Sexual Harassment and Fraud in the US
Introduction
In the United States (U.S.), the law prohibits anyone from being victimized based on sex and gender. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) classifies sexual harassment as a crime since it violates Title VII. Fraud has no distinct form but can amount to a criminal act depending on the nature of the wrong committed. Common elements that cause fraud to be considered a crime include using unlawful means to obtain or attempt to receive a benefit, employing false representations, deception, or lies, and intending to cheat or deceive the target. Sexual harassment and fraud are prevalent crimes in the U.S. and have attracted the government’s attention to punishing the perpetrators.
Sexual Harassment
The longstanding belief is that women are the sole victims of sexual harassment. The EEOC indicates that either a woman or a man can be the victim or harasser, and the crime can involve parties of the same sex (Dobbin & Kalev, 2020). In most cases, sexual harassment is perpetuated at the workplace by supervisors, co-workers, or people employed in other companies or conducting business with the victim’s employer, such as a customer. The offense can be perpetuated in different ways, including unwelcome sexual advances, offensive remarks about a person’s sex, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature (Dobbin & Kalev, 2020). Simple teasing, offhand remarks, or isolated cases that are not extreme have not been declared illegal. However, they can amount to sexual harassment if they become frequently used or serious, resulting in hostility or offense at the workplace. The victims can further claim sexual harassment if they suffer negative consequences, such as demoted or termination.
Sexual harassment issues are mainly handled under the EEOC, which employs different approaches to settle the matters. The agency seeks to prevent crime through education and outreach programs and provides a remedy for the victims through legal enforcement. For instance, the EEOC has earmarked April National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. The agency derives its mandate under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII forbids persons to engage in discrimination based on a person’s sex and includes sexual orientation, pregnancy, and gender identity. According to Dobbin and Kalev (2020), the #MeToo movement that became prevalent in October 2017 led to increased reporting of sexual harassment cases. As a result, in 2018, the agency had to deal with 7,609 sexual harassment charges in 2018, an increase of about 14 percent compared to the 6,696 charges it handled in 2017. The agency indicates that women were disproportionately affected in most of the cases that were reported.
Fraud
People commonly consider fraud to be a case of theft that involves stealing. However, fraud is distinguished from theft by two main attributes; it involves a scheme or artifice that constitutes the crime’s key component. The scheme or artifice entails convincing someone concerning providing or intending to provide something of value using falsehood. Even if the scheme does not become successful at the time of being caught, a person is still considered to have committed fraud. The common types of fraud include wire, tax, welfare, bank, securities, insurance, bank, credit card fraud, and perjury (Jacobs, 2019).
Fraud can be handled differently by the state and federal governments depending on established laws that outlaw varied categories of fraud. There are circumstances where fraud is evaluated differently by state and federal laws. A person who commits a fraudulent activity can violate either state law, federal law, or both simultaneously and could be prosecuted at both levels. At the federal level and in most states, fraud must be proved through the court system. The state and federal governments still need to provide explicit definitions of the terms, so the courts must rely on precedent.
In general, the U.S. Supreme Court defines fraud based on the intention of a party to deprive another of property, irrespective of whether it would result in instantaneous financial harm. Jacobs (2019) indicates that the federal state has expanded the scope of fraud to include honest services fraud, which constitutes the intention to rob another of the transcendental right of honest services. The expansion in the definition has empowered courts to charge perpetrators on crimes bordering on corruption cases, such as bribery (Jacobs (2019). Fraud can mainly be punished by imposing a fine, imprisonment, or both. Jacobs (2019) states that the sentence can vary depending on the nature of the current violation as defined by the quantity of harm committed and the victims targeted, the defendant’s criminal past, and the interest in safeguarding public safety. The suspect can apply several defenses, including lack of intention, knowledge, insufficient evidence, entrapment, justifiable reliance, mistake of fact, no injury, and illegal seizure, among others.
Conclusion
Sexual harassment and fraud are prevalent criminal acts in the U.S. All complaints on sexual harassment are handled by the EEOC. In contrast, fraud is based on the laws developed by the state and federal governments. While sexual harassment is explicitly considered a criminal act, fraud needs to meet specific conditions to be considered a crime; otherwise, it amounts to a civil action. In both crimes, perpetrators can be punished through the courts can punish the perpetrators through fines, imprisonment, or both.
References
Dobbin, F., & Kalev, A. (2020). Why sexual harassment programs backfire. Harvard Business Review. Web.
‌Jacobs, J. B. (2019). The rise and fall of organized crime in the United States. Crime and Justice, 49(1). Web.