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You’ve worked hard your whole life to get into top-rated schools, to obtain hard-to-get internships, and you’ve spent years building a career in a specialized field just to have everything come crashing down on you when you were retaliated against for reporting sexual harassment to your employer.
It’s a familiar story that women across career industries share and those stories haven’t died down, despite the #MeToo movement calming down compared to years ago when it trended.
Just three days ago, a Vox headline stated, “Google employees say they were retaliated against for reporting harassment”.
The article stated, “After the employee reported the issue, they say they faced indirect punishment: negative performance reviews, demotions, or being dropped from desirable projects. In several cases, employees wrote that HR investigations dragged on for weeks or months without a conclusion, and meanwhile they were forced to continue working with their alleged harassers.”
In an article from CNN, cofounder of a travel startup, Susan Ho, described her experience telling her experience with sexual harassment and retaliation, “When you talk about sexual harassment in tech or in any other industry, it’s like dropping a nuclear bomb on your career,” Ho told CNN Tech. “That fear of retaliation, of it impacting your business in some way, is so, so real.”
Basically, if they weren’t forced out, they would want to leave on their own to avoid working with their alleged harassers to try to save their careers.
While Google has made some concessions regarding their workplace culture problems such as ending forced arbitration clauses, not all large companies have followed suit. Many companies keep that clause to hush sexual harassment allegations and settlements to maintain their company reputations.
But should that be legal? Yes, there may be some false allegations, but companies can maintain their reputations by proving these allegations are false. And if they are not false, then when they are made public it may force the company to make a much needed change to their workplace culture.
Some victims may wish to engage in quiet settlements with their companies, but others may not. Filing a lawsuit may offer some victims a way to take back their agency. They can take control of their narrative and their career.
A harassment attorney can assist a victim with filing a sexual harassment or discrimination claim. Here are a few reasons why a victim of harassment may wish to work with an attorney:
- An attorney can advice their client on what their case may be worth. A company will most likely try to low-ball a victim if they are not represented by an experienced attorney.
- An attorney can help control the narrative of the story by speaking with the media.
- An attorney may be able to get compensation for expenses that a victim may not realize they are entitled to.
- An attorney may be able to hold companies liable for their actions when it came to investigating sexual harassment in the workplace.
- An attorney may be able to clear the victims name so that they can continue pursuing their career path.
For more information about filing a sexual harassment lawsuit when you’ve experienced workplace retaliation, send us a message or fill out our free case evaluation below.
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