Harassment is when someone behaves in a way which offends you or makes you feel distressed or intimidated. This could be abusive comments or jokes, graffiti or insulting gestures. Harassment is a form of discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. If you’ve experienced this kind of behaviour you may be able to do something about it.
Read this page to find out more about harassment.
What’s meant by harassment?
Harassment is a form of discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. Discrimination which is against the Equality Act is unlawful. This means you can take action in the civil courts. If you’ve been treated badly, but it’s not unlawful discrimination there may be other things you can do.
Harassment is unwanted behaviour which you find offensive or which makes you feel intimidated or humiliated. It can happen on its own or alongside other forms of discrimination.
Unwanted behaviour could be:
spoken or written words or abuse
offensive emails, tweets or comments on social networking sites
images and graffiti
physical gestures
facial expressions
jokes
You don’t need to have previously objected to something for it to be unwanted.
When is harassment unlawful discrimination?
Harassment is unlawful under the Equality Act if it’s because of or connected to one of these things:
age
disability
gender reassignment
race
religion or belief
sex
sexual orientation
The Equality Act calls these things protected characteristics. Harassment because of one of these characteristics is called harassment related to a protected characteristic.
What’s the effect of or the intention behind the harassment?
The Equality Act says it’s harassment where the behaviour is meant to or has the effect of either:
violating your dignity
creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment
This means it’s harassment even if the person harassing you didn’t mean to offend or intimidate you, as long as the harassment has one of the above effects.