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>Microsoft founder Bill Gates had an 'inappropriate' sexual relationship with a female staff member in 2000, and resigned while an investigation into the relationship was being investigated by the company board.
This time the target should be those left out in the first wave, including law firm partners and senior advicates.
Can we not ask both complainant and accused to withdraw from their position? so that there is actually a procedural justice. they both can be paid till the finality of adjudication. how many times these sexual harassment cases resulted in a finality? anyone. in my view, these procedures will be effective and efficient to weed out the fake cases and provide a bit of reprieve to the accused in case he later turns out to be innocent, this won't stop the genuine person either to pursue this legally fair and square. this will also protect them and help in fetching remedies?
else this is just an MEE TOO which is a seasonal topic for people to gossip and later on when the actual objective is lost it will be a mockery of genuine people having to face this unfortunate stuff.
Please mark trollish, no way even 1 month of legal education could result in this level of legal thinking.
On the other hand, there is plenty of supporting evidence that the vast majority of sexual harassment (and also sex crimes) are never reported. In a survey, 47% of women in India reported having faced sex harassment at work but only half ever file a complaint, and 70% are not happy with the outcome of such a complaint: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/workplace-safety-still-an-issue-survey/article31011136.ece
The reality is that a large number of companies (and probably Indian law firms too), sweep complaints under the carpet or simply issue a warning to the perpetrator (especially if the person is a senior member who generates a lot of business). And most complaints do not automatically result in placing the alleged perpetrator on leave, but require a bit of due diligence to ensure that the complaint is prima facie credible (and a lot of complaints never make it past the internal complaints committee stage). If there is strong prima facie evidence against someone, there is also legal liability on the company or firm for not putting the accused on leave.
Please also cite evidence when you say "nothing happens to the lady" in a false complaint. The opposite is true: many sacrifice their career by making legitimate complaints (particularly if against someone more powerful in the organisation), and might lose their jobs or promotion opportunities or experience retaliation for complaining, even if the ICC recognises the complaint. Now imagine the professional and workplace repercussions if a complaint is actually proven false, and if the person she (wrongly) accused remains her manager, etc.
Fact is, women usually have very little to gain by making an ICC complaint other than risk to their career, and in the rare cases they are successful, (possibly minor) punishment for their harasser. On the other hand, they have a lot to lose as the process is also stacked against accusers.
The "Plenty of evidence" you cited Kian was actually an online survey conducted by women something and gender something (NGOs) , the problems are obvious, Sample size (450) and sample selection (female journalists lol, see MJ Akbar's defamation case to know more about sexual harrasment and female journalists, I miss him smh). We all know about pollsters and dishonest respondents but I digress.
Oldboy you've fallen prey to sensationalism, of which few are innocent.
Here a report by the Delhi commission of women in which it admitted that half of the rape cases filed by it were false (they haven't revealed the statistics since (2014), can't imagine why)
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/false-rape-cases-in-delhi-delhi-commission-of-women-233222-2014-12-29
Note that this ensued after the orwellian (read democratic) state's knee jerk legislation to the Nirbhaya rape.
Overall, if you speak to women in most professions honestly, a lot will have stories about sexual harassment (if you don't just include physical harassment, but also verbal or other behavioural or institutional harassment). The 47% figure of sexual harassment from that survey actually seems fairly realistic, and also tallies up with a lot of research elsewhere (52% in [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/almost-all-young-women-in-the-uk-have-been-sexually-harassed-survey-finds the workplace in the UK], for instance).
And even if for hypothetical argument's sake the number were half that, it'd still be a huge figure of millions of women.
Using your logic that suspension without pay constitutes as βpunishmentβ (2nd punishment for the woman; 1st for the accused); this is what happens in the case of a false complaint - an innocent person is βpunishedβ
Or to put it your way -
1. There was a burglary at your neighborβs place.
2. You are not the burgler, but you are falsely accused
3. Now you are in jail while your neighbour is still lounging in his/ her sofa
In my opinion, itβs difficulty to strike a balance because of the unique nature of sexual harassment. We can never compare it to burglary or other crimes because with sexual harassment cases there is an added element of shame that the victim has to face, which would never happen if he/ she was robbed/ burgled etc.
The closest we have come to settling this debate was in the recent MJ Akbar vs Ramani case, where the court said the right of woman to talk about her sexual harassment (right to dignity) trumps the right of accused to maintain his/ her reputation.
2. The Bill Gates incident wasn't part of the #MeToo movement. There was an internal investigation at Microsoft and as anyone familiar with corporatespeak can tell you, "left the board" usually means they were handed a pre-drafted resignation letter and were given the opportunity to leave with their dignity intact.