Teen fights store owner’s blatant sexual harassment

Fresh out of high school, at the age of 18, Rebecca landed a job selling cellphones at a small store.

Some days she worked alone. Other days the store owner would work with her and occasionally his wife would be there.

During the first two weeks, the owner began to make sexually explicit comments including “How’s my sexy worker?” “Good morning, sexy” and “You look hot today.”

Even though Rebecca just ignored the comments and tried to pretend they were not happening, they increased in frequency.

About a month after she started, the owner told her he was planning to hire more staff and that she would need to manage and train the new employees.

Not surprisingly, Rebecca asked if she could have a raise. The owner responded by saying “as long as you give me” oral sex. He then unzipped his pants and laughed. Rebecca refused and left the room.

The owner began engaging in sexual touching around this time, including grabbing at Rebecca’s buttocks, slapping them and attempting to grab her by the hips and pull her into his lap.

Every time it happened, she asked him to stop and he just laughed at her. Eventually, he began forcing his hands up her skirt and grabbing her breasts.

Almost two months after Rebecca started, the store was scheduled to have a big sale and she dressed up in high heels and a skirt for the event. When she got to work, she was told that instead of selling in the store, she would be required to walk up and down the sidewalk out front to hand out flyers to passersby. It was a fairly rough street, and Rebecca felt this task was meant to make her look cheap. She complied, but at one point went to her nearby apartment to change shoes because she could not walk up and down the street in high heels all day.

At the end of the day, she and the boss argued about her having gone home and other issues and she quit. On the way out, she told the owner’s wife about the sexual comments, requests and touching that he had visited on Rebecca.

When Rebecca’s sexual harassment complaint was heard by the Canada Human Rights Commission, the owner simply denied all of this behaviour.

He wasn’t believed. Rebecca got a new job after a month, so the federal commission only ordered a month’s lost wages.

But it also ordered that she be paid $7,500 for pain and suffering and $12,500 as a result of the owner’s wilful and reckless conduct.

The adjudicator said that in arriving at those amounts, he tried to balance the extreme nature of the behaviour with two facts: it had happened over a fairly short period of time, and this was not a large and sophisticated employer.

Trying to assess whether such an award is actually enough is difficult. On the one hand, no amount of money can ever compensate for Rebecca having been subjected to such heinous and, yes, criminal treatment.

Although adjudicators don’t explicitly take into account how deep the pockets of the defendant are, there is no point in making an award so large that it can never be paid and the defendant simply declares bankruptcy. That could be a disservice to the complainant.

If Rebecca had hired a lawyer and sued the store owner for sexual assault, she likely would have ended up with significantly more money. He’s lucky she decided to simply do a human rights complaint on her own because he probably ended up spending less.

Although human rights monetary awards are not meant to be punitive, no one can ignore the fact that if these rights are to be taken seriously and this kind of behaviour discouraged, the consequences have to hurt.

While I am dismayed at the low dollar figure Rebecca received, I am comforted by the fact that the store owner would have had to sell a lot of cellphone plans to make that money.

Ed Canning practises labour and employment law with Ross & McBride LLP, in Hamilton, representing both employers and employees. You can email him at ecanning@rossmcbride.com.