Groping Prevention Week Announced

No, this isn’t an announcement made by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or some other government agency in the U.S. This is an announcement made by the Tokyo police. Why? Last year, more than 6,000 men were arrested for groping women on Japan’s crowded trains. It’s also reported that two-thirds of young women have been groped on public trains.

Indeed, the Japanese groping problem has become so serious that police undercover teams have been deployed on some train lines to catch the gropers. Gropers have formed gangs and communicate with other via the Internet about the train lines on which gropers have the most success. Gropers can be imprisoned for seven years in Japan.

Groping is, of course, a form of sexual harassment in the workplace in the U.S. There hasn’t been a groping outbreak in this country like in Japan, but there are a disturbing number of harassment cases filed each year where it’s alleged that one employee, usually a male, groped another employee, usually a female. (See recent case filed by EEOC.)

To use the Japanese example as a source of guidance, in addition to making sure your employees are aware of your sexual harassment policy and what it covers, you may also want to advise them that, like in Japan, groping can be a crime in this country. It’s a form of criminal battery, and every so often, in addition to filing a sexual harassment lawsuit, an employee will have her harasser prosecuted for criminal conduct.

There are still too many employees who don’t take sexual harassment seriously enough. They think it’s the company’s problem. It is a problem for the company, but being put in jail for battery or some other related crime is the harasser’s problem. Thus, a groping prevention week might not be a bad idea.