Man Wins Sexual Harassment Suit Against Female Employee

LensCrafters, the largest optical chain in the country, has settled a lawsuit accusing the company of allowing a male employee to be sexually harassed by a female co-worker. The company admitted no wrongdoing, but it will pay former lab technician William Sheard $192,500 and will start educating its employees about harassment against males in the workplace as part of the settlement.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which filed the suit on behalf of the technician in 2009, claimed Sheard fended off repeated come-ons from colleague Melissa Brandt in a LensCrafters store in Saginaw, Mich., and alleged that management ignored Sheard’s complaints because he was a man being harassed by a woman.

“Sometimes people think that a young man — well, they don’t believe it can happen to a man,” Sheard told HuffPost. “They just believe every guy would jump on a situation like that. That’s far from the truth.”

According to the suit, Sheard started working at LensCrafters in 1998. In 2006, Brandt told him she wanted to have a relationship with him that was “more than platonic.” Sheard declined. From then on, Brandt would reference sex acts in front of Sheard, talk openly about his body, touch and grab his chest and backside and tell him she loved him and wanted to have sex with him, the suit claimed.

At a holiday party in 2008, Brandt allegedly tried to grab Sheard’s crotch several times, to the point where Sheard had to leave. After repeated rejections, Brandt eventually made a sexual harassment claim against Sheard, a charge she later admitted was false, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged that LensCrafters management immediately investigated Brandt’s charge while ignoring Sheard’s.

“People witnessed things,” Sheard said. “Nobody wanted to do anything about it.”

Sheard repeatedly brought his issues to management — at first the lab manager, and then up the company ladder — all to no avail, he said. All told, the alleged harassment lasted for more than a year.

via huffington post