Verdict raised awareness of harassment at work

You are in a crowded court room. A barrister is asking you about your sex life and accusing you of lying about a sexual assault. The public gallery is full and reporters' pens are scribbling. All the time lawyers' meters are ticking at the rate of thousands of pounds a day.

It is not surprising that Ms Monica Reilly grasped her father's hand and smiled on Wednesday when the jury returned after just two hours with the verdict she wanted.

The High Court jury found that her former boss, Mr William Bonny (52), guilty of sexual assault and awarded her costs and £140,000 in damages.

The award has been welcomed by those working in labour and equality areas. Some see it as a development that will send a shiver down the spine of employers. In the words of one legal expert, "Maybe now perpetrators or offenders will start to think: `If you have money people will come after you.' "

Ms Reilly (22) said in evidence and in an interview with Pat Kenny that money was not her motivation. "Money didn't come into it for her," her solicitor, Ms Emer Shiels of Gartlan, O'Neill, Furey, said yesterday.

Ms Reilly had tried the route of a criminal prosecution. In 1993, after she had left her job as a lounge girl in Mr Bonny's Dublin pub, the Bonny & Clyde, in Newmarket she gave a lengthy statement to gardai in Kevin Street.

The gardai interviewed Mr Bonny and a file was sent to the DPP, who decided not to prosecute the case. The DPP does not have to inform gardai or solicitors of his reasons for not proceeding with a case.

And there it could have rested. But Ms Reilly decided to take the gamble of a civil case and sue her former employer. In January 1995 she set the action in motion.

It is a course that few people choose. The twin terrors of publicity and huge legal costs are enough to put most people off the road to the Four Courts.

It is believed that Ms Reilly's legal team took the case on a "no foal, no fee" basis.

The last time a case concerning sexual harassment at work came to the civil courts was in February 1995. The Circuit Court awarded a 26-year-old woman £10,000 against her employer for sexual harassment by a fellow employee at a Four-Star Pizza shop in Dublin. Though similar, this case was about harassment and not assault. The woman's complaint was that her employer had turned a blind eye to the harassment.

At the time it was felt that more harassment-at-work cases would come to the courts, rather than the Labour Court. The size of the award, roughly three times the average Labour Court award, was one of the reasons some legal observers felt the floodgates would open. However in the 2 1/2 years since then the issue of sexual harassment at work has only been aired in the Labour Court.

The chief executive of the Employment Equality Agency (EEA), Ms Carmel Foley, believes this week's judgment will raise the profile of the issue, even if it does not result in more people going into open court to deal with it.

"I imagine there may be people feeling uncomfortable today, people who may have tolerated harassment or have a complaint in front of them and are considering whether to take it seriously.

" It is good that the issue has been raised because it is a form of intimidation and bullying and in no one's interests."

The EEA receives about four inquiries a week about workplace sexual harassment. About half these become legal complaints on which the EEA takes action. However, last year just two cases came to the Labour Court. The women in both instances won their cases, with awards of £3,200 and £2,000.

Compared to Ms Reilly's damages the financial compensation available through the Labour Court is minimal. However, the men and women who take cases to the Labour Court do so in private, without their lives, and particularly their sex lives, opened up for public scrutiny.

"A big attraction of the Labour Court for most people would be that you can come in here for free," the Labour Court chairman, Ms Evelyn Owens, says. Costs can never be awarded against a plaintiff in a Labour Court case, and the hearings are held without the intimidating atmosphere found in legal courts.

"In my view, to take that type of case requires a tremendous amount of courage in any case."

The Labour Court heard its first sexual harassment case in 1985 and has been hearing cases ever since. However, Ms Owens has noticed that recently more cases tend to be settled before they reach the court.

Ms Marguerite Bolger BL, a practising barrister specialising in employment law, says sexual harassment is an area where people bring proceedings on principle.

"The primary motivation is to bring the harassment to an end or to ensure that it doesn't happen to someone else. Sexual harassment is one of the few areas where generally clients do feel quite principled about it and money isn't the prime motivation."

As a result Ms Bolger feels that most people are willing to "forgo huge damages for privacy". As a consequence of the Reilly judgment people may reconsider that.

"Obviously it is going to make people think twice and employers think twice about settling the case."

Ms Olive Braiden, director of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, believes most of her clients "have no possibility of taking a civil action" because even if they are awarded damages their assailant has no money.

This week they called on the Government to reinstate the Criminal Injuries Tribunal "so that all victims of sexual crimes can be compensated equally. If victims could afford the long-term counselling and therapy which is needed in the aftermath of serious sexual assault, it would show that what happened to them mattered and was treated seriously."

With an appeal possible Ms Reilly has been advised not to talk to the press.

"She was a very brave person," a source close to the case said. "People are literally opening their lives to whoever wants to read about the case, and in particular they are opening their sexual lives."