Legislative changes in the USA that create a new opportunity for sexual victims / by Adv. Sigal Geshori

 

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 in 5 women in America has experienced rape or attempted rape, and nearly 44% of women and about 25% of all men experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetime

Did she reduce vulnerability to #metoo women ?

Despite #metoo and its positive effects on raising awareness and cultural change and even legislative changes that I will review later, COVID-19 has increased the amount of sexual abuse through digital and social networks dramatically. 1

1 out of every 3 women under the age of 35 has experienced online sexual harassment in the last two years

Tragically, many of those attacked are young. Studies show that these attacks can have lifelong effects on health and are associated with chronic diseases. Too often, this trauma is compounded by lost productivity, the challenge of seeking accountability, and the resulting costs of medical and mental health care.

Only 1% of victims worldwide who have been abused, physically or digitally harassed or even raped receive relief.

99% of injury victims did not receive any compensation that would help them deal with the trauma and move on with their lives.

Sexual violence in a closed circle - since criminals are mostly serial criminals still among us , we are free to harm more and more people , without paying for their bad deeds, because an effective prevention mechanism does not yet exist.

"The #MeToo campaign did a wonderful service to raise awareness of sexual harassment and created a real revolution, especially when it comes to young women who today are much less willing to suffer sexual harassment, especially in the workplace.

However, the campaign, like any revolution, produces "counter-waves" that pose additional challenges such as "disdain" for the issue of sexual harassment due to the floods and the large number of cases. "Communicative field experiments" in communication can be a double-edged sword because the ear gets used to it. What caused a storm two years ago, today is received with much more indifference because the threshold of sensitivity is blatant. A conditional backlash was created in such a way that even men who strongly condemned certain behaviors before the campaign, now feel the need to identify with the male sex in a sort of "sense of persecution". There is much more fear of revenge, false complaints and extortion attempts than before, although the percentage of false complaints, especially regarding women's complaints against men, is less than 2%.

The practical meaning of this is that victims are even less likely to reveal their story in the public media. The fact that 94% of victims do not report or seek criminal or civil prosecution at all means that #Metoo's ability alone to create long-term change and help rid the world of sexual assault is small and ineffective.

Despite this, the advantage #metoo created for the victims is that it made it clear to the sex offenders the price of public exposure, if the victim does choose to publicly expose the offender and this is one of the significant catalysts why offenders will choose to reduce their risk and turn to confidential mediation.

In the wake of #metoo and the criticism it also provoked for victims who supposedly "remembered too late" to disclose their injuries, a follow-up campaign #whyididntreport was born that represents the victim's need to explain their silence and the process that sometimes takes years to understand the nature of the abuse and its consequences first of all for themselves.

Anyone dealing with sexual abuse and harassment knows that the courts are a poor way to deal with it. The slowness of the system, the exposure of the victims to the investigation of a lawyer whose entire role is to undermine the credibility of the victims is one of the first barriers for people to complain.

Even those who overcome their fears will find themselves in a mentally and financially exhausting situation, where at the end of three or four years of litigation there will be an acknowledgment of the damage caused to them and perhaps also a not very high financial compensation.

Furthermore, the law establishes a limitation period, an evidentiary threshold that must be met, and a large part of the violations cannot even reach the courts due to failure to meet these threshold requirements.

Impaired ? You can get compensation

Most of the victims are not at all aware of the fact that they are obliged by law to compensate for the injury, many times without any need to prove damage, since the legislator understands that the offense itself is an injury.

Sexual abuse is something broad from relatively minor offenses committed in the digital or physical space such as inappropriate photos or a blatant comment to serious ones such as rape.

The mandatory compensation stipulated by law varies from country to country. The law in the USA states that it is possible to receive compensation for sexual harassment or sexual assault even without proof of damage. Compensation for sexual harassment at work is limited to a ceiling of $300,000. In Israel, for example, sexual harassment can entitle the victim to a payment of up to NIS 150,000 without proof of damage And there is no legal limit to the amount of compensation if the damage is proven.

If you have been sexually abused/harassed at work - these are the options you had until recently:

Traumatic - you must meet your aggressor face to face.

Long - 3 to 5 years average time to reach a verdict.

Small chances - your word against his.

Loss of trust in the judicial system - in some very publicized cases, a lot of corruption was implemented within the judicial authorities.

A sense of lack of control over the situation - the victim does not choose the investigator, the lawyer or the ombudsman who defends the victim and not the judge.

Fear of post-trauma - every encounter with the aggressor is traumatic and mentally dangerous for the victim. Dozens of studies confirm this.

Burden of proof is hard - in some cases it's word against word.

Difficulty in representing a legal funder - especially in low-level sexual offenses such as sending intimate photos, (photos of genitals) or light harassment, there are almost no lawyers who agree to represent.

Expensive legal representation - if you win the case, the fees for lawyers and mediators can range from 25% to 40% of the compensation you deserve.

Labeling the victim as a problematic person - with a long-term negative effect.

Difficult personal exposure - a civil lawsuit requires the victim to be exposed to both associates and strangers. The risk of exposure can easily turn into public criticism and discourse about the victim's "contribution" to sexual assault rightly or wrongly.

Long - can take 2-4 years to receive compensation. Studies show that because of the emotional nature, victims "put their lives on hold" during the trial.

Even with the option of a normal civil lawsuit, there is a feeling of lack of control - the victim does not choose the investigator, the lawyer or the ombudsman who protects the victim and not the judge.

Option 3: face-to-face arbitration / mediation / negotiation between the lawyers of the parties

Paying a physical mediator or arbitrator is not contingent on success Hourly rates are usually expensive and range from $150 to $500 per hour. This expense is added to the expense of a lawyer representing the victim in the procedure - 25%-50% established fee.

In the case of mediation - pre-paid margins that do not depend on the result.

Dangerous - the social campaigns and the social network have created a way to say goodbye to the secret and come to terms with the perpetrator in a very accessible way - publishing a post on the Internet or an interview with one of the media channels.

On the one hand, it is characterized by high availability and the victim's control over the schedules. On the other hand, online, you are immediately judged for good or bad. The victim can be a star overnight but can also crush his life's work there and even his friends and family in the blink of an eye.

"Price tag" - the problematic nature of labeling the victim as a sex victim will accompany him for a long time in a way that is very difficult to get rid of, just as it happened to Miss Universe Lenore Abergele . Or the changes promised to Monica Lewinsky.

This option is only relevant in the case of sexual harassment in the workplace, an internal organizational investigation procedure and if an appeal to a relevant legal instinct according to the jurisdiction was unsuccessful. This mechanism also suffers from many problems that directly affect you as the victim.

The month of April 2022 was declared as National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month by President Biden and enacted a federal law aimed at strengthening rape prevention and education efforts and expanding access to legal services for all victims of sexual assault. $450 million has been allocated as part of the US rescue plan to provide funding for domestic violence and sexual assault services, including rape crisis centers and new laws that create a new way for you to try and get signed compensation as follows:

1. The end of forced arbitration - a revolution in resolving sexual harassment disputes in the workplace.

The new US federal law prohibits mandatory arbitration of sexual harassment in the workforce, the new law puts an end to forced arbitration of sexual assault and sexual harassment. This law promotes efforts to prevent and treat sexual harassment and assault and promotes access to justice by ensuring that people who have experienced sexual assault and sexual harassment in the workplace are not subject to binding arbitration and can instead choose whether to go to court or to resolve the dispute outside the organization.

The background to the legislation - a protest by Google employees - many corporations used internal arbitration mechanisms to "wash away" sexual claims, and they continued in part to harm the workers who were affected. An important catalyst for the law was the global protest by Google employees over Google's policy regarding the treatment of sexual harassment. The mediation/arbitration procedure, which is usually found as a clause in employment contracts in Silicon Valley, requires that any dispute be resolved within the organization and not through external means such as courts. Opponents of this article replied that it was used to protect the reputation of the debtor and the defendant, and at the same time remained silent.

In 2018, an investigation by the New York Times was published, according to which Google fired 48 employees in 2016-2018 due to sexual harassment cases - and provided their senior managers with protection, assistance and a shiny retirement package. Prominent among them was Andy Rubin, the inventor of Android, who left the company with $90 million in his pocket. Other demands of Google employees were the publication of a report on cases of sexual harassment in the company, and the establishment of a uniform process for reporting incidents anonymously.

Following the protest, the largest technology organizations in the world changed their individual contracts, but the corporate culture that continues to "disenfranchise" the employees did not change dramatically and therefore the law was enacted.

2. Creating a one-year window of opportunity - you can claim now for past injuries, even those that happened many years ago .

For the first time, the state of New York enacted a law that revokes the statute of limitations on sexual assault for a limited period of time.

On May 24, 2022, the governor of the city  New York City, Kathy Hotzol , signed a law that allows a 12-month " look back" period for survivors of adult sexual abuse to file a lawsuit against the abuser and other responsible parties (eg, institutions and employers), even when the statute of limitations may have already expired. The ASA submission window will run from November 2022 to November 2023.

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Geshury offers the first online dispute resolution platform (online dispute resolution = ODR) to resolve infringement disputes through a fully digital mediation process. The platform will allow victims to tell their stories, shed the heavy psychological burden of keeping a secret and manage a completely digital process without human intervention in order to try and receive compensation from those responsible for the harm.

Geshori's goal is to dramatically increase the percentage of compensation for victims and prevent future harassment by creating an overly efficient system that teaches criminals that their actions can cost them a lot of money.

This model enables efficiency, availability, low costs and a short time of conduct in the mediation process and minimizes the risk of renewed post-trauma.

The compensation that may be waiting for you now in Geshori

Now it is possible to receive compensation even for sexual abuse in the lowest range like Dick Pic . As mentioned, the reality before Geshori shows that for the vast majority of sexual assaults in the low range, no lawsuits were filed at all and therefore they did not receive compensation.

Before Geshori it was simply not worth investing the time, energy and heartache involved in a confrontation with the attacker. Now it is both possible and worthwhile.

Not only is there no need to meet the perpetrator at any stage, but the path to an agreement is also shortened since there are no lawyers and the system offers an amount on its behalf based on an analysis of similar cases both in the legal system and in verdicts from alternative systems of mediation and physical arbitration in a way that creates a kind of "price list" of vulnerability, so All parties will be able to reach an agreement more easily and not feel like "suckers".

Mediation is the process of creating agreements through a third party. There is no ability to compel any of the parties to reach an agreement, no third party has any ability to decide. The importance of a mediation procedure is the fact that each party controls its own decisions and does not hand over the decision to a third party, therefore there is an extremely important psychological element here whose importance becomes cardinal when it comes to sexual injuries which are first and foremost experiences of a lack of control on the part of the victim.

Successful mediation is not only the one that ends in an agreement to resolve the conflict. A good mediation is also such that even if the agreement is not signed, the parties have received clarity and understanding regarding the things that are important to them and regarding the position of the other party and thus can decide whether to turn to the legal system or to external arbitration or to give up the whole matter.

How does the process of receiving digital compensation work?

The entire mediation procedure is carried out digitally and anonymously without face-to-face meetings.
Maximum protection of confidentiality and privacy.
All documents are created digitally.
Each party submits its version to the system and only if it is interested will its version be transferred to the other party
There is no direct interaction between the parties, so in the meeting there is no fear of being interrogated, humiliated, threatened and so on.
The entire process is secured at a high level of security and allows the victim to store his testimony and certificates in a "digital safe"
Respectful and matter-of-fact.
Payment only if agreement is reached - so the victim is not required to pay another financial "fine".
Fast and does not require physical space - in fact there is no need to leave the house.
The system encourages the quick conclusion of mediation procedures by a variety of means - such as a reduced fee for an agreement reached within 72 hours.
Each party clarifies its needs and interests to reach an agreement and what are the real obstacles that those parties tend to repress usually of not reaching an agreement both mentally and financially.
The system transfers between the parties only the ranges that bring them closer to agreement and by means of artificial intelligence produces a "system proposal" for a logical compromise according to the circumstances of the location of the risks of the parties and the compensation amounts agreed upon in similar cases. . It does not depend on the jurisdiction or the law and regulations of the country and therefore can be between parties with different circumstances. Enables multi-participant mediation, victims, insurance companies, employers, other third parties. .

Most importantly, Geshury was developed by experts in the complex psychological processes that characterize sexual abuse of both the victim and the perpetrator.

Geshurai's method was designed to reduce gaps and find the common denominator, therefore it significantly increases the chances that an agreement will be formed between the parties and compensation will be paid compared to the other alternatives.

Accepting the system proposal immediately reduces the commission paid by the parties to the system and rewards them in this way as well.

Another important detail, since there is no payment to mediators or lawyers, the offender can afford to increase the amount of compensation, he is willing to pay and in the same way, since the victim saves about 25%-40% paying expenses to representatives, he can settle for a smaller compensation than the offender.

Social Impact - Stopping the Sexual Abuse Epidemic Using the Geshury Platform at Scale

For many victims, the fact that they will receive financial compensation or revenge on the offender is not enough incentive to pay the price of the behavior in the legal or internal system. Many times the motivation to complain or sue occurs when they realize that their offender is serial, and that they can be the ones to prevent the next injury that the offender may commit.

In the absence of an effective criminal deterrent, the most effective deterrent (with the exception of public exposure) is a significant hit to the pocket. An offender who received a message on his phone that a complaint of sexual abuse has been filed against him will think twice before being hurt again, because now he knows that his actions are being recorded.

Furthermore, since many viral sexual abuses are committed by underage teenagers, the fact that their parents would get the message and have to pay thousands of dollars in damages would make them supervise their children much better than is the case today.

Within a decade, Geshori seeks to "cleanse" the world of sexual abuse during this period

I was raped

I had a rape attempt.

I was sexually harassed at work.

I was digitally sexually harassed.

I was sexually assaulted in a different way.

Do I know the attacker?

Did I complain?

I received compensation.

I want to be compensated

Sigal Geshori - holder of two degrees in law, one of the first mediators in Israel, develops a treatment method*** for victims of sexual assault and serial entrepreneurs in projects that combine technology and psychology