Workplace Is No Place for Abuse, by Anyone

It’s a distressingly familiar story: The employee, a conscientious worker with a record of raises and commendations, is sexually harassed by the boss. The unwelcome attention includes lascivious comments, fondling, kisses and threats.

The employee complains to the company president, to the company attorney. Nothing changes.

Finally, the employee quits and files a lawsuit. The case goes to trial.

The boss makes the usual defense: a lackluster worker who couldn’t cut it is looking for someone to blame. Or maybe the love-struck subordinate was spurned by the married boss. In any case, the lawsuit is fiction, purely a matter of revenge.

But the jury doesn’t see things that way. Ten women and two men find the boss guilty of sexual harassment. They award the plaintiff $10,000 in damages--just to teach the boss a lesson. The big loser, though, is the company. Its officials will pay more than a million dollars for ignoring the employee’s complaints.

So if we’ve heard it all before, why was Gutierrez vs. Martinez front-page news last week? Why were the attorneys receiving phone calls from reporters as far away as Australia?

Because the victim was a man; the harasser, a woman.

And because the case is widely believed to be the first in which a man alleging sexual harassment against a female supervisor has prevailed in court.

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For many men, I assume, this will be welcome news.

In letters and phone calls that inevitably follow columns I write about issues such as harassment, rape and discrimination, male readers often say they feel under siege, that women have the upper hand because they can cry victim while men cannot.

Not any more.

While it may be unusual for a woman to sexually harass a man, it is not impossible for a jury to recognize that it happens.

The verdict puts women managers on notice that they have the same responsibilities as men to create workplaces free of harassment. It frees men to stand up against their harassers when, clearly, they put themselves at risk to do so. The mantle of victim is not comfortable for anyone to wear, but for a man to say he has been victimized by a woman offers the unsavory possibility of a double stigma. Some people, after all, scoff at the very notion that a man can be sexually harassed.

The case also puts companies on notice: Deal with your employees’ harassment complaints seriously or face severe economic repercussions. Water flows downhill, as the saying goes. Commitment to eradicating sexual harassment has got to come from the top.

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The Pomona-based company in this case--California Acrylic Industries Inc., also known as Cal-Spas--says it will appeal.

Cal-Spas’ attorney said the verdict was an expression of hostility toward women, particularly “a Hispanic woman in a position of authority.”

“Absolutely not!” responded jury forewoman Carla Riles during a conversation two days after the verdict.

She said the case turned on the credibility of Sabino Gutierrez, 33, and Maria Martinez, 39. And the jury simply felt that Martinez was not telling the truth. Riles said Martinez testified that she never went anywhere in the company of a single man without her husband. During cross-examination, though, said Riles, “there were several occasions she testified to that she had met Sabino at a restaurant and she went to his home alone, so she lost her credibility.”

Any haggling in which jurors engaged was not over whether Gutierrez deserved compensation, said Riles, but how much.

“There were quite a few bosses on this jury,” said Riles, 46, an executive at a local bank. “You think we would not have wanted to find for Maria? Come on!”

Riles said she hopes the verdict will make managers a little more careful how they relate to their employees.

“You can have a work relationship, and you can have a social relationship,” she said, “but you have to know where to draw the line. I tell you, it made me go reread our sexual harassment policy at work.”

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I’d like to say that the verdict in Gutierrez vs. Martinez is a giant leap toward equality of the sexes.

But I can’t.

It’s too much a good news/bad news situation to rejoice.

The good news is that men and women alike are entitled to equal protection under the law.

The bad news is that as women rise to positions of power, they are capable of abusing that power in the same old ways.

I’ll feel like celebrating when we eliminate sexual harassment from the workplace, instead of making it an equal opportunity crime.