'He touched me all over. I froze': A male victim of Westminster sexual harassment speaks out 🔴 For months, Sam says he was harassed by the Lord he worked for: ‘He said it’s perfectly normal in Westminster’
: “I’ve seen first-hand how male victims are often dismissed, their experiences deemed trivial, or sometimes even openly mocked.”
The role was in the peer’s private office, therefore somewhat isolated from the party itself – an issue that would only become important later when he needed help. It was soon after Sam started, before the pandemic, that problems arose. “From the beginning nothing [I did] was good enough,” he says. “Even when things, I thought, went great, he’d complain. I was mortified, thinking: ‘I’m messing it up.’” Now he regards his boss’s reactions differently: “It was a power thing.
A few days after accusing Sam of flirting, he says the Lord repeated it in front of other people. “He said: ‘[Sam] keeps flirting with the guests.’ I was so embarrassed. No one said anything or backed me up. I was fuming.” The Lord’s other staff member told Sam the incident was “just his sense of humour”.
Sam managed to push him off, but the damage was done. The line had been crossed, unequivocally. Before, when he had told friends about the Lord’s conduct, they had suggested he was sexually interested in Sam, but Sam rejected the idea. But there was no denying that now. “That’s when I realised: ‘OK, this is what this is.’” Sam returned to his room, but there was no escape.
So he forced himself to stay for what became a protracted, uncomfortable handover period. “I said: ‘I don’t want to be left alone in the room with you.’” Sam’s employer, meanwhile, kept failing to find a replacement, telling Sam he was hoping to change his mind. Sam has now left the political party he once devoted himself to. He didn’t consider talking to the party because of the possible implications for his career.
Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Service does now offer certain support, online and through a helpline, for staff who have been bullied or sexually harassed, but this is targeted towards helping those who want to make a formal complaint or go the police. Its “Get Support” page offers advice to “respondents” – people who have been subject to a complaint – first, and victims second.
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