Versions of Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood’s casting couch have been played out all across this country in industry after industry. I know, because it happened to me. 

After my experience I did extensive research and then conducted seminars on the law of sexual harassment. Still later I conducted investigations into workplace harassment complaints. In most of the cases I encountered, every participant had a completely different understanding of what actually happened. Most weren’t lying – other than to themselves – but few determined their conduct by reference to anyone or anything other than their own interests. 

Most importantly, I learned that there are concrete ways to attack this metastasizing phenomenon – ways that offer legal protection to everyone who follows the rules, and that also encourage people to do the right thing. The problem is that most people, even most professionals in industries where harassment is endemic, don’t know the law. In this area, at least, the law is a strong motivator of good conduct by employers and others who are affected by harassment.

I relate my experience as a case study to highlight the complexities and challenges of sexual harassment both during and after the trauma itself. I then point out that there are available legal protections so that readers can search out those tools, or force their employers to do so.

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I was a young associate in a law firm when I was approached at an after-work fundraiser by a partner with whom I worked. After about an hour of conversation he told me I was smart but that I wouldn’t make partner unless I had his help. And he made it clear that his help would be forthcoming only if I agreed to a certain kind of relationship with him.

He insisted that I let him drive me home that night. Although I repeatedly refused, he menacingly followed me back to the office. I cowered under my desk that night, terrified to get in the elevator or use the stairs to escape, lest I find him in a space from which I could not get away.

I went to that partner the next day and told him if he never did anything like that again I wouldn’t report him, but if he did I would. I also went to a more senior woman lawyer and told her what happened, but insisted I didn’t want her to do anything because I needed to take care of it myself. So far as I know, she respected my wish.

Mine was a classic case of sexual harassment: a man in a powerful position used that position to try to get something he wanted from a woman from whom he wouldn’t otherwise get it. He allowed himself to believe he wasn’t being coercive because I paid close attention to him. As a young associate my goal, in part, was to make sure he was happy with me. Coming from a female associate, that pleasing had a different meaning to my boss than when the young male associates listened carefully and laughed at his lame or off-color jokes.

This phenomenon – smart older men with young attractive women intent on satisfying their demands – was the perfect setup for what I called the Revenge of the Nerds. These predators were frequently the guys who weren’t popular in high school or college, the geeky ones (have you looked at Harvey Weinstein?) who suddenly have women hanging on their every word. Harvey Weinstein still insists any physical encounters with the women complainants were consensual – and at least a part of him believes it, no matter how ludicrous that seems. They all seemed so eager to please him!

The partner who made the advance to me was a white male, but I was also harmed by several white woman who used my experience, without permission, to wheedle money out of our firm when it fired them. They included what happened to me in their sex discrimination complaint: “it was the juiciest thing in the complaint,” I was told by a firm partner. And the black female lawyer who drafted and filed the complaint on behalf of those women never asked me if the facts as stated were true – as was her obligation as a lawyer – or if I was okay with her clients using my experience for their financial benefit – another painful disappointment for me. 

Months later, when the predatory partner was asked to take a position of power for a Republican U.S. senator, I told the senator’s wife for whom I used to work about what had happened. I hoped to ensure there would be no repeat performance when the predator arrived in our nation’s other candy bowl of anxious-to-please women: Washington, D.C. 

Instead of thanking me for the tip-off, my former boss told her husband. The senator summoned me to his office and ruthlessly grilled me about the incident. He tried to get me to say it was okay with me if he hired the predator lawyer.  I refused.  Short-lived victory.

That night the head of my department called me at home. This lawyer was a staunch Democrat but the firm benefitted – and hoped to continue – from its relationship with the senator, and with one of its partners on the way to DC, they hoped to continue to benefit from that relationship. So my boss understood that he had one duty: not to right the wrong, and not to make sure it didn’t happen again, but to get me to sign a release. My bosses wanted me to say that what happened wasn’t that bad, that I had misunderstood. They wanted me to give the okay for the senator to hire their partner. And they used a woman partner to try to get me to give that okay. This was taking place just when I learned I had cancer and needed to decide what course of treatment to pursue.  That made no difference to any of them.

There was one good guy in my story: a black professor of mine from Harvard Law School. He was the only one I could turn to who wouldn’t fold in the face of the senator or the law firm. Everyone else – peer or superior, man or woman, black or white – did a calculation about what to do with what happened to me, and for each of them the calculation treated me as irrelevant – my feelings, my privacy, my rights, all were of no consequence.

So, finally, here’s the good news: as I learned from my studies of sexual harassment, the incentives to do the right thing are written into the law. People just need to know what the law is, and how they can trigger the appropriate conduct. That could be reporting a problem before it becomes a nightmare, or it could be intercession by a supervisor, because if one has knowledge of the bad behavior and doesn’t report it, that supervisor is also liable. The woman lawyer to whom I told what happened to me was legally required to act once she knew, my request that I needed to handle it myself notwithstanding.

If a company has a sound sexual harassment policy, and if its employees are made aware of that policy, and if the policy is followed – the company has a good defense to any claim. Conversely, if there is no policy in place or if the policy is not followed, or if the employees are not informed in detail about the policy, the company has no such defense.

And for those (hello, Woody Allen) who worry that a single wink or innocent remark will lead to the chain gang, the law is smarter than that. There are legal protections for those wrongly accused, just as there are guidelines for knowing when a wink is just a wink.

The people who engage in sexual harassment, or those who act based on their own best interests’ calculation rather than protecting those who deserve protection, need to know the law and the consequences to them for getting it wrong. There can and should be fewer victims, both the many abused and those wrongly accused. 

Marcus is a journalist and former lawyer.