What do you do if you’re sexually harassed? Speaking from past experience, Brooke Le Poer Trench explores the top 3 things you need to do…

The first time I was sexually harassed it took a split second. A passing crotch grab on the street outside my work. And until I started writing this article, I didn’t even really count it. Still, the definition of sexual harassment is any unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour where a reasonable person would have anticipated the possibility that the person harassed would feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. And I felt humiliated. 

The second time, I was in a taxi late at night. I got in the front because (and I remember thinking this exact thing) it would make me seem friendlier. And then the driver rested his hand on my upper thigh all the way home. I completely ignored it, hoping he would stop. Then in a move that I still marvel at, I had him pull over at the edge of a dark park several blocks from my apartment to let me out. I wasn’t thinking about where I was—I just desperately wanted to get away from his rough hand resting under my skirt on my bare leg, edging closer and closer to my underpants. I felt intimidated.

The third and last time was at work, and this one I wasn’t even sure counted. I literally just typed into the search bar: “is talking about someone’s breast size at work sexual harassment.” I was in a mid-level role, working among whip-smart, accomplished women. I absolutely loved the job. The one dark spot was my manager, who constantly commented on everyone’s appearance. He talked about my friend’s “jew curls” and another colleague’s “huge, hump-able ass” and when it came to me, he had become fixated on my breasts… or lack thereof. This time, I should have been offended. 

I’ve never been all that sensitive about having basically no breast tissue, and at the time I prided myself on my ability to snap back with sassy retorts. It didn’t occur to me that talking about my body was off limits. At the time, five years into my career, I’d only heard about sexual harassment once. A few years before, my boyfriend’s mother had gone on a work conference, and her boss’s unwanted advances had escalated to a late-night, drunken banging on her hotel door demanding she let him. It was terrifying. And she bravely reported him to HR and promptly lost her job and any hope of a reference. This is the moment I thought of when I heard Gretchen Carlson speak to Laura Zarrow on the Women@Work podcast about sexual harassment in the workplace. 

You know who she is: the former Fox News host who made a sexual harassment complaint against Roger Ailes, the then-CEO and chairman of Fox News in 2016. She was played by Nicole Kidman in the movie Bombshell, a fictionalised account of what happened (that she was unable to even comment on because of an NDA Fox forced her to sign). Since then, she has dedicated herself to making work safer for women. As many as 8 out of 10 women experience sexual harassment at some point. 

In Chapter Four of her book, Be Fierce, she lays out the steps you should take if you are being harassed. And going to HR is not one of them. According to Gretchen, what typically happens to women is they keep working hard and hope the harasser will stop, which they never do, and then one day they just lose it. And then without a plan they go to HR, and immediately become a problem for the company. HR then activate systems to manage their liability, which is usually a ‘forced arbitration’ clause in your contract. They deal with it quietly and the woman or man loses their job.

Instead, you need a better plan. Here are the top three things Gretchen says to do: 

1. “You have to consult a lawyer. I know people don’t have the finances to do that but you have to have a 10 minute conversation to find out if you have a case.”

2. “You have to tell someone. We live in a he-said, she-said environment and you have to have witnesses. You must have someone who can say, “yes, she told me this on this date.”

3. “Evidence, evidence, evidence. There are many ways to gather evidence. Journalling, taping—and then you have to bring it home. I can’t tell you how many people tell me they were doing it but then they got fired and left it all at work.”

The most under-reported element of taking a stand, however, is retaliation Gretchen says. “That’s why for each woman and man this is a personal choice. Women and men are right when they say to me, ‘when I come forward I’m going to lose my job and no-one is going to want to hire me again.’ This is real. I’m trying to change that, but that’s a risk. Retaliation is probably the most undersold part of this story. The media focuses on the headlines of the sexual impropriety, but they don’t talk about what happens to you if you don’t aqueous.  But I like to say courage is contagious. And when you do decide to jump off your own cliff, it is liberating."

Read the book. Give it to anyone you know who is struggling with this problem at work. If the statistics are to be believed, you already know several people who need it.