I'm a mental health support worker, and the company I work for took over the case management of a client about a month ago with some “challenging behaviours”. The client has a history of physical and sexual offences that were never prosecuted because of his diminished capacity, but the company is still aware of the history. The client also has a history of fixating on male care workers and attempting inappropriate sexual contact.
Well, lucky me, out of the team assigned to this client, he picked me as the object of his affections. He started by saying he has a crush on me, but over time has made increasingly inappropriate and aggressive sexual comments. I have documented these comments and informed management, whose response was “make sure to reaffirm boundaries with the client”, which I have done at every instance as firmly as possible. Management continued to roster me on with the client, explaining “they had no one else, and anyway he really seems to like you” which is kind of the problem in the first place.
Anyway, earlier in the week I was rostered on with the client by myself, and inappropriate sexual comments graduated to sexual assault. In the greater scheme of things it could have been worse, and without going into specifics, I'm not physically damaged, although I'm a bit psychologically shaky. I reported the incident through the available channels, to which my manager's big concern was “but you're right to keep working with him, right? We'd hate to have you lose hours if you can't work shifts with him”(this seems a bit ambiguous, but was my employment threatened here?)
Now, I know by Monday the client will have forgoten the incident and that he lacks the insight or intelligence to understand why what he did was a big deal. However, my immediate manager has rostered me on 4 days next week with this client, 3 working by myself, which is making me pretty uncomfortable. Upper management haven't made so much as a phonecall to see how I am, so I don't know if the incident was passed up the chain, or what.
So that's where I'm at. Could use any advice.