Harassment

Harassment (/həˈræsmənt/ or /ˈhærəsmənt/) covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour which disturbs or upsets, and it is characteristically repetitive. In the legal sense, it is behaviour which appears to be threatening or disturbing. Sexual harassment refers to persistent and unwanted sexual advances, typically in the workplace, where the consequences of refusing are potentially very disadvantageous to the victim.

Etymology

The word is based in English since circa 1618 as loan word from the French harassement, which was in turn already attested in 1572 meaning torment, annoyance, bother, trouble and later as of 1609 was also referred to the condition of being exhausted, overtired. Of the French verb harasser itself there are the first records in a Latin to French translation of 1527 of Thucydides’ History of the war that was between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians both in the countries of the Greeks and the Romans and the neighbouring places where the translator writes harasser allegedly meaning harceler (to exhaust the enemy by repeated raids); and in the military chant Chanson du franc archer of 1562, where the term is referred to a gaunt jument (de poil fauveau, tant maigre et harassée: of fawn horsehair, so meagre and …) where it is supposed that the verb is used meaning overtired.

Harassment in the United Kingdom

Harassment is a topic which, in the past couple of decades, has been taken increasingly seriously in the United Kingdom, and has been the subject of a number of pieces of legislation.

Introduction

Though racial and sexual discrimination have been unlawful under the Race Relations Acts and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 respectively, it is only comparatively recently that specific legislation has defined harassment specifically as unlawful.

Because of the rise recently in awareness of the issues involved in harassment, recent trends have shown significant rises in the number of people making claims of harassment at Employment Tribunals. If the complaint is serious, high damages may be awarded against the Employer, so it is important for the Employer to take seriously any allegation of harassment at an early stage and take steps to quickly resolve it.

There is also legislation in place to be able to deal with discrimination, and this legislation is distinct to that provided under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Acts.