Sexual Assault Awareness in HR

RQ1: what is your understanding on sexual assault?

Sexual Assault is a word likened to sexual Harassment. According to the retaliation policy based on order and accountability, 2011, sexual assault is an offensive act of sexual nature which may be persistent, intimidating and hostile in a work environment. The federal Equal employment opportunity commission suggests it as an unwelcome special sexual request or advances asked in form of favors, verbal or physical conducts which might be of sexual nature.

RQ2: What are the steps of creating sexual assault awareness?

Eberhardt, et al., suggests that there are procedures for responding to sexual assault in workplace. Creating a report scheme for both the managers and the employees to follow makes them aware of the situation in workplace environments. As employees, in case the harasser advances sexually and you are unable or are uncomfortable with the situation, there is a need to provide the scene of incidence and report to the human resource director immediately. Managers and employers similarly should take all concerns and allegations seriously and should not allow or tolerate such scenes. In fact, they should organize an immediate investigation of the process and offer warnings to prevent future similar events

RQ3: what are the barriers to reporting sexual assault for both men and women?

When these assaulted individuals were asked why they are barred from reporting the situations they confirmed the following reasons: shame, embarrassment, guilt and not wanting friends and family to know, fear of not being trusted or believed, concerns on confidentiality(Sable et al., 2006). In most cases different assault victims may fear being gender; both genders have the perception of the fear of being judged as maybe gay especially for the male victims. Sometimes these individuals may fear retaliation from the sexual offender.

RQ4: What are the barriers to working with Sexual assault survivors?

Ullman & Townsend, 2007, states that societal attitudes, organizational barriers, environmental factors are some of the barriers to working with sexual assault survivors. Understanding these perspectives require our perspectives on service-related barriers that may need collaborative research and professional guidance. Different professional backgrounds give different negotiating aspects to help ease such tensions. First, they have to deal with identifying the victims face to help interview the assault case and to talk about the experiences through an advocate. Some of these victims should be given a modest approach and understanding by issuing to them medical advances, legal mental health attention. Reviewing every individual’s experience requires a proper measure to be used to assist the survivors in workplaces. Trauma related to rape crisis may be very victimizing and therefore there is need to understand certain concepts for keeping the survivors safe and mentally stable.

RQ5: what is an empowerment approach to working with sexual assault survivors?

Ullman & Townsend, 2008, states that there is need to understand what constitutes the empowerment used by rape crisis advocates working with sexual assault survivors. The feminist empowerment approach requires that each survivor is specifically drawn and is keenly observed to avoid trauma in the process of work. There are different implications for empowering the sexual assault survivors and in most instances, there is need to ground such facts to social justices to issues that may arise from an explicit standing point of pursuing social justice.