I LIKE ADVISEN Front Page News (FPN). It lands in my email five days-a-week, and it almost always has something thought provoking for an enterprise risk management practitioner, even though Advisen FPN is targeted to the insurance industry.
Today’s edition (Monday, August 14, 2017) caused me to think about harassment — sexual and otherwise — including bullying and hazing in schools and on the job and all the claims finding their way into the media and into courts.
It should be clear to everyone, albeit probably not the perpetrators, that harassment in any form at any venue is illegal.
- I am against laws prohibiting harassment against this group or that, and laws that protect this group or that. There should be one (1) law that prohibits and protects all people of all groups without exception. Harassment is illegal. Discrimination is illegal. Specifying this group or that waters down the law — if it’s illegal to discriminate against women, then it is equally illegal to discriminate against men (yes, men often are victims of discrimination), infirm, seniors, etc. and et al. If it is illegal to harass a person at work, it equally is illegal to harass (bully) a person at school.
We all know that discrimination and harassment exist, and most would agree that the perpetrators should pay a price for their actions.
However, the victims of the attacks have some “due diligence” obligations.
There is a “statute of limitations” for most crimes. That’s fine and, unless you are a victim of the crime, the limitation probably seems legitimate.
I believe there should be a statute of limitations on reporting the crime.
For example, if a person is raped, unless that person is incapacitated or held captive, the crime should be reported promptly — within 24 hours. The same with harassment and discrimination.
By failing to report the crime within a reasonable time — that does not mean 20 years after the crime allegedly took place — the violated person loses the right to make a complaint.
- This does NOT apply to a child whose parents or guardian failed to report a crime; a child must be allowed to file a complaint within a reasonable time once reaching adulthood — say by age 25.
The courts are seeing too many claims of sexual misconduct dating back 15, 20, or more years ago, claims that are only now being lodged. The Bill Cosby accusations are but one example.
I am NOT suggesting criminals should escape punishment. All I am suggesting that there should be a statute of limitations on REPORTING a crime. Promptly reporting gives law enforcement a far better chance of apprehending the culprit.
Common sense forces most reasonable people to look askance on complaints filed 20 years after the fact (again, with the caveat that the statute of limitations for crimes against minors is a much longer).
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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