This happened a handful of years ago.
We had a transfer come on the team from another department within the company. He was nearly completely deaf, meaning he could hear really, really loud noises but nothing else. He did quite well speaking out loud and he read lips to understand what was being said to him. No big deal, it just was an easy adjustment to make sure you faced him when talking and talked one at a time.
He was a decent team member in the beginning, but after a while started making comments to me and the only another female on the team. Things like, “why haven’t you made the coffee yet” and just other stupid old-school “jokes” that made fun of women.
My role gave him instructions on customer requests/needs. He would often not follow the instructions and I would get calls from customers complaining. Often I had to let him know he had to go back and fix the work so it matched the original request.
Afterwards he would storm into my office and yell at me as if his inability to read and follow simple instructions was my fault. I got tired of it and said, “do your job right the first time and there wouldn’t be complaints.” This of course didn’t go over well with him. His anger was very unnerving. I got the feeling it wasn’t going to stop there.
In the following weeks, he would intentionally block doorways I would be trying to go through. One time I was in the other female workers small office and he blocked the entire doorway. He stood there and smiled this super creepy smile as if he was saying “what are going to do about it?”
I refused to touch him to try and push past him. The other lady kept looking at me like she was beyond uncomfortable too. It was like we read each others mind and we kept having our own conversation about something work related and ignored him. After several minutes he left.
Another time I had to go to the far back of the warehouse to organize some stuff in the room. I remember going in and thinking, okay there are two cameras and they can see this main hallway but not between the shelving units. I had the uneasy feeling he would come back there.
Sure enough, a few minutes later he came barging in the room and came right at me. I had already been on high alert so I quickly exited the other door in the room and booked it back to where the rest of the team was. I pulled up the security cameras to see if he had a reason to be in there…sure enough he paced in the room for a few minutes after I bolted and then he left. He clearly had no reason to be in there that exact moment I was in there.
I shared this with a male coworker friend and he said he would go back with me to any of the spaces away from the main team areas. I had to get my work done but I didn’t trust I could do it without this angry guy finding me.
Anytime we would make comments about his anger or demeaning jokes, the managers would say “oh maybe he didn’t understand because you talked too fast”, “I bet it was just a misunderstanding”….as if having a disability means you can’t also be a disgusting person.
Not too long after that, I heard from a teammate that this angry guy had grabbed the other female’s upper thigh (literally right below her private area), squeezed and said “does this make you uncomfortable?” Then laughed. A few teammates witnessed it but didn’t know what to do, as the other female worker froze up.
I immediately went to HR and told them everything he had been doing to intimidate, belittle, trap and of course the sexual harassment. He was fired the next day.
When they escorted him out, he yelled “this is retaliation!”
HR asked me what I would make of that comment, and all I could think was it had to do with me standing my ground with him??
I was so scared to see him show up unexpectedly. I told my family what he looked like, his tattoos, the car he drove…anything that would identify him since they never met him. I blocked him from every social media platform too.
After he was let go, other females came forward and shared things he said or did to them too. They had told managers but they dismissed it because the guy is deaf and they didn’t want to deal with any lawsuits.
As much as I hate what he did to my coworker, I’m grateful it gave that final boost to get him fired!
TLDR: guy with disability harasses female workers and gets away with it until the final sexual harassment