Ariel Haynes

Stu­dent, Hugh Wood­ing Law School

What is ha­rass­ment?

The of­fence of ha­rass­ment has been in­clud­ed as an of­fence against the per­son as it af­fects you di­rect­ly. Sec­tion 30A(1) of the Of­fences against the Per­son Act Chap. 11:08 de­fines "ha­rass­ment" of the per­son to in­clude alarm­ing them or caus­ing them dis­tress by en­gag­ing in a course of con­duct such as:

�2 fol­low­ing, mak­ing vi­su­al record­ings of, stop­ping or ac­cost­ing them;

�2 watch­ing, loi­ter­ing near or pre­vent­ing ac­cess to or from a per­son's res­i­dence, work­place;

�2 en­ter­ing their prop­er­ty or in­ter­fer­ing with prop­er­ty in their pos­ses­sion;

�2 mak­ing con­tact with the per­son by ges­ture, ver­bal­ly, by post, tele­phone;

�2 giv­ing them of­fen­sive ma­te­r­i­al or leav­ing it where they can find it;

�2 act­ing in any man­ner de­scribed pre­vi­ous­ly to­wards some­one with a fa­mil­ial or close re­la­tion­ship with the per­son;

�2 act­ing in any oth­er way that could rea­son­ably be ex­pect­ed to alarm or cause dis­tress.

The con­duct re­ferred to must have been done on at least two oc­ca­sions.

Penal­ties

Sec­tion 30A(2) stip­u­lates that any­one who pur­sues such con­duct amount­ing to ha­rass­ment of an­oth­er and which he knows or ought to know amounts to ha­rass­ment, is guilty of an of­fence and is li­able to pay a fine of $2,000 and to im­pris­on­ment for six months.

It does not mat­ter whether the of­fend­er does not be­lieve the ac­tions amount to ha­rass­ment. By sec­tion 30A(3), where an­oth­er per­son has knowl­edge of the in­for­ma­tion and rea­son­ably be­lieves that it would amount to ha­rass­ment, the of­fend­er is be­lieved to know that their con­duct amounts to same.

Un­der sec­tion 30B(1) the of­fend­er is not on­ly li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion for ha­rass­ment, but may al­so be pros­e­cut­ed where the con­duct caus­es the oth­er per­son to fear that vi­o­lence will be used against him and the of­fend­er knows that his con­duct will cause this fear.

Such per­son is li­able to pay a fine of $10,000 and im­pris­on­ment for ten years or on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $5,000 and im­pris­on­ment for six months.The sec­ond part re­lates to where an­oth­er per­son can look at the con­duct and see it as caus­ing an­oth­er to be­come fear­ful.

The of­fend­er is then pre­sumed to have this knowl­edge. Sec­tion 30B(3)) al­lows for a per­son found not guilty un­der this sec­tion, to be charged with ha­rass­ment.

De­fences

Sec­tion 30C of the Act sets out the fol­low­ing ways where en­gag­ing in con­duct amount­ing to ha­rass­ment the con­duct would be ex­cus­able:

�2 where pur­sued for the pur­pose of pre­vent­ing or de­tect­ing crime; or

�2 un­der any writ­ten or un­writ­ten law or any re­quire­ment un­der the law; or

�2 where in the cir­cum­stances it was rea­son­able.

Reme­dies

In ad­di­tion to pros­e­cu­tion, the Court may al­so make an or­der for the pro­tec­tion and com­pen­sa­tion of the vic­tim, ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 30D of the Act.The pro­tec­tion or­der di­rects the of­fend­er to stop en­gag­ing in the con­duct. It lasts for a spec­i­fied time and may be changed or cleared.Fail­ure to fol­low the or­der re­sults in an of­fence, con­vic­tion and im­pris­on­ment.

The com­pen­sa­tion or­der (sec­tion 30E) may in­clude pro­vi­sion for loss of earn­ings, med­ical ex­pens­es, mov­ing and ac­com­mo­da­tion and rea­son­able le­gal costs.

This col­umn is not le­gal ad­vice. If you have a le­gal prob­lem, you should con­sult a le­gal ad­vis­er.