Sexual Harassment Guilt
We here at the Law Office of Jim Zadeh have represented sexual harassment victims for over 15 years. We often see a few patterns and I would like to address one of those patterns. Often times our clients will come in and they will come in reluctantly, and the reason they will come in reluctant is because they feel in some way that they were responsible, that they may have caused it, or may have led the person on, or may not have said no forcefully enough. What we find in many of those cases is that in fact the victim themselves was not responsible, it’s something that they have put upon themselves as some guilt that they have felt. The fact is that the person who approached our client and sexually harassed them, either verbally or physically, is a true predator and is grooming the victim. The predator often uses these methods in order to get the victim to trust them. If you feel like it was probably your fault or maybe you did something to deserve this, then my message to you is, No! You didn’t deserve this, you were probably set up, and this was something done by the harasser in order to be able to manipulate you and then sexually harass you. If you feel like you have been sexually harassed, even if you feel like you might have been responsible, call somebody who's a professional, talk to them and they'll be able to analyze the case from an objective viewpoint and let you know whether or not you had any responsibility.