"Teens are particularly vulnerable because they are new to the workplace, they are impressionable and are more likely than not at the bottom rung," said Jocelyn Samuels, vice president for education and employment with the National Women's Law Center. "They feel less authorized to complain, and they may not know that procedures are available to them."
"As long as humans have a dark spot, you can find a more sophisticated co-worker who takes advantage of someone more naive," said Naomi C. Earp, vice chairwoman at the EEOC, which launched a program this fall to train youths in high schools about sexual harassment after noticing an increasing number of such complaints.
Tiffany Grabin, 25, said she was sexually harassed by an employer when she was in high school. Hers was one of the EEOC's first cases involving harassment of teens.
(Jonathan Alcorn For The Washington Post)
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Some teens who are taunted or touched may think the actions are not serious or assume that the culture is just part of work life, said Adele Rapport, regional attorney for the EEOC in Detroit. Her office has seen a number of teen harassment cases.
"A very small percentage of women complain. That's part of the issue with teens," Rapport said. "They are not sophisticated enough to know how to use those kinds of resources to report it."
Since teens are new to the workforce, they expect the same teasing that happens in high school hallways, experts say, but when teasing is taken to another level, they do not know what to do, particularly if it involves an older co-worker.
In one of the few studies that has measured sexual harassment occurrences among teens who work part time, 35 percent of 712 high school students surveyed said they had experienced it.
"Part of the problem is they have no frame of reference," said Susan Fineran, a University of Southern Maine social work professor who conducted the study. "These are girls' first jobs."
That naiveté seems to be changing. "I think the schools are now starting to do more training and put the word out to the kids because schools have their own sexual harassment problems to worry about," said Craig Pratt, a human resources consultant in Oakland, Calif. "Today's teens have more awareness than they had four or five years ago because schools have had to ramp up their awareness of it."
Companies are also more aware of sexual harassment issues and are increasingly providing harassment training to new employees, which makes employees more aware of right and wrong, said Susan Strauss, a consultant who specializes in teen harassment. "I think it sounds like teens are taking heed," she said. "Workplaces as a whole . . . are taking the issue of harassment a little bit more seriously. It makes sense that teens are recognizing it."
Tiffany Grabin, now 25, was the complainant in one of the first cases in which the EEOC focused on teens being harassed at work. When Grabin was 18 and working at a now-defunct athletic footwear store in San Jose, she alleged that a co-worker and a supervisor sexually teased her, taunted her and goaded customers into propositioning her. When the primary harasser put his hands around her neck and asked, "What would your boyfriend do if I snapped your neck right now?" Grabin quit.
"I knew that it's not appropriate to be treated that way, but I didn't know what to do about it," Grabin, who now lives and goes to school in Los Angeles, said in an interview. "Part of the problem was management. When a grown man is saying things about you, how do you complain to him?"
Her mother found a lawyer, and Grabin's case ended up with Marcia Mitchell, senior trial attorney for the EEOC in San Francisco. "Since then, we've paid much more attention to when charges involved teenagers. Now we're tuned in and seeing more of it," Mitchell said.
The case against the store was settled in March 2001, and Grabin received $111,250, according to the EEOC.
"Just because you're a teenager doesn't mean you don't have rights," Grabin said. "There are laws, and if you know your rights, you are better able to stand up for yourself."
