Employment Tribunal Help

[DrJoe]

Please can someone help with this as I can find no legal guidance about an unusual scenario.

Image you have unusual facial characteristics in that you look prehistoric. It causes you to experience sexual harassment in the workplace. So you end up resigning and going to an employment tribunal with a sexual harassment claim. This is fine, I have sufficient evidence to prove that.

The issue is that for victimisation to be added to my claim, it obviously needs to follow on from a complaint or grievance for sexual harassment.

Unfortunately I only made a bullying grievance. I did not tick the sexual harassment box, and all of its contents to someone who doesn`t know any different read as bullying incidents. But inside it I asserted a female team member stating she hated my face, and took part in a discussion to attack me.

I perceive that as sexual harassment. I mean, she finds me attractive and is reacting angrily because of it. Its a bit of a grey area as to what constitutes sexual harassment. That`s the first problem.

The second is if I argue the grievance contained sexual harassment, even though only the bullying box is ticked and nothing is explicitly stated about sexual harassment, can I successfully argue to the tribunal that I`ve complained about sexual harassment, and therefore done a protected act? To get my victimisation claim in.

[DrJoe]

Please can someone help with this as I can find no legal guidance about an unusual scenario.

Image you have unusual facial characteristics in that you look prehistoric. It causes you to experience sexual harassment in the workplace. So you end up resigning and going to an employment tribunal with a sexual harassment claim. This is fine, I have sufficient evidence to prove that.

The issue is that for victimisation to be added to my claim, it obviously needs to follow on from a complaint or grievance for sexual harassment.

Unfortunately I only made a bullying grievance. I did not tick the sexual harassment box, and all of its contents to someone who doesn`t know any different read as bullying incidents. But inside it I asserted a female team member stating she hated my face, and took part in a discussion to attack me.

I perceive that as sexual harassment. I mean, she finds me attractive and is reacting angrily because of it. Its a bit of a grey area as to what constitutes sexual harassment. That`s the first problem.

The second is if I argue the grievance contained sexual harassment, even though only the bullying box is ticked and nothing is explicitly stated about sexual harassment, can I successfully argue to the tribunal that I`ve complained about sexual harassment, and therefore done a protected act? To get my victimisation claim in.

I will also add that while the grievance only had the bullying box ticked, there are various quotations that I could argue were sexual harassment. So can I not argue the grievance was in fact a protected act based on its contents, even though I dont explicitly assert it as sexual harassment.

[ULA]

Couple of thing I need to clarify.

1. Where are you in the ET process?
2. Your claim is just for sexual harassment? If you have other claims please advise?
3. You mention tick boxes in relation to your internal grievance. is this a template grievance document your company had for raising a grievance?
4. If so was there a box for sexual harassment?

The definition for unwanted behaviour to be considered as sexual harassment, is that it must either:

a) violated someone's dignity, whether it was intended or not
b) created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them, whether it was intended or not.

This is what you would need to prove you were subjected to support your claim.

In respect of victimisation you are going to have to try to prove that although you did not explicitly set out it was a sexual harassment grievance alongside bullying (by way of any tick box subject to your answer to my above question), the content and description of events contained in the grievance implied you were subject to sexual harassment.

[Retromau5]

https://www.acas.org.uk/bullying-at-...ment%20are%20o

You wouldn't necessarily need to say "I feel I've been sexually harassed" for it to be sexual harassment. As long as there are comments of a sexual nature directed at yourself and you've made a complaint about them, then you've made a complaint about sexual harassment.

As for the victimisation, ACAS describe it as:

'Victimisation is when someone is treated less favourably as a result of being involved with a discrimination or harassment complaint. Ways someone could be victimised include: being labelled a troublemaker. being left out'.

So long as you have evidence that shows that after you made your complaint your circumstances and situation in the working enviroment was made worse than before, an you can show that there is a link between the behaviour and the complaint, then there is potential for a victimisation claim.

Have I got that right ULA?

[ULA]

Retromau5 as I set out in my post the OP is going to have to try to prove that although they did not explicitly set out it was a sexual harassment grievance alongside bullying (by way of any tick box subject to your answer to my above question), the content and description of events contained in the grievance implied they were subject to sexual harassment."

Victimisation is as you have set out but only if that occurs because of unfavourable treatment that results from a grievance about a protected act, in this case, sexual harassment.