President's Message - No place for sexual harassment at the Bar

29/10/2021

The New South Wales Bar Association condemns any form of discrimination, workplace bullying and sexual harassment and is committed to the elimination of unacceptable behaviour in our workplaces and to a safe and inclusive legal profession.

Today the Association has launched three key linked initiatives to combat unacceptable behaviour at the Bar:

• A new film for the Association’s CPD program which will highlight the issue of sexual harassment at the NSW Bar;

• The appointment of an independent Sexual Harassment Officer to provide dedicated, confidential support and advice to anyone who has experienced or witnessed sexual harassment, workplace bullying or discrimination at the NSW Bar; and

• ‘Spot’, an online tool to allow sexual harassment, workplace bullying or discrimination to be reported confidentially and anonymously.

No place for sexual harassment at the Bar film

The Association has commissioned a film titled "No place for sexual harassment at the Bar", which will become a part of our ongoing CPD program and is targeted at achieving cultural change at the Bar.

The film includes statements from the Chief Justice of New South Wales the Honourable TF Bathurst AC and me about the need for significant change to the culture of our profession and the stigma around reporting sexual harassment. The film is contained in a video with a short introduction and then a discussion between the Chair of the Association’s Diversity and Equality Committee, Kate Eastman AM SC and myself on the three linked initiatives. The video can be accessed through your member log in.

Sexual Harassment Officer

The Bar Association has appointed a new, independent Sexual Harassment Officer, Ms Jenny Houen, to provide confidential advice and support to anyone who has experienced or witnessed discrimination, workplace bullying and sexual harassment at the New South Wales Bar.

Members can contact the Sexual Harassment Officer directly for support and referral to services.

The Sexual Harassment Officer is also available to listen to reports, to provide pastoral care and support to those who have experienced or witnessed sexual harassment, and to provide advice about the various options which are available for making informal and formal complaints about sexual harassment and other behaviour.

The Sexual Harassment Officer will not have any involvement in investigating or adjudicating complaints and all communications with the Sexual Harassment Officer are entirely confidential.

You can contact Jenny anonymously via Spot (further details below) or directly on 0427 317 958 or at sexualharassmentofficer@nswbar.asn.au.

Some members may know Jenny from her role as Director of BarCare. BarCare will also continue to be available alongside the Spot reporting tool to provide confidential support to help members of the Association and their immediate families to manage emotional and stress-related problems.

Spot

Spot is an online tool which allows those who have witnessed or experienced discrimination, workplace bullying and sexual harassment at the Bar to make a confidential record of what happened, and, if they wish, to report the behaviour to the Sexual Harassment Officer on an anonymous basis.

To report an incident, members can initiate a conversation with Spot through the online platform, which is available here.

Spot is a completely secure online application, which means that a record can be made without any involvement with another person.

The platform is designed to provide prompts to enable a record to be created of exactly what was experienced or witnessed, who saw it, where it happened and when. It allows questions to be skipped and documents or records to be uploaded.

Once a record of an incident has been created, Spot provides a time stamped contemporaneous record of the incident which can be downloaded and retained by members.

The record can also be submitted on an anonymous basis to the Association’s independent Sexual Harassment Officer to start a conversation or to simply inform her that an incident has occurred.

The Sexual Harassment Officer will periodically consider the aggregated anonymised data which is collected by Spot and will report to the Association on identified trends and themes. All members are encouraged to test the Spot platform to familiarise themselves with the process. Further details regarding Spot and the Association’s Sexual Harassment Officer are available here.

There is no place for discrimination, workplace bullying or sexual harassment at the Bar. The Association has developed these initiatives to assist in calling out such unacceptable behaviour and addressing cultural issues at the Bar which have gone unchecked for too long.

If you have experienced or witnessed sexual harassment, workplace bullying or discrimination in any form, please call it out. By working together we can create a more inclusive and supportive environment at the NSW Bar.

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