It was her per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence with sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and as­sault in the work­place that prompt­ed 41-year-old Roseann St Rose to start the net­work NoMoreTT—a vol­un­teer group of pro­fes­sion­als in­tend­ing to give mem­bers the con­fi­dence to chal­lenge and re­port in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour in the work­place.

In a ra­dio in­ter­view, how­ev­er, speak­ing elab­o­rate­ly on the June 2020 formed net­work, she said the is­sue was one that still re­ceived very lit­tle at­ten­tion in this coun­try and the re­gion de­spite glob­al ad­vo­ca­cy groups like the MeToo move­ment, which shone a heavy light on sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and as­sault in the work en­vi­ron­ment, en­cour­ag­ing women to speak up and take le­gal ac­tions.

St Rose who won her case against her per­pe­tra­tor told Guardian Me­dia in a sep­a­rate in­ter­view, even though there was the frame­work of a na­tion­al work­place pol­i­cy on sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, there was no law.

Guardian Me­dia found, as per the na­tion­al work­place pol­i­cy on sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, in its con­tents it sug­gests: “Cur­rent­ly, the law is silent on the is­sue of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and there­fore lacks de­f­i­n­i­tions or spe­cif­ic in­di­ca­tors to de­ter­mine what type of be­hav­iour con­sti­tutes sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place. This si­lence un­der­mines ef­forts to pre­vent and treat sex­u­al ha­rass­ment mat­ters.”

The pol­i­cy fur­ther high­lights: “The sen­si­tive na­ture of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place, in ad­di­tion to cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers, vary­ing de­mo­graph­ics and un­de­fined av­enues for re­dress have hin­dered the re­port­ing of this of­fence so that there is an ab­sence of col­lec­tive da­ta and re­search which ac­cu­rate­ly re­flects the preva­lence of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in the work­place.”

At a flawed best, for any re­dress on this is­sue, ref­er­ence is made to sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion in­clud­ing the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Act Chap­ter 22:03— dis­crim­i­na­to­ry em­ploy­ment prac­tices. The In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act, Chap­ter 88:01— via the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion pro­ce­dure un­der Part V of the Act and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act, Chap­ter 88:08 which speaks to en­joy­ing a safe and healthy work en­vi­ron­ment.

But St Rose said, though the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion (EOC) had guide­lines on sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, they were not manda­to­ry for or­gan­i­sa­tions to fol­low.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she point­ed out with the al­ready non-prac­ti­cal chan­nels ex­ist­ing for ap­pro­pri­ate re­dress on sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, vic­tims al­so dealt with shame, fear and so­cio-eco­nom­ic fac­tors in­flu­enc­ing and dic­tat­ing low re­port­ing.

She re­ferred to a 2005 re­search con­duct­ed by Deirdre Mc Cann, Pro­fes­sor at Durham Law School, al­so high­light­ed in na­tion­al work­place pol­i­cy on sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, stat­ing: “Con­di­tions of Work and Em­ploy­ment Pro­gramme, In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Of­fice, Gene­va, shows that the type of women most vul­ner­a­ble to sex­u­al ha­rass­ment are young, fi­nan­cial­ly de­pen­dent, sin­gle, or di­vorced and with mi­grant sta­tus.”

It is with these re­al­i­ties that St Rose cre­at­ed the sub ini­tia­tives— Our Safe Work­space ini­tia­tive and Talk out Loud Cam­paign.

She said the first, was aimed at cre­at­ing aware­ness to the gen­er­al pub­lic of the type of ser­vices NoMoreTT of­fered un­der the theme, “cre­at­ing a safe work­space,” while the lat­ter was an ini­tia­tive based on the in­spi­ra­tional work of ac­tress Ce­cil­ia Salazar, about the life of Gene Miles.

The cam­paign’s name was al­so de­rived from the lyrics of a song per­formed by Salazar.

“Talk out loud seeks to en­cour­age per­sons to come for­ward and through us or oth­er­wise speak up about sit­u­a­tions that may be op­pres­sive to them, specif­i­cal­ly but not lim­it­ed to, vi­o­lence against women, gen­der-based vi­o­lence, sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and vic­tim­i­sa­tion etc. Most times we would seek to blend the two based on the type of ac­tiv­i­ty that we are em­bark­ing on,” St Rose ex­plained.

Can­did­ly, she ar­tic­u­lat­ed: “I have had the full spec­trum of atro­cious­ness when it comes to my per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence. Not on­ly did I ex­pe­ri­ence sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, but al­so sex­u­al as­sault in the work­place. And the full spec­trum of re­tal­i­a­tion, and vic­tim­i­sa­tion.”

Salazar al­so re­vealed much like the char­ac­ter she played of Gene Miles, she had her re­al-life en­coun­ters with sex­u­al ha­rass­ment in her field, but not know­ing how to deal with it, she of­ten “bobbed and weaved” her way around it.

“I did not speak out, and my not speak­ing out may have caused oth­er young ac­tress­es to go through it,” she reck­oned.

St Rose said the Trinida­di­an cul­ture was a very sex­u­al one and in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour might be wide­ly dis­played and ac­cept­ed as “just part of us.”

But there was the cru­cial need to raise aware­ness and train­ing so that vic­tims, in­clud­ing men, were aware of what is sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and how to re­spond to it.

She is call­ing on “men of morals” to join in speak­ing out and to stand with women and all vic­tims in this fight.

For more in­for­ma­tion on NoMoreTT, vis­it them on Face­book.