What would it take to believe women on sexual harassment?

IN this new age and era of the metoo movement where some powerful men like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein have been made to pay for their legendary acts of sexual harassment against women with long jail terms upon conviction, it would have been expected that more women would feel empowered to come out with their experiences of sexual harassment just as the society would also be more receptive of the accounts and tales from these survivors of sexual harassment. This especially as we know that women and young girls are the most frequent victims of sexual violence; with 82 percent of all juvenile victims of sexual assault being female, while 90 percent of adult rape victims are female. In which case, the society is richly aware of the burden of sexual harassment that girls and women bear under the patriarchal system that not only sees and treats the female as second-class being, but encourages and normalises her suppression, oppression and exploitation by boys and men. When girls and women therefore talk about sexual harassment, they are talking about their lived experience and something they encounter everyday and every time, which should give some sense of reality and affirmation to their complaints.

Yet, the society continues to treat reports and complaints from girls and women with such incredulous disbelief and non-challance that we are left to wonder what exactly girls and women have to do before their sexual harassment complaints would be taken seriously and treated with respect and needed attention and investigation. It ought to be remembered and apprehended that coming out with reports of sexual harassment cannot be a plaything for any victim, as sexual harassment is essentially a very traumatic and deeply disturbing experience. Researches have shown that ‘sexual violence often stays with a victim for a long time after the actual incident. Ninety-four percent of women who have been raped experienced post-traumatic stress disorder following the incident. Seventy percent of sexual assault victims experience moderate to severe distress, which is more than victims of any other violent crime.’ The implication of this is that victims of sexual harassment continue to feel the distress of the act for such a long time that they do not want to add to their own discomfort by coming out with reports about the act. It does take tremendous courage and strength on the part of any victim of sexual harassment to want to come out and openly report about the act, as she expects to become canon fodder and easy target for unwanted intrusions and debilitating questioning.

And even in this context, the society still wants to disbelieve the victim and play games with her complaint, with many suggesting that perhaps nothing like the complaint happened and maybe the victim simply wants to play to the gallery and toy with the life of the named victimizer. It is conveniently forgotten here that the victim of sexual harassment that elects to make open complaint is also opening herself to invasive public scrutiny and how many would want to undergo damaging public scrutiny just to toy with the life of a named victimizer. This is the sense in which it has been suggested that every complaint of sexual harassment by any girl or woman should be treated with respect, if not acceptance, and then investigated instead of being peremptorily dismissed, as the victim is also opening herself to a lot of pain by coming out with open complaint. Girls and women are most likely not just going to report sexual harassment and assault for the fun of it as such report carries enormous negative implications for them with the society almost certainly going to subject them to debilitating intrusion and invasion of privacy going forward. The huge negative cost of complaints of sexual harassment to victims themselves should help invite a sense of understanding, if not sympathy and standing with, for the victims rather than the persisting dismissive attitude we see for almost all complaints of sexual harassment from girls and women, with such dismissive attitude having grave implications, including bolstering perpetrators while further silencing other victims into not ever wanting to report on their victimisers.

Take the case of the San Jose University in the United States. Several female athletes accused the University’s sports medicine director, Scott Shaw, of sexual harassment and sexual assault in 2009 with the University, apparently because it did not take the accusations and complaints seriously, announcing that it could not substantiate any of the accusations after investigations and therefore exonerating Scott Shaw in 2010. But many of the athletes, even after leaving the University, kept up the complaints and insisted that Scott Shaw was taking advantage of his medical interactions with the female athletes to subject them to sexual harassment and assault. The persistence of the complaints from the female athletes got the New York Times to publish an investigative report on the allegations against Scott Shaw in April 2020 and this ensured that the California State University system had to take over the investigations, appointing private attorneys to help conduct thorough inquiries. The results of the new deep investigations, released in February 2021 ‘determined that Scott Shaw’s physical therapy treatments lacked medical basis, ignored proper protocols and violated the system’s sexual harassment policies.’

This means that in truth, Scott Shaw had been subjecting the female athletes to sexual harassment and assault for more than a decade with the system and authorities not caring to confer respect and belief on the many complaints from the female athletes since 2009. Imagine the system allowing Scott Shaw to continue to subject many more female athletes to sexual harassment and assault for a decade more just because the system was not inclined to believe the sexual harassment complaints from the female athletes in 2009! Imagine the level of damage done by the man for another decade on the altar of not conferring respect and belief on the earlier complaints from the female athletes!  Linzy Warkentin, one of the five athletes who first reported on Scott Shaw’s conduct to the University in 2009, could not but exclaim on the day the new findings were released: ‘there was an overwhelming sense of relief. … We had tears and laughs. Tonight there will be celebratory drinks. We have been waiting for this … and finally, we are officially acknowledged.’

• Yakubu is of the Department of Communication and Language Arts, University of Ibadan, Ibadan

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