Sexual Harassment Case

Sexual Harassment Case

Bryan Fischer at Idaho Values Alliance discussed this complaint to the Idaho Human Rights Commission in the context of sexual orientation discrimination, but the charge in this case is actually far more serious. From the June 5, 2008 Spokesman Review:

A former Hauser city employee accuses a city councilwoman of offering her a city job, then retaliating against her when she declined sexual advances, according to a complaint filed with the Idaho Human Rights Commission.
In the complaint, often the first step in a discrimination suit, former City Clerk Janet Crapo outlines alleged sexual harassment by Carmen Miller, one of four City Council members in the 670-person lakeside town.
...
The two seemed to become fast friends, Crapo said, and the two-day-a-week city clerk job Miller pitched sounded perfect. In the complaint, Crapo writes that Miller said the job would be great for her if she would "play the game."
"When I asked Ms. Miller what 'play the game' meant, she explained that it would be like any other job, you just have to 'play the game,' " according to the complaint.
In a short time, Miller began visiting Crapo at work, bringing her lunch or offering to take her out.
Crapo claims Miller talked about having gay friends, discussed her own sexual orientation and showed pictures of herself in a bikini during a body-building competition in Hawaii.
"I was so uncomfortable being around Ms. Miller, I would come home from work and cry or tell my husband that I did not want to go back because I was so uncomfortable," Crapo wrote. "I even spoke with my doctor about the situation."

I don't know if Crapo's complaint is valid or not. I tend to be a little wary of sexual harassment claims because many of them are not as clear-cut as the phrase suggests.

Cases where a supervisor or co-worker either requires or hints that sex is part of the requirements for keeping a job get no sympathy from me. This is clearly sexual harassment. Vulgarity also gets no sympathy from me--although we seem to be living in an increasingly vulgar society. If such vulgarity is directed at someone (usually a woman) for the purpose of making them uncomfortable on the job, that's sexual harassment.

However, at least some of the sexual harassment claims that I have seen made over the years are a bit over the top. In some federal circuits, women have filed and won sexual harassment claims because of pinups on the walls of the workplace creating a "hostile work environment." This is definitely an ugly situation, and I can see the point of these suits, especially if guys are making vulgar or suggestive remarks about the pinups--but there really isn't a clear dividing line between appropriate material and inappropriate material in the workplace. In other cases, I have seen a compliment turned into a sexual harassment claim.

So far, all we have is Ms. Crapo's side of the story--and it wouldn't be the first time that someone has made such charges without merit. But I have read far too many similar news accounts over the years where it did indeed turn out that a lesbian used her power to attempt to get sex from a female employee--behaving as badly as a few piggish men do.

This claim, if Ms. Crapo's version of it is what happened, is not discrimination based on sexual orientation; a lesbian who resented being harassed into sex by an employer would have just as valid a complaint, as would a man being harassed by a woman supervisor, or a woman being harassed by a male supervisor. Senator Corder's sexual orientation bill would have added nothing to Ms. Crapo's standing on this.