Harassment

WASHINGTON -- A Maryland judge has refused to dismiss a sexual harassment case against Hechinger Co. and one of its senior vice presidents.The decision Tuesday by Prince George's County Circuit Judge Darlene Perry clears the way for a lawsuit to proceed in which a former Hechinger employee alleges that the company's director of store operations, Gary Mercer, physically and verbally harassed her.The suit, filed in March, comes as the Landover-based seller...

New England Patriots owner Victor Kiam spent much of yesterday at a law firm giving a deposition stemming from the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by sports reporter Lisa Olson.Olson, who is on leave from the Boston Herald, sued Kiam, three players and two front-office employees following an incident last year. Olson said the players approached herin the Patriots locker room and made lewd remarks and exposed themselves. The NFL fined the team and the players.* GIANTS: Linebacker Pepper Johnson let it rip after practice this week, accusing unnamed defensive teammates of not going all-out on every play this season.

Maury Povich was just another steely-eyed news anchor until sensationalism came to call in the mid-1980s. The show was the tabloidy "A Current Affair," a muckraking syndicated program that offered tantalizing stories on cheerleader hookers and mass murderers who crochet. Mr. Povich's booming bass voice made him a perfect candidate to read aloud the segment's sordid intros. The show became so popular, of course, that Mr. Povich left it. What personality in America today, if offered his or her own talk show, wouldn't jump at the chance?

A sexual harassment complaint against Northeast High School's baseball coach was dropped last night when the alleged victim refused to testify at a Board of Education hearing."

After an eight-week inquiry and a 60-page report by a former Watergate investigator, the NFL has reached twin conclusions in the matter of Lisa Olson: one, that Olson was telling the truth about being sexually harassed in the New England Patriots locker room; two, that it's no big deal.Nobody was suspended. Fines were virtually incidental. The cost of wiggling your waggle -- as Patriots owner Victor Kiam so eloquently put it -- in front of a woman reporter is obviously cheap. Here's your NFL benchmark for sexual harassment that borders on assault, as established by commissioner Paul Tagliabue: a $12,500 fine for Zeke Mowatt and $5,000 fines for Michael Timpson and Robert Perryman.

Although the allegations of Professor Anita Hill did not derail the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, they stripped bare the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace.During the turbulent Senate hearings, sexual harassment was examined in great detail, but one aspect remains unclear: Just how widespread is it?An analysis of national surveys on sexual harassment -- each conducted before the hearings -- shows that 42 to 60 percent of women questioned reported being harassed.

In the largest study done of misconduct in academic science, researchers have reported that 40 percent of female university faculty members and 32 percent of female graduate students surveyed in four major disciplines have direct evidence of sexual harassment by faculty members at their universities or have observed such harassment.But despite such indications of widespread sexual harassment, many faculty members in engineering and science still do not consider it an ethical problem that they need to address, other researchers reported.

The personnel director of a downtown Annapolis hotel was at the seminar to learn how to raise employees' awareness about sexual harassment. But she was also there as a woman.Like almost all of the other women in the room, Deborah Seyler has been subjected to unwanted comments, looks, jokes and gestures.Yesterday's workshop at Loews Annapolis Hotel on West Street underscored both the troubling frequency of sexual harassment and the difficulties caused by the changing rules in the workplace.

WASHINGTON -- Responding to charges that black elected officials are being harassed by the federal government, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus proposed yesterday the creation of a special institute or center to seek hard evidence of such cases.Recently, Attorney General Richard L. Thornburgh was asked to create a special commission to investigate instances of inappropriate or overzealous government investigation and prosecution of black elected officials. But the attorney general said he first needed "evidence" of such instances.

A male boss who makes unwelcome sexual advances to a male subordinate is not committing illegal sexual harassment -- even though the same behavior toward a female worker could violate federal law, a federal judge in Baltimore has ruled.In the first ruling of its kind in federal court here, Senior U.S. District Judge Alexander Harvey II dismissed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. Wednesday, saying that federal anti-discrimination laws do not cover cases in which a person sexually harasses another person of the same gender.