Rights of Those Accused of Sexual Harassment
The rights of those accused of sexual harassment are the same as all those accused of a tort – they have the right to air their defense in a fair, impartial, and speedy court of law. If the sexual harassment is aggravated to the point where it becomes a crime such as sexual assault, lewd behavior, stalking, etc., then the suspect will have additional rights afforded to a criminal suspect, such as a right to a jury trial, freedom from self-incrimination, the right to a public defender, and so on.
Sexual harassment is a kind of sex discrimination occurring in the workplace as defined by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Traditionally, sexual harassment could not occur outside of the workplace. However, new laws are finding it in certain relationships of trust, such as one with a doctor, an attorney, a social worker, a real estate agent, a banker, a contractor, an executor, a landlord, a teacher, and so on.
In order to protect the rights of a person accused of sexual harassment, one must understand what sexual harassment is to present a good defense. First of all, sexual harassment cannot occur on the first sexual advance alone. People are free to make their sexual feelings known to another person in any legal way (i.e., free of touching).
Sexual advances become sexual harassment when they are “unwelcome.” Thus, those accused of sexual harassment will want to show that the other person welcomed, or at the very least did not object to, the advances. They must show that the alleged victim actually consented to the joking, touching, horseplay, or juvenile behavior. Proof of this is the alleged victim’s reciprocal behavior – sexual mannerisms, flirtation, partial removal of clothing, sexually explicit language, etc.
However, those accused cannot defend themselves based on defenses that the victim was the same sex, that the accused was a non-employee, that the victim did not suffer any negative employment ability or economic injury, that the victim did not make an outright rejection where a rejection was clearly implied, or that they had been in a relationship before. In the end, a jury will consider all facts and circumstances, using their commonsense about whether nonconsensual sexual advances had occurred.
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Last Modified: 05-05-2009 04:57 PM PDT
