People who sexually harass others sometimes do it unconsciously — it’s just a part of their personalities to bully and dominate their coworkers. Other sexual harassers do it strategically, so there aren’t any witnesses — in an attempt to cover their tracks. If you’re being sexually harassed by one of these strategic harassers, you’ll need to take extra care to gather the evidence required to build a watertight case.
When gathering evidence, it’s vital for you to understand the factors that courts look for, so you can start to build your paper trail and identify any witnesses to support your claims:
Was the conduct offensive or hostile?
Do you have evidence that shows the co-worker’s conduct elevated to the degree of hostility? Perhaps you asked for the behavior to stop and he or she kept doing it. Hostile could also mean unwanted touching and any kind of behavior specifically meant to harm you, cause you distress or upset you. Both hostile and offensive behavior could be harassment — but hostile is more severe.
Was the conduct verbal or physical?
Verbal conduct, when offensive or hostile, can constitute sexual harassment. When the conduct is physical in nature it is especially harassing. It helps to call upon witnesses or surveillance camera footage to prove physical conduct beyond he-said/she-said accounts.
How often did it happen?
Harassed employees should keep a sexual harassment log where they note the date, time, what happened, who did it and who witnessed the specific events.
What kind of hard evidence do you have? Employees should save all text messages, voicemails, emails and any other hard proof of the harassment. They should keep this evidence at home and away from their computers.
Other issues that can bolster an employee’s claim
Was the harasser a supervisor or superior? Were additional people participating in the harassment? Can you show that any reasonable person would interpret the behavior as abusive, offensive or hostile? Did the abuse happen on a regular repeated basis?
If you have a potential sexual harassment claim, start building your case now and confront your sexual harasser in court.
