literally across the country.
