Retaliation, Backlash and Victim-blaming

December 29, 2009

Sound familiar?

Filed under: General issues, Retaliation, Backlash and Victim-blaming — Jennifer @ 4:44 pm

In China, a 28-yer-old woman has won the first sexual harassment lawsuit since the country passed the Chinese Women’s Rights Protection Law back in 2005.

The woman, surnamed Luo, suffered repeated groping from her new boss at the Japanese-owned company Moriroku (Guangzhou) Plastics Company Limited. She complained to the institution officials, even producing photographs of her boss in action at a party. All she requested was an apology and a promise that the company would work to prevent such incidents from happening again. Instead, the fired her.

Luo reported to the China Daily, “They fired me under the excuse of skipping duties without valid reasons….I still live in a terrible psychological shadow after sexual harassment. I have been turned down for several jobs since the case was brought to court.”

The court ordered her former boss to pay 3,000 yuan ($440) in compensation and demanded the company issue an apology letter three weeks ago.

But you know those Chinese and their human rights abuses against women….tsk, tsk. We are so more evolved in the U.S.–NOT!

This is much like every other story I heard since SHS came into being: institutions trying to get around discrimination law by firing the complainants using some lame or trumped up charge about her performance. Many of these are published at the stories area of SHS, there are certainly too many to list here. For me, the professor-stalkers’ particularly lame excuse for their most recent conduct–including phone tapping and repeated burglary–is that I’m ADD and “not focused.” (Earlier, when I would not pursue any of them sexually, in retaliation they spread the blatant lie that I was cheating in school.)

Moreover, the same blackballing is also going on in the U.S., with people often unable to find new jobs after they are fired in retaliation for harassment complaints. And you are really up-a-creek if you come from a small community. I know of one couple who both worked at the company where the wife was harassed. They were literally run out of town after the boss’s conduct came to light.

The U.S. is as violent, discriminatory, and sexist as any other country that we love to point our fingers and sniff at. Will the people of the United States ever grow up enough to have the strength and maturity to see the truth about themselves? Let’s hope so.

Source: 1

Comments (3)

December 17, 2009

Revising my “worst case” assessment

Filed under: Retaliation, Backlash and Victim-blaming — Jennifer @ 6:18 pm

Did I say that the Jay Glosser case was one of the worst stories of sexual harassment retaliation I’ve heard? Well, it still is, but now I’ve stumbled across another one that is worse.

Frank Garcia, a former nursing supervisor in Rochester, New York, has been sentenced to three life terms for murder. Prosecutors say that he shot five victims during a retaliation rampage after he was fired twice from two different healthcare facilities for sexual harassment. Two women he supervised complained he sexually harassed them— Kimberly Glatz at Wesley Gardens and Mary Silliman at Lakeside Beikirch Care Center.

The prosecutor said “He was fired because he couldn’t control his ego” and “he couldn’t put up with” romantic rejection.

Garcia first went to Lakeside Hospital where he killed Silliman outside. Two people, Audra Dillon and Randal Norman were driving by, witnessed the attack and tried to assist. Garcia wounded Dillion and killed Norman. Then he drove to the home of Glatz and killed both her and her husband execution-style.

“It was a premeditated, calculated, cold act,” said Judge Frank Geraci.

When I founded this community, it never occurred to me in my wildest dreams I would be writing about murders and attempted murders in the aftermath of sexual harassment and sexual harassment complaints. But really, we hear about this all the time, and never relate it to sexual harassment. Any romantically-obsessed stalker killing represents the same problem. We just don’t tend to make the connection.

In all my research on sexual harassment when SHS was coming together, I never heard one mention of how violent the aftermath can be. But then again, I never found much of anything about retaliation, in general, which is why that survey I put together is now out there on the Internet, although it never occurred to me to include “attempted murder” in the multiple choice list under the retaliation questions.

Our denial is extraordinary. We really believe that Americans are so advanced that no educated, financially secure, credentialed American male would think “If she doesn’t accept me, I’ll destroy her.” We really think this only happens in places like India and Afghanistan…..

We need do think again, and think long and hard.

Sources: 1, 2, 3

Comments (0)

December 5, 2009

Guilty: update on the TCC murder plot

Filed under: Retaliation, Backlash and Victim-blaming — Tags: sexual harassment retaliation — Jennifer @ 4:49 pm

Recently, LiveScience and Yahoo featured an article published by a university professor which claims the more formally educated someone is, the better they are at handling anger. Source (As if people stop learning when they quit going to classes.)

This made me laugh out loud. After working in social science research for years with those supposedly hyper-educated university professors, I can assure you it was never the secretaries or clerks throwing things in anger–it was always the people with “Dr.” in front of their names. Other professors would hide in their offices whenever there was conflict in the air. The PhDs from Rice University worked things out professionally by sabotaging the equipment of those who made them angry. (Not to mention the fact that I’ve been stalked for over seven years by university professors who clearly can’t manage their own anger, either.)

You’ve got to watch those researchers as they are notorious for focusing their studies and conclusions in ways that validate themselves, their values, their behaviors, their personalities, etc.

I think educated people are just more aware of how they should behave, but are more apt to be in denial (lie) about how they really behave as they are more image conscious.

This all reminded me of one of the worst cases of sexual harassment retaliation I have heard which involved a college professor at Tidewater Community College who hired a hit man to kill a female colleague who had accused him of sexual harassment. The story was reported back in 2006. At the time, there were only accusations and charges.

I remember that the harasser’s colleagues were outraged that he had been suspended for this. (It figures)

While the story had not faded from my mind, I had not kept tabs on what happened. So I have been Googling for updates. Here is a recap and what I found out:

Jay Glosser was an IT professor worried that a sexual harassment complaint made by Kimberly Perez could cost him his job. Perez was an associate professor in the same department. (Yes, the sexual harassment complaint was TRUE.)

Glosser had a neighbor, Raymond Groves, who offered to help him with his problem and arranged for one of his employees, F. Devin Scott to assist. Glosser offered the two men $3,000 to $4,000 to persuade Perez to withdraw her complaint or $10,000 to “take her out.”

But when Scott showed up at Perez’s front door, he ended up warning her instead. Later in a phone call, he asked her for $10,000 not to kill her. In another call, he told her he was connected to the Ku Klux Klan and that if he didn’t kill her, “some skinheads would come in from Alabama to do it.”

Subsequently, police sting operations led to arrests of Glosser, Groves, and Scott.

Glosser later pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder for hire, solicitation, and conspiracy to commit extortion. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but most of it was suspended down to 8 1/2 years in prison. Groves got 8 years. Scott got 7 years.

Perez later filed a lawsuit against the college for ignoring her complaints. (I don’t know if this has been settled.)

She says her days are filled with fears and anxiety. “I can’t got to the store without worrying that someone is following me.” She said, “It’s a different life.

Most people still don’t know that the retaliation against sexual harassment complainants is often a lot worse than the original harassment. If you are interested in this issue, Perez’s story is really a must read: Kimberly Perez talks about her ordeal

Let’s get these educated folks some anger management classes. Quick!!!

December 4, 2006

Murder plot in retaliation for sexual harassment complaint

Filed under: Retaliation, Backlash and Victim-blaming — Jennifer @ 7:54 pm

On first read, this sounds pretty extreme in terms of retaliation against a sexual harassment complainant. But in actuality, many of us experience retaliation that is akin to murder, if not in the physical sense. As the judge put it in the Christina Orozco stalking case, you can murder a person in other ways, such as by destroying their reputation, their relationships, their job prospects, their life, etc.

While this story below reports the most extreme attempt at retaliation that I’ve come across, from my own experience, and what I know about what happens in the aftermath of many other sexual harassment situations, it doesn’t surprise me in the least.

For even more surprising responses, go to the website to read the discussion comments on this article–one guy was actually complaining about this professor getting suspended for plotting the murder. (He viewed it as a violation of the man’s civil rights–puh-lease!)

from Inside Higher Ed
June 12, 2006

Plot to Kill a Colleague

State prosecutors in Virginia charged a professor at Tidewater Community College last week with plotting to murder a departmental colleague who had filed a sexual harassment complaint against him.

College officials suspended Jay A. Glosser on Friday, citing his arrest on “serious criminal charges involving another TCC faculty member.” In a statement, college officials said that Glosser, an associate professor of information systems technology at the college’s Norfolk campus, “has been temporarily relieved of all college-related duties and responsibilities pending the outcome of the charges against him.” The statement said that Glosser has been on the Tidewater faculty for 10 years. Tidewater officials declined further comment.

In court records and testimony at a bond hearing Friday, according to reports in The Virginian-Pilot and other local newspapers, prosecutors and the Virginia State Police laid out what appeared to be a well-documented scheme to kill Kimberly Perez, who also teaches information systems technology at Tidewater’s Norfolk campus. According to the college’s Web site, the two have collaborated on courses on how to use Blackboard, among other things.

As described by prosecutors, Glosser feared that the sexual harassment complaint could damage his career. “Because he was concerned for his job, he was going to have her killed,” The Virginian-Pilot quoted the prosecutor, David Laird, as saying in court on Friday.

According to police officials, Glosser asked a friend and former neighbor, Raymond Groves, for help in trying to either persuade Perez to drop the complaint or to “take her out.” Glosser allegedly offered Groves as much as $4,000 if the complaint disappeared and up to $15,000 if Perez did, according to the testimony of police officials.

Prosecutors said that Groves solicited a third man, F. Devin Scott, to be the conduit to Perez. According to police, Scott made threatening telephone calls to Perez, who hired a private investigator and eventually contacted the Virginia State Police.

They then set up a sting that resulted in Scott’s arrest. That set off a chain of taped telephone conversations, first between Scott and Groves, and then between Groves and Glosser, in which the men implicated themselves, police officials said. Laird, the prosecutor, told The Virginian-Pilot that the evidence against the men was “very strong” because of the taped conversations.

Neither Glosser nor his lawyer responded to e-mail messages and telephone calls left for them over the weekend. Perez also did not respond to messages.

Tidewater Community College officials said they were cooperating with the police and that they might take “further action” against Glosser as “additional information on the charges and evidence becomes available.”

— Doug Lederman

http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/06/12/murder

Comments (1)

Speak Up! Blog