Sexual Harassment and the Real North Country: Revelations of an Expert Witness

Abstract

In the film North Country, Academy-Award-winning-actress Charlize Theron portrays Josey Aimes, one of many female miners in Eveleth, Minnesota subjected to a wide range of injurious and abusive sexual behaviors by male coworkers. Moreover, the behaviors were tacitly condoned by company management. The women portrayed in the film became part of the first successful class action suit brought against an employer because of sexual harassment (Jenson vs. Eveleth Taconite Company 1991).Since Jensen, many U.S. organizations and managers have traveled great philosophical distances and have acquired the ethical and intellectual heft to avoid the type of rampant behaviors that caused Eveleth Mines (located in Eveleth, Minnesota, U.S.) to lose the lawsuit. Unfortunately, we may not have traveled as far as we think. As an expert witness in the area of sexual harassment, I continue to be flummoxed and amazed each time I am faced with reports, depositions, and testimony concerning the actions of employees in organizations today. According to the combined data of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Fair Employment Practices agencies (FEPAs), in 2011 approximately 11,364 sexual harassment complaints were filed resulting in $53.2 million in monetary benefits paid to complainants by offending organizations (EEOC 2015a). From 2010 to 2014, the EEOC alone received 37,442 SH complaints with $208.9 million in monetary benefits paid to complainants (these values do not include monies obtained through litigation (EEOC 2015b)). Even in our post-modern, sophisticated, well-trained, and well-educated world, individuals, groups, and organizations continue to astonish and disturb us with reports of undesirable sexual behavior.Why does sexual harassment continue to afflict organizations and individuals with such persistence? We are all aware of the risks-both personal and professional-of engaging in behavior that benefits no one and in fact, can injure others. Why does it continue? Is it that we make mistakes in selecting individuals into our organizations and then promoting them into positions of power? Is it an organizational problem? Is it primarily a gender-based issue? I

Civil Forensic Evaluation in Psychological Injury and Law: Legal, Professional, and Ethical Considerations

“…Even if the expert stands in an agency relationship with the hiring attorney, this type of agency relationship cannot be reduced to the simple purchase of the expert's services. That is, as discussed above, a primary duty of the expert even as an agent of the retaining attorney is that he or she owes a legal duty to the attorney to keep private all communications or materials related to the case at hand until circumstances (report, deposition, or testimony) require specific facts in the case to become public in the legal arena (Atwood, 2011;Dostart, 2006;Knapp, 2016;Lareau, 2015;Melton et al, 2018;Shuman, 2000).…”