Sexual Harassment

- Sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors. Further, other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment. In a workplace, sexual harassment can occur with a co-worker, supervisor, company owner, or a non-employer (customer, delivery person, etc.)

 

Harasser

- The person, male or female, who subjects the person to any unwelcome behavior based on their protected category. There are seven categories protected by the federal law: race, gender, religion, national origin, color, age and disability. State laws may be different. In the case of sexual harassment, the behavior occurs because of the individual’s gender.

 

Retaliation

- Retaliation against the victim is very common, particularly a complaint. Victims who speak out against sexual harassment are often labeled troublemakers and risk hostility and isolation from colleagues, supervisors, teachers or fellow students. They risk being given negative evaluations or low grades, having their project sabotaged and being denied opportunities which undermines their ability to do work well or advance in work or school.

 

Sexual Abuse

- The most obvious form of sexual abuse involves forcing someone to have sex. Other forms of sexual abuse include:

• Pressuring someone to have sex or to do certain things
• Manipulating someone into having sex, through false promises, emotional pleas, or alcohol and other drugs
• Not allowing the victim to use birth control or protect themselves from sexually transmitted infections
• Forcing a woman to have an abortion or not allowing her to have an abortion
• Forcing someone to watch/act out pornography

Sexual abuse in an intimate relationship can be very confusing. Because the victim has consented to be with this person sexually, s/he may feel that they have to agree to everything their partner wants. In a healthy relationship, a person’s sexual boundaries are always respected.

 

Physical Abuse

- Physical abuse consists of physical pain or injury. Examples include:

• Punching, kicking, or slapping
• Shaking, pushing, or grabbing hard enough to cause discomfort
• Attacking with a knife, gun, or other weapon
• Any physical act that is unwanted or hurtful (even tickling or hugging if it is unwanted)

 

Emotional Abuse

- This type of abuse is also referred to as psychological abuse. It is often the form of abuse that is most difficult for people who have never been abused to understand. When taken out of context, emotional abuse may look “normal.” For example, joking about a mistake someone has made can be a normal part of a relationship. However, when it involves ongoing insults, criticism and put-downs, it becomes abusive and reinforces the victim’s feelings of worthlessness. Other examples of emotional abuse include:

• Isolating the victim
• Keeping track of everything s/he does
• Threatening the victim’s friends against them
• Threatening suicide
• Blaming the victim for everything
• Keeping the victim from doing things they enjoy/want

Survivors of abuse consistently say that emotional abuse is the most difficult form of abuse to recover from, because physical harms can be healed, but recovering from emotional harms is a much harder process.

 

Financial Abuse

- Money is a difficult thing to negotiate with in a healthy relationship. When someone is abusive, money becomes a way for them to control the victim. Teenagers may feel pressured to spend money they do not have in order to fit in with their peers, and abusers can use that against them. Financial abuse can include:

• Using the victim’s credit cards
• Running someone’s credit
• Paying for things the victim needs and using that to manipulate the victim
• Making someone feel guilty about their financial status
• Taking money without the victim’s consent

 

Dating Violence

- Dating violence is controlling abusive and aggressive behavior in a romantic relationship, most often occurring in teen relationships. It occurs in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships and may include verbal, emotional, physical, or sexual abuse or a combination of them.

 

Domestic Violence

- Domestic violence is behavior used by one or both persons in a relationship to control the other. It includes psychological, emotional, social, financial, physical, and sexual abuse, perpetrated by family or household member, with the goal of establishing or maintaining power and control over the victim. Partners who are married, living together, separated, or dating can be a victim of domestic violence. Examples:

• Name calling or put downs
• Keeping a partner from contacting his/her family or friends
• Withholding money
• Stopping a partner from getting or keeping a job
• Actual or threatened physical harm
• Sexual assault
• Stalking
• Intimidation