Many sexual assault survivors I have represented has said some version of the same thing in our first meeting: “I don’t know if I have a claim,” and “I’m scared.” They apologize for taking up my time. They minimize what happened to them. They ask if they waited too long, said the wrong thing, or if it was their fault. They are afraid of the repercussions if they choose to initiate litigation.

The fact that so many survivors arrive doubting themselves (even those brave enough to talk to a lawyer) tells you something important about how sexual assault in the workplace actually works, and why representing these clients requires more than knowing the law. Nearly one in three women will experience sexual assault or harassment at work at some point in their careers. Fewer than one in ten of those incidents are ever formally reported. For every case that reaches a courtroom, many more never leave a break room, a manager’s office, or a survivor’s own private sense that speaking up isn’t worth the risk. By the time a sexual assault survivor reaches our office, it is our responsibility to have deep familiarity with the law to advise them, and an understanding of how trauma can affect their experience.

Understanding Why Survivors Act The Way They Do

When a workplace sexual assault case reaches trial, one of the hardest things to explain to a jury is that trauma doesn’t behave the way people expect it to. A survivor who freezes instead of fighting back isn’t consenting; her brain is doing exactly what trauma does under threat. A survivor whose story shifts slightly in the retelling is likely just proof that memory under trauma does not record events like a video camera. A survivor who stayed friendly with her harasser, or kept working alongside him for months, was not fine with what happened; she was trying to keep her job and her paycheck.

These are not excuses made on behalf of clients. They are critical context, and supported by medical proof of how trauma works. Any lawyer handling these cases needs to understand the effects of trauma well enough to explain it clearly, often with the help of an expert, so that a jury’s attention shifts from a survivor’s reaction to the employer’s conduct, which is where it belongs.

Holding Employers Accountable, Not Just Individuals

The person who committed the assault is rarely the only one responsible. In many of the cases I have handled, the more important question is not what one bad actor did. It is what the company knew, what it ignored, and what it could have prevented.

In evaluating a sexual assault claim, there are three paths to liability. Federal civil rights law prohibits harassment and assault in the workplace, though it can come with damages caps and applies only to larger employers. California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act is an avenue for sexual assault in the workplace claims, which fall under a “sexual harassment’ umbrella. And alongside both of those statutory paths sits ordinary tort law, claims like assault, battery, and negligent hiring or supervision, which can reach conduct and damages neither civil rights statute was designed to cover.

Employers have a real, enforceable obligation to protect the people who work for them. When a supervisor is involved in a sexual harassment or assault claim, the company can be held directly responsible. When the warning signs were there, prior complaints, ignored red flags, a pattern with the same perpetrator, the company can be held responsible for its own failure to act. California gives survivors meaningful tools to hold employers accountable on all of these fronts. Prevailing plaintiffs are also entitled to attorneys’ fees and costs.

The Obstacles Are Real, But They Are Not Insurmountable

For years, many survivors never got the chance to have their case heard by a jury at all, because they had unknowingly signed away that right in an employment contract, often years before anything happened to them. Forced arbitration clauses buried in new-hire paperwork routed sexual assault claims into private, closed-door proceedings instead of open court.

That changed in 2022, with the passage of the federal Ending Forced Arbitration Act of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA). The EFAA gives survivors the right to choose whether to go to court, regardless of what their employment contract said. California has gone further still, closing loopholes that let employers stall arbitration indefinitely and strengthening protections against non-disclosure agreements that would otherwise silence survivors as a condition of settlement. None of this happened by accident. It happened because lawyers and advocates pushed for it, case by case, client by client.

Learn What A Good Workplace Sexual Assault Case Actually Requires

Prevailing in these cases takes more than legal argument. It takes patience in the intake process, so a first conversation doesn’t feel like an interrogation. It takes moving quickly to preserve evidence, emails, HR records, messages, before it disappears. It takes building a record from day one, because the strongest cases are built long before they ever reach a jury. And it takes selectively forcing a client to re-tell their story multiple times, and trying to minimize the revictimizing that can happen during the litigation process.

And it takes remembering, every time, that the number at the center of the case is a person, not a statistic. The EEOC has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of sexual harassment victims in recent years. That number matters. But it’s made up of individual people who decided, often at real personal cost, that what happened to them was worth standing up for.

That’s the part of this work I carry with me: the clients who walked into my office certain that no one would believe them, and walked out knowing that someone finally did. That’s the obligation we carry, every time a survivor decides to trust us with their story.

If you have experienced sexual assault in the workplace, reach out to our experienced attorneys at Altair Law.