Sexual harassment and abuse in law enforcement: Best practices for creating safety for female officers

Case study: Anna Brown

Anna Brown (pseudonym), a 31-year-old White/European American woman, aspired to serve as a police officer after narrowly escaping a sexual assault on campus one night when she was in college. She never forgot the sense of relief and gratitude she felt when a police officer arrived on the scene of the attack. Years later, she attended and graduated from a local police academy and began on-the-job field training. During her training, when her senior co-worker, Officer Adams, asked her if she wanted to have sex with him, the problems began. Officer Adams continued to harass and touch Officer Brown throughout her training, despite her explicit unwillingness to develop a relationship with him.

Although Officer Brown had every intention of filing a complaint, she was paralyzed by fear and uncertainty about whether her complaint would be taken seriously. Officer Adams was well-liked and respected at the department. The abuse escalated one evening when Officer Adams raped her at the police station afterhours. He threatened to ruin her career prospects if she told anyone, and he became increasingly insistent that they be in an official romantic relationship. He also sent a slew of threatening and harassing text messages to convince her of this, and the grim consequences of going against his wishes. As a result of the threats, intimidation, and fear for her job, Officer Brown agreed to begin “dating” Officer Adams. He then moved in with her and did not let her go anywhere without his permission. Officer Adams continued to intimidate and harass Officer Brown throughout their relationship, including threatening to shoot her with a gun at one point. On another occasion, he choked her so hard that it burst a blood vessel, causing a medical emergency. In her fear and frustration with her situation, she had no appetite, rarely ate, and lost over 20 pounds.

After enduring almost a year of intimidation and violence, one of Officer Brown’s friends reported Officer Adams to the police department, and she was then able to muster the courage to admit that she was in danger. At first, her account of harassment and violence seemed to be accepted by her police department, who acknowledged that she was the victim. However, a few months after reporting her experience, she was fired for “unauthorized intimate contact with a coworker.” Officer Adams, on the other hand, was allowed to retire with no workplace repercussions.

Former Officer Brown had trouble finding new employment, both because of the stigma of being fired from her last job, as well as ongoing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from the experience. More specifically, she experienced a variety of distressing symptoms when memories of her experience at the hands of Officer Adams were triggered, including an increased heart rate, sweaty palms, hyperventilation and difficulty breathing, as well as abdominal discomfort, feeling as if she was losing control, numbness in the extremities, hot flushes, and dizziness. Upon the advice of an attorney, Officer Brown obtained an expert mental health evaluation. Over the course of three visits, her assessment included a consultation, detailed history, structured diagnostic interviews, and a number of clinical questionnaires. She was given the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5; Weathers et al., 2017), as well as the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory (PTCI; Foa et al., 1999) and Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale (PDS; Foa et al., 2017)—with all scores indicative of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The clinical team, which included an experienced psychologist and a trauma therapist, formally diagnosed her with PTSD, and the assessment also revealed symptoms of depression, social anxiety, and suicidality.

Despite the violence and power inequities of the situation, her employer maintained they were justified in dismissing her since she had read and signed off on the Police Department’s Policy for Sexual Harassment, which described the procedure for making a complaint.

Sexual harassment and abuse in law enforcement

What happened to Officer Brown is very distressing, and variations of this experience are far too common for female police officers across the Western world. As an international standard, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (UN General Assembly 48th sess, 1993-1994), defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” For an example specific to employment, The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC, 1980) defines sexual harassment as “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature in the workplace or learning environment.” Accordingly, using a position of authority to coerce another person into engaging in unwanted sexual activity is a form of sexual harassment as well as an employee being pressured into a sexual encounter out of fear of being dismissed.

As a persistent, marginalizing, and sometimes life-threatening issue for women around the world, sexual harassment is particularly prevalent in employment settings where women are underrepresented such as law enforcement where, in the US, women make up only 15.3% of the law enforcement workforce (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2021). While underrepresentation exacerbates the prevalence rates, sexual harassment in the workplace remains a pressing issue within the general population. Results of a recent survey showed that approximately 81% of women in the US have experienced some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime (Kearl, 2018), and the rates are similar in the UK workplace (Briggs, 2017). Likewise, 60% of respondents of a similar survey in Canada reported experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace, and sexual assault is the only violent crime in Canada that has not decreased in the last 15 years (Employment and Social Development Canada, 2021; Perreault, 2014).

However, while the prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace is high across the Western world, the vast majority of incidents go unreported. Only around a quarter of women who have been sexually harassed report it to their employer (Jinq and Yazdanifard, 2015), and this trend is amplified in a law enforcement context (Bonkiewicz et al., 2022). In fact, the incidence of sexual harassment and assault in the law enforcement profession, such as experienced by Officer Brown, are much higher than in other professions. Results of a mixed-method analysis of the incidence, impact, and perception of sexual harassment in law enforcement in the US showed that 93.8% of female officers reported experiencing at least one incident of sexual harassment during their law enforcement careers (Lonsway et al., 2013). More specifically, 92.5% of the women in law enforcement in this study reported experiencing at least one form of sexual harassment in the previous year, most of whom (89.0%) never filed a formal complaint to report the incident. The most common reason for not filing a complaint (49.2%) was that the situation was deemed “not serious enough to warrant a formal complaint.” Other common reasons included “concern about the impact of reporting on my career,” concern that “nothing would be done if a complaint were filed,” “fear of retaliation by supervisors and/or coworkers,” “concern regarding the reaction of supervisors and/or coworkers,” and “similar situations have been reported and no action was taken” (Lonsway et al., 2013). Similarly, a nationally representative survey revealed a prevalence rate of 71% for experiencing non-physical sexual harassment and/or sexual assault by female law enforcement officers in the US, with comparable rates in the UK (Brown et al., 2018; Taylor et al., 2020). These trends are unrelated to seniority, as female officers experience sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace even after being promoted (Silvestri, 2017). Given this misogynistic, unsafe, and unaccountable context within law enforcement, sexual harassment has been cited as one key reason for the relatively low proportion of women officers (Perrott, 2021).

Women officers, police organizational culture, and working conditions

Officer Brown’s (justified) fear of reporting her abuse, and her subsequent treatment as a willing participant rather than a victim of abuse, were symptoms of the unaccountable and marginalizing culture of her workplace. Organizational culture can drive experiences of sexual harassment and assault in the workplace and impacts how or if victims engage their workplace about their experiences, as well as how their workplaces treat accusations of harassment. Factors influencing workplace culture include staff composition (i.e., as mentioned above, higher rates of sexual assault are found in workplaces dominated by men and with a strong gender imbalance), jobs that are traditionally seen as masculine in tasks and duties, and the degree of leadership’s tolerance of harassing or aggressive behavior by employees (Brown et al., 2018; Maher, 2008; McDonald, 2012). In general, women are at greater risk of sexual harassment in male-dominated and hierarchical professions (Raj et al., 2020), two characteristics that are hallmarks of the law enforcement profession. The proportion of the risk of sexual harassment also increases relative to the proportion of men in the workplace (Buchanan et al., 2014). Additionally, structural or cultural power inequities in an organization can enable sexual violence, and in turn, the dismissal of reports of sexual violence can further sustain these inequities (Armstrong et al., 2018). Literature suggests that a critical mass of approximately 30% minoritized individuals is needed to mitigate these problematic dynamics (Joecks et al., 2013), although this diversity must extend to leadership as well. In Officer Brown’s police department, of the 75 police officers employed in that jurisdiction, less than 10% were women despite women being about 50% of the general population, and all of the leadership was male.

When it comes to women in law enforcement, the gendered nature of police culture has long been recognized (Franklin, 2005; McCarthy, 2013; Rief and Clinkinbeard, 2020). Gendered organizations are ones that contain processes and structures of social relations that are mirrored by larger unequal gender or gendered relations in society (Franklin, 2005). In other words, a gendered organization perpetuates the gendered (1) division of work and authority, (2) decision-making, (3) duties, and (4) presence and occurrence of sex and violence (Hearn and Parkin, 2001). Within gendered organizations, men have a far more prominent role in the hierarchy, whereas women are often consciously or unconsciously barred from occupying key positions of power, such as supervisory or decision-making positions (Acker, 1990). Through informal gendered social contacts, macho subcultures that embody traditional police norms are knit into the fabric of the workplace culture and create negative experiences for women. For instance, police women may face hostility and retaliation if they do not conform to the dominant and prioritized gender-informed roles in the workplace, and may also miss out on career opportunities, friendships at work, and membership in the “boys' club” to be able to work effectively and safely in their jobs (Brown et al., 2019; Shelley et al., 2011). Consequently, policing continues to be an inherently gendered field that privileges the culture and experiences of “maleness” over those of women, and it places little value on traditionally feminine qualities (Archbold and Schulz, 2012; Garcia, 2003).

The consequences of this disproportionately masculine culture and women’s general lack of acceptance in the profession not only result in social isolation, but also make them regular victims of workplace harassment, discrimination, marginalization, and incivility, despite laws against discrimination (Yu and Lee, 2020). This results in women often feeling unwelcome and unsafe at work and compromises their mental health, performance, and professional success (McLaughlin et al., 2017). Research has shown that women officers are more likely than men officers to feel that they do not belong in their workgroup. This has been suggested to be mediated by workplace incivilities, implying that women’s experiences with subtle forms of discrimination contribute to their lower levels of fit in their workgroup (Rief and Clinkinbeard, 2020).

As we saw in the case of Officer Brown, not only does this culture create many more personal and professional hurdles and risks for women in the profession, the nature of police work can also create conditions and a culture permissive of sexual misconduct. In general, police officers have authority and power in their communities. Much of their work is unsupervised with isolated contact with co-workers and community members, they have irregular work schedules, and an officer’s judgment is given priority and precedence (Romeo Perez, 2020). There is also often a strong orientation towards officers supporting and “protecting” one another (Lamboo, 2010). These conditions can create more opportunities for sexual misconduct and silence that misconduct (Barker, 2020; Purvis and Blanco, 2020). Police chiefs also recognize the role of these conditions in influencing the likelihood of misconduct (Maher, 2008). And so women such as Officer Brown, with lower pay and lower seniority, insecure employment, experiencing a marginalized role in the culture of the organization, and operating in precarious working conditions, can find themselves more vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace.

Barriers to reporting

Officer Brown knew that she was in a dangerous situation and that what was happening to her was wrong. But because of her position in the organization and the culture in which she was operating, she felt she could not report her experience to her superiors. There are many barriers that prevent victims from reporting their experiences of harassment or abuse, and in unaccountable and misogynistic workplaces, women must try to determine whether the risks and costs of reporting outweigh the risks of continued abuse to their safety and professional future. In cases where victims are not given safe and confidential options to report misconduct and perpetrators threaten victims with physical harm or death, such as the case of Officer Brown, the uncertainty and risks of reporting outweigh the need for help. Thus many victims are forced to remain silent and not report (e.g., Wolff and Mills, 2016). And consequently, as noted above, the vast majority of law enforcement employees who experience sexual discrimination and harassment do not make a formal report (Yu and Lee, 2020).

Reporting protocols within law enforcement vary in their level of risk to the victim and in their likelihood of providing victims with a confidential investigation, prompt action, adequate protection, or a resolution that holds the abuser accountable. Internal mechanisms involving immediate supervisors are often highly problematic, as reporting within the victim’s organization or department can increase personal and professional risk (Lave, 2019; McDonald, 2012). Inadequate protocols can also exacerbate the violence of the situation for the victim by making the complaint “known” and triggering retaliation from the perpetrator or his supporters, putting the victim in even greater danger.

Reporting abuse is therefore a complex decision for victims, who are already trying to navigate a highly stressful situation. Many victims are forced not to disclose because of threats from perpetrators of physical harm or death, concerns of privacy, being isolated, being vilified or dismissed, limited protections, risk of reprisal or retaliation, and the absence of supportive resources. Reporting is also less likely if the perpetrator is a close or casual acquaintance of the victim. These cases are less likely to be prosecuted by police than assault by strangers (Lave, 2019).

Perceptions or myths of sexual harassment and assault in the work environment can be an added barrier. Prevailing myths about what is “a serious incident” and who is a “legitimate victim” can impact whether a victim reports, whether they are believed or considered a credible source of information, the likelihood of victim-blaming, and whether the complaint is investigated (D’Souza et al., 2018; Mengeling et al., 2014). Although victims might not endorse these myths, knowing that other colleagues and supervisors believe them creates a barrier to reporting. Conversely, victims are better able to make a report if the complaint mechanism is anonymous, if they have a strong social support network, the work environment does not tolerate sexual harassment but encourages reporting, and it contains supportive allies, colleagues, and victim-centered services (Purvis and Blanco, 2020). Importantly, reporting sexual violence is often treated differently from reporting other crimes. Unlike victims of other crimes, sexual assault victims are more likely to be vilified, blamed, or told that the incident did not happen. In the case of Officer Brown, while her allegations were at first well received, despite the facts of her case, she was eventually cast as a willing participant in the “relationship” with Officer Adams, and was dismissed for engaging in intimate relations with another officer, further exacerbating the trauma and personal impacts of an already traumatic experience.

Trauma and psychological consequences

Traumatic experiences of sexual harassment and abuse have powerful psychological consequences on victims. These can include anxiety, hopelessness, fear, isolation, flashbacks, and mental re-experiencing of abuse, and these symptoms can also prevent individuals from seeking help. PTSD can also prevent survivors from living their life as they normally would and cause individuals to behave in ways that are counterintuitive (Campbell and Raja, 2005). However, the victims’ behaviors are generally motivated based on what feels safest to them at the moment.

When institutions retaliate against victims who report sexual harassment in good faith, this compounds their traumatization as a result of experiencing “institutional betrayal,” as seen in the case of Officer Brown. Institutional betrayal refers to institutional action and inaction that exacerbates the impact of traumatic experiences by minimizing the severity of a victim’s experience, refusing to take proactive measures to prevent or address victimization, responding ineffectively to claims of trauma, and creating an environment where similar traumatic events seem more likely (Smith and Freyd, 2013). This makes it challenging to report traumatic experiences, in effect punishing trauma victims for coming forward.

Institutional betrayal can lead trauma survivors to experience “secondary victimization,” which may include victim-blaming, ostracization, demotion, or even job loss. It makes victims feel guilty, depressed, anxious, distrustful of others, and reluctant to seek further help. This secondary victimization is significantly positively correlated with PTSD symptomatology (e.g., Campbell and Raja, 2005; Lave, 2019).

Police culture and policies

Police officers and police departments maintain a culture of support surrounding hyper-masculine behavior, with their own unwritten rules of conduct. This includes the “blue wall of silence,” an unwritten police code that demands that officers remain silent or even lie to conceal misconduct by a fellow officer (Purvis and Blanco, 2020). This creates a unique type of group loyalty whereby police officers are mandated to maintain their allegiance even to corrupt officers (Barker, 2020). In addition to this prevailing dysfunctional culture, police chiefs, who are often male, often view police sexual misconduct as serious but not a widespread problem, a prevalence which suggests that police chiefs often underestimate the incidence of sexual misconduct (Maher, 2008). These issues are further complicated by police complaint systems. Police chiefs may not consider conducting an investigation with a third party external to the department. As such, a female officer being sexually harassed or assaulted by a male officer would reasonably expect that making reports of such unlawful behavior to be met with inaction or even punishment toward the victim for breaking the code of silence.

Unlike other forms of police misconduct, such as “excessive use of force,” police sexual misconduct is defined and regulated to a far lesser extent (Purvis and Blanco, 2020). In a national policy review of over 30 of the top law enforcement agencies in the US, it was found that the majority of police departments had some policies prohibiting sexual harassment and misconduct among officers, however, many of these policies were simple and not sufficiently detailed, failing to capture an appropriate definition and consequences of sexual harassment (Ritchie and Jones-Brown, 2017). Although an explicit prohibition of sexual harassment is important, vague descriptions do little to advance an accurate understanding of sexual harassment and the specific behaviors that constitute harassment and fail to establish an internal culture of condemning such acts (Purvis and Blanco, 2020; Ritchie and Jones-Brown, 2017). These issues can contribute to a culture of silence around sexual harassment and police sexual misconduct, which marginalizes victims, whereby perpetrators are not stopped and continue to cause harm (Purvis and Blanco, 2020). We see throughout the duration of the harassment and abuse experienced by Officer Brown that she was consistently interacting with police in her day-to-day work, but she was not able to report these abuses as there were no protocols to ensure her confidentiality and safety given the perpetrator threatened her life.

The Police Department Policy for Sexual Harassment materials issued by Officer Brown’s workplace outlined a “work environment ... free from sexual harassment” as the main purpose of the policy. However, the process and resources in place to bring this policy to life were inadequate, and as such its purpose was not fulfilled. It would have been necessary for the department to clarify and expand on this vague language to capture the nature of sexual harassment, create a victim-centered approach, and outline the professional and psychological harms of sexual harassment. Further, the policy did not specify a method or timing of reporting incidents, whether verbal or in writing or within a specific time frame. This policy also failed to specify the expected outcomes of an investigation, specific disciplinary action to be taken, or the consequences for supervisory employees who may fail to investigate a report. It did not reassure Officer Brown or other potential victims about the disciplinary action that would be taken after the investigation, how their privacy and confidentiality would be protected, the availability of supportive resources, reporting options, and general protections for victims who chose to report. Given these shortcomings, victims like Officer Brown are left feeling unsafe when contemplating making a report, worrying about undergoing an investigation that focuses on the victim’s credibility, and is less likely to have trauma-informed processes or outcomes (Buchanan et al., 2014; Purvis and Blanco, 2020; Ritchie and Jones-Brown, 2017).

As an employer and a public institution, police departments have a responsibility to ensure a safe workplace for employees, timely and prompt intervention, and resources for victims. Officer Brown’s police department failed in its policies, prevention, and intervention measures to uphold this responsibility. Given the prevalence of harassment versus the relatively smaller number of complaints made, it is very likely that there are many other departments across North America and the UK facing similar inequitable and harmful cultures and practices.

Practical strategies to promote gender equity, safety, and inclusion in the law enforcement workplace

Sexual violence and police sexual misconduct have focused heavily on the characteristics of perpetrators in understanding and mitigating sexual violence, however, there is less recognition of the more substantial influence of organizational culture, policies, and procedures in driving the occurrence and response to sexual violence (Armstrong et al., 2018; Campbell and Raja, 2005). Strategies to prevent frequent non-reporting of sexual harassment include sexual assault education and awareness training across all levels of staff, explicit and consistent messaging from senior leadership condemning harassment, resources to help victims understand their options and make informed decisions, safe and confidential reporting mechanisms, and environment, a transparent investigation, and appropriate consequences for perpetrators. These strategies are essential to enable victims to report sexual harassment and assault.

Given the outcome of Officer Brown’s report of the abuse (and eventual job loss), her predictions about how her superiors would react to her breaching the “blue wall of silence” were unfortunately proven correct. Officer Brown was blamed for the abuse she experienced and lost her job as a police officer as a consequence of “engaging” in this abuse, compounding her traumatization. This case shows that simply providing information about a harassment policy and reporting process is not sufficient for protecting people who are vulnerable to abuses of power. Safe, confidential and accountable spaces and processes must be provided to enable women officers suffering from harassment and abuse in the workplace to come forward.