ABSTRACT
Feminist critiques of the rules of evidence have noted their tendency to confine, distort or simply to silence women’s stories.1 What happens, then, in a regime in which the rules of evidence are relaxed? This chapter investigates the hearing process in a tribunal not bound by the rules of evidence, which determines cases concerning alleged discrimination and sexual harassment. In sexual harassment cases, complainants attempt to tell stories of unwelcome and invasive behaviour that is often unwitnessed, frequently prolonged, and always embarrassing and humiliating to recount. Relative informality and the absence of traditional evidentiary restrictions might be thought to enhance the ability of women who have been targets of sexual harassment to tell their stories and to have them believed. Tribunal observations in a number of sexual harassment cases, however, demonstrated that respondents’ counsel used the rules of evidence (or their absence) tactically to obstruct the hearing process. Comparisons with recent studies of rape trials reveal disturbing similarities, if not a more abusive process for complainants.
