Riyana S Gib­son

Stu­dent,

Hugh Wood­ing Law School

Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is a very re­al and of­ten trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence for many peo­ple in T&T and it of­ten man­i­fests it­self in the work en­vi­ron­ment.

Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place may be broad­ly de­fined as "un­wel­come con­duct of a sex­u­al na­ture that detri­men­tal­ly af­fects the work en­vi­ron­ment or leads to ad­verse job-re­lat­ed con­se­quences for the vic­tims of the ha­rass­ment." As stat­ed in the lead­ing Cana­di­an case of Janzen-v-Platy-En­ter­pris­es-Lim­it­ed-[1989]-59-D.L.R.-(4th)-352:

"It is ... an abuse of pow­er. When sex­u­al ha­rass­ment oc­curs in the work­place, it is an abuse of both eco­nom­ic and sex­u­al pow­er. Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is a de­mean­ing prac­tice.... By re­quir­ing an em­ploy­ee to con­tend with un­wel­come sex­u­al ac­tions or ex­plic­it sex­u­al de­mands, sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place at­tacks the dig­ni­ty and self-re­spect of the vic­tim both as an em­ploy­ee and as a hu­man be­ing."

What con­sti­tutes­sex­u­al ha­rass­ment?

Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment means no more than sex­u­al mis­con­duct, di­rect­ed, in the work­place, at an un­will­ing vic­tim to whom that mis­con­duct is of­fen­sive, un­set­tling, up­set­ting, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing or oth­er­wise stress­ful. Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in­cludes un­want­ed pres­sure for sex­u­al favours; un­want­ed de­lib­er­ate touch­ing, lean­ing over, cor­ner­ing, pinch­ing or the like; un­want­ed sex­u­al looks or ges­tures or un­want­ed let­ters, tele­phone calls, or ma­te­ri­als of a sex­u­al na­ture.

In the work­place

A work­place cov­ers any place that a per­son at­tends for the pur­pose of car­ry­ing out their work or trade. Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is cov­ered in the work­place when it hap­pens at work; at work-re­lat­ed events; be­tween peo­ple shar­ing the same work­place; or be­tween col­leagues out­side of work. Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment can in­volve em­ploy­ees, man­agers, con­trac­tors, agents, clients, cus­tomers and oth­ers con­nect­ed with or at­tend­ing a work­place. It can be male to male, male to fe­male, fe­male to male or fe­male to fe­male.

All in­ci­dents of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment re­quire em­ploy­ers to re­spond quick­ly and ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. While the per­son who sex­u­al­ly ha­rass­es some­one else is li­able for their be­hav­iour, em­ploy­ers can al­so be held vic­ar­i­ous­ly li­able for acts of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment by their em­ploy­ees.

Reme­dies

There may be sev­er­al reme­dies avail­able to vic­tims of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment.

Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment may be con­sid­ered in­de­cent as­sault. Sec­tion 15 of the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act, Chap 11:28 de­fines "in­de­cent as­sault" as an as­sault ac­com­pa­nied by words or cir­cum­stances in­di­cat­ing an in­de­cent in­ten­tion. Thus, a per­son who in­de­cent­ly as­saults an­oth­er may be guilty of an of­fence.

Sex­u­al ha­rass­ment may al­so be con­sid­ered a form of sex dis­crim­i­na­tion. There­fore, an in­di­vid­ual may seek re­dress against a ha­rass­er or em­ploy­er un­der sec­tion 5 of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act, Chap 22:03 on the grounds of sex dis­crim­i­na­tion.

There is a nat­ur­al link be­tween work­place health, safe­ty and wel­fare and sex­u­al ha­rass­ment. In such work­places, psy­cho­log­i­cal in­jury or dam­age as a re­sult of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment may be suf­fi­cient in­jury to health and wel­fare to ini­ti­ate a claim un­der sec­tion 6 of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act, Chap 88:08.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, com­mon-law reme­dies may be avail­able where the courts may award com­pen­sa­tion to a vic­tim of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment.

–This col­umn is not le­gal ad­vice. How the law ap­plies to you de­pends on the facts of your case. If you have a le­gal prob­lem, you should con­sult a le­gal ad­vis­er.