Tl;Dr woman at work is being sexually harassed but doesn’t want to report him to management but would be ok with me saying something to him directly
There’s a woman at my work I’m friends with. There’s this guy that would message her sexually harassing stuff back when he first got hired. Stuff like hey beautiful and asking her out. He’s married and she’s engaged. She told him to stop messaging her and I believe he did stop.
Couple weeks ago he got promoted to a new position where she would have to train him. She mentioned to our manager his messages. He told her if he does anything else to let him know. She just told me that he’s started saying stuff to her in person. I told her she said tell management but she doesn’t want to cause him to get fired or to make things awkward cuz he’ll know it was her that said something. I told her she should report him anyway she said no. I asked if she wanted me to report him to management and say I overheard something. She said no. I asked if she wanted me to say something to the harasser himself and she said that would be OK.
This guy needs to be reported and then removed. He’s not going to stop and has decided to kamikaze into your friend. I totally understand that she wants to avoid awkwardness or being associated with a problem, but this thing is going to escalate until it gets reported.
You can try to talk to the harasser and if you’re going that way I’d probably tell him that people are noticing that she seems uncomfortable around him and it’s starting to seem weird… and that you suspect that if anyone asked her questions it would be bad for him. Tell him that if everything just stopped immediately he’d probably walk away totally unscathed, but that he’s hanging out on the edge of a cliff. The only possibly acceptable way to justify this spot is if you aren’t a manager and you respect her wishes here more than you care about any other consideration. I wouldn’t feel good about this as the harasser will very likely just pick a new target if it even works.
Or something like that. Just knowing other people are starting to notice might be enough to scare him off. If he doesn’t care he’s probably too far gone.
Uh yeah… that’s relevant. She probably needs to figure out a way to accept that he’s the one doing this to himself, and that absolutely nothing about this situation is her responsibility. It’s not her getting him into trouble it’s him getting into trouble.
Dude with impulse control issues who won’t stop trying doesn’t stop trying. Ever.
If neither of you feel comfortable reporting it to management, if your company has an ombudsman or compliance department there’s likely a way to report it anonymously.
I feel like that’s what I should have done if she wouldn’t do it herself. Yeah she might be mad at me but at least she won’t be getting harassed. But then I always fear the worst in this stupid country that reporting him might cause him to escalate the situation