Sexual Harassment Case
by Philip
The EAT president has just dealt with a case involving allegations of sexual harassment brought against the individual harasser and their employer.
Points to note:
1. There is no requirement to bring a grievance against the individual, there was a requirement to bring a grievance against the employer, a school.
2. Where the grievance was brought against the school, the time limit extended by 3 months to make a total of 6 months from the last act complained of.
3. The inferred fact that the employee did not know that time would not extend for a claim against the individual was an acceptable reason to justify a late claim against an individual.
4 Tribunals should not salami slice sexual harassment claims into discrete acts and look at each individually but look at the harassment allegations as a “continuing state,” (as per Hendricks) thereby running time from the last act complained of
5. The employer could not run the reasonably practicable steps defence, thereby passing liability to the individual employee, as there was no evidence that there was a dignity at work policy or any employee had been trained in it.
This reads like a particularly nasty case of harassment involving a male person in power (an assistant head) abusing his position to harass sexually a subordinate (a teaching assistant) .The allegations included one of rape. It is particularly surprising that a school did not educate its employees about dignity at work.
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