New Zealand sex worker to get six-figure payout for harassment

NZ sex worker will receive a six-figure payout after she was sexually harassed at brothel.

The tribunal found ‘even in a brothel, language with a sexual dimension can be used inappropriately’.

A New Zealand sex worker will receive a six-figure payout after she was sexually harassed at a brothel.

The woman took harassment proceedings against the owner of the brothel where she worked and was awarded compensation by the country’s Human Rights Tribunal for “emotional harm and lost earnings”.

Michael Timmins, who represented the woman, said the settlement was an important reminder to businesses that all workers, regardless of the nature of their work, had the right to freedom from sexual harassment.

“It’s good that people are coming forward with these complaints but it’s also a stain that this is acceptable conduct in businesses up and down the country,” he told The New Zealand Herald.

Dame Catherine Healy, national co-ordinator of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective, said the decision was a milestone and a warning to brothel operators to be “very aware” of upholding labour rights.

The details, including the identities of those involved, ­remain confidential.

In an earlier decision the tribunal had found that sex workers were protected by human rights laws. Although they work in an environment where there will be some sexual language and behaviour, there is a difference between that with a legitimate work purpose and unwelcome or offensive language and behaviour, the tribunal held.

“Context is everything. Even in a brothel, language with a sexual dimension can be used inappropriately in suggestive, oppressive or abusive circumstances,” it said. “It follows that it is not possible to ask whether a ‘reasonable sex worker’ would find the behaviour unwelcome or offensive.

“If in a brothel language or behaviour of a sexual nature could never be considered unwelcome or offensive, sex workers would be denied the protection of the Human Rights Act.”

The Times