THE Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) is now reviewing its sexual harassment policy which an independent panel referenced in February in recommending two weeks suspension for a senior staff member at the Electoral Office of Jamaica (EOJ) found guilty of sexual harassment.

The panel also recommended “training for the harasser”. But an appeal has since been filed and the outcome of the review, expected within the next two weeks, will determine the way forward, according to EOJ Director Glasspole Brown.

“We have to be guided by what comes out of it… Following that we will do a whole sensitisation of staff [about] the policy,” Brown told the Jamaica Observer on Monday.

He said the sexual harassment case, the first he is aware of during his “nearly 11 years in the system”, had “impacted” on the need for the ongoing review but was not the only contributing factor.

“It had to do with it. We are looking at all our policies across the different areas. But that [the sexual harassment case], to a certain extent, contributed to it also. But it wasn’t solely because of that alone. We’re doing a comprehensive review of a number of polices across the organisation. Some of them we need to update and so on,” he said.

In a written report, dated February 11, 2020, a three-member panel ruled that the senior staff member was found to have made “unwanted sexual advances towards [his subordinate], contrary to a part of Section 2 of the Sexual Harassment Policy of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica”. The EOJ carries out the day-to-day functions of the ECJ and is thus guided by its policies and procedures.

Speaking with the Observer, the senior staff member was adamant that “there was no two-week suspension” and referred all further queries to Brown.

The panel’s February 11 ruling was a culmination of sessions between December 2019 and January 2020 to hear allegations a secretary brought against her boss, and give him a chance to tell his side of the story.

It began with an unwelcome kiss one week into the job and allegedly continued for five months, the secretary testified. By her estimation, there were unwanted sexual advances more than 10 times a month during that period.

In recommending the two-week suspension, one level below dismissal, the panel made it clear it was being guided by the ECJ’s sexual harassment policy, the document now under review. The policy does not appear to provide guidelines for the duration of suspensions meted out.

The panel also noted in its ruling that the ECJ had breached procedures outlined in the policy by failing to have someone in the post of sexual harassment officer, and failing to notify the senior official — when he complained about the secretary’s poor performance in November — that she had verbally accused him of sexual harassment the month before.

The panel said the breaches had deprived both parties of a chance to “resolve things informally” before it escalated to a trial. It stressed, though, that the senior officer had not been deprived of a fair hearing as he was given an opportunity during trial to “confront and test” his accuser.

After hearing both sides, the panel found that the accused senior EOJ staff member was not a “truthful or reliable witness”. It also spoke of the imbalance of power between the two. “We… accept that [the secretary] did not want to make an issue of [the first kiss]. [The senior staffer] was an appointed senior official and all [the secretary] had been for six years prior was a temporary worker elsewhere. We accept that several of the instances of touch and sexual utterances happened without her consent.”

It added: “The evidence was that the acts, course of conduct and utterances were regarded by [the secretary] as unwelcome, inappropriate, offensive or humiliating to her.”

While it noted that the acts occurred “quite frequently” over a five-month period, the panel made it clear that it rejected some sections of the secretary’s evidence as there were “blurred” lines in the relationship between the supervisor and his subordinate. The panel did not accept the secretary’s claim that all the “incidents” were “entirely unwanted” and therefore found that the harassment did not last for the duration of the period outlined in her testimony. It was unclear whether this impacted the duration of the suspension recommended for the senior staff member.

In her testimony, the young secretary outlined that between July and November 2019, behind office doors closed by her accuser, he touched her breasts and buttocks. In her written complaint that led to the hearing, she also said he touched her pubic area. She repeatedly told her boss to stop, she said, and had to “fight off” his advances.

The senior employee has denied that he made sexual advances, wanted or unwanted, to his secretary. In a 13-page written response to her formal complaint, he pointed out that he was integrally involved in the drafting of the National Sexual Harassment Policy that was before a parliamentary committee as part of deliberations on national sexual harassment legislation. “I am very conversant with this sensitive and often misunderstood issue and I have been conducting awareness sessions with faith-based, civic and academic institutions in an effort to build awareness, as well as the likely accompanying consequences related to same,” he said.

According to Brown, The University of the West Indies’ Hugh Lawson Shearer Institute has already been engaged to sensitise “management and staff” about the issue of sexual harassment. That will be the next step after the ongoing policy review has been completed.