LVgeoGeek is not a dog, needing to show her underbelly to the alpha male in a submissive gesture to avoid getting her throat torn out - she is a woman working in a male-dominated field who has, from what I’ve read, done a remarkable job standing up for herself in the face of treatment that nobody, at any job site, under any conditions, should ever have to tolerate. And what was described in the OP wasn’t an “intellectual confrontation” - that was an ATTACK, pure and simple.
I don’t know why you and levdrakon are having such a hard time getting this, except possibly that you are both being deliberately obtuse. I haven’t wanted to bring the gender issue into this thread, but I suspect you and lev are both males, and you don’t get the subtext behind the male junior project manager physically, verbally, and mentally intimidating a woman, LV, at work. Women live in a different world than men live in, where we are frequently made aware of how vulnerable we can be; there is no excuse for a man frightening a woman at work like this. No, it probably isn’t a criminal offense, but there is still no excuse for it. If this man can’t deal with having a woman on his team without physically, verbally and mentally intimidating her, that is HIS problem, not hers. I don’t know how this can be made any clearer to the two of you. I suppose if you don’t get it by now, no arguments I or anyone else can make will make a dent in your brains.
I believe that what he did was false imprisonment. I believe that he restrained her through a threatening manner and intimidation. I believe that she was too frightened to move. I have no opinion on how a trial might come out. Maybe he would cop a plea. Maybe he would get probation. Maybe he would be acquitted. But the possibility of prison has no bearing in my mind as to whether he should be charged. The police/DAs proffer charges, the courts rule on those charges.The question of whether he deserves a particular punishment is immaterial to whether he committed a particular crime.
Some thirty-odd years ago, I was arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession and felony possession of marijuana for the same 12 oz. bag. Did I deserve to do felony time? Did the police give a fuck? No, and no. I copped to the misdemeanor, and served probation. But I was guilty of felony possession under the law. The judge took my youth and my clean record into consideration.
It was not the cops’ job to consider possible punishment outcomes. I don’t care what punishment he might face. What he did was wrong, and not just a violation of workplace etiquette, as you seem to believe.
He followed her into the room and yelled at her. That is unacceptable behavior. At the same time, it is not an “ATTACK.” Your attempted dramatization of the event and your insistence on making this a feminist gender issue is just as condemnable as those who would deny anything untowards happened. Accept the event as what it was, don’t try to make rhetorical hay out of it.
He cornered her in the room after slamming the door shut and proceeded to curse and yell in her face. Anyone that would overreact that way would scare me too.
I swear I could post that I went outside in my yard and a cinderblock fell from the sky and landed on my head and a few people from the judgement squad would rush in to tell me that it was somehow my fault. :rolleyes:
Common usage says that it was. Note particularly definitions 3, 4, and 5, all of which seem entirely applicable to the situation being described, but except for definition 10, none of the supplied definitions include physical violence as a requirment.
I may be projecting, but if someone did to me what the Junior PM did to LVgeoGeek in the OP, I would consider it an attack, no doubt in my mind. If you have never had this happen to you, you might not understand how powerful words and anger can be. You can certainly be attacked without someone laying a finger on you; I thought that was well-understood these days. It doesn’t have to involve fists for someone to hurt you.
As for the gender issues, well, I think there may have been some involved in the original event, and possibly in the responses here, but I’m not actually “insistent” on this. If you see it differently, athelas, I’m not going to argue with you.
I am a big guy, and I have difficulty controlling my temper. I am getting better at it, but in the past, I have had friends tell me that they were frightened at my behavior when, to me, I was just arguing emphatically. I’m talking about guys who played football in high school, sitting ten feet away from me, frightened that I was about to lose control. And all I was doing was yelling at them. No name calling. No finger in the face. No threats. Just shouting my case.
If I were to chase a woman into her office, slam the door, pin her against her desk, stick my finger in her face and scream profanities at her, you can damn well be sure she would be justified in thinking of it as an attack. If a man who was as much larger than I am as I am to a woman were to do that to me, I would use whatever weapon I had handy to fend him off. Any weapon at all.
For folks to think of this as “discussing business” or some kind of bizarre love play is abominably stupid.
Why is bringing gender into this condemnable? Its not entirely impossible that gender was in fact involved here. My take is that even if this guy just totally snapped, there was still a part of his brain that thought he could get away with it. He saw OP as inferior to himself (obviously) and I don’t think its a stretch to wonder if her gender (making her a minority in her office) was part of why he thought it was okay to put her in her place. That is to say, if OP were a 30 year old man who had been at the company for 2 years, would she have been treated the same way? Maybe, but I think its a fair question.
He could be standing “in such a way” all he wants.
Unless you can PROVE his intent to confine her against her will AND an act in furtherance of that intent, you’re not getting a conviction. And you have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
You’re not going to get intent beyond a reasonable doubt from the circumstantial evidence you’ve got here. What have we got?
LV’s testimony? She can’t testify as to his state of mind.
Boss’s testimony? He can’t either.
Yeller’s testimony? You really think he’s going to get up there and say, "Yes, I intended to confine her against her will?
Any judge worth his salt, and even most judges not worth any salt at all, would rule against the prosecution as a matter of law. However, in order to ensure that the case was not appealed, the judge would probably just wait for the jury to come back with a Not Guilty.
All of this assumes, of course, that a case for false imprisonment made it past arraignment, in the unlikely event that it even got to arraignment, if one were to get so lucky as to find a DA who was sympathetic. And drunk. And retarded. Wicked retarded.
And it is your contention that he did not intend to restrain her. How, exactly, do you know that? His actions speak otherwise. Isn’t that what trials are for?
If I were defending him, I would not need to prove that he did not intend to restrain her. The opposite is true, and based on these facts – it’s not getting to trial.
The problem is, from the OP’s description, she didn’t attempt to leave the office. Which is understandable under the circumstances, but he never actually prevented her from going any where, which would make any charge of wrongful imprisonment pretty much impossible to prove.
Sure, I’ll take a position. It is my opinion that he was angry, lost his temper and intended to intimidate her. It is not my opinion that he intended, and I do not believe the facts support that he intended, to confine her against her will.
Not to pick to fine a nit, but drugging someone unconscious would do it. Or binding them in such a way that movement was impossible. Or threatening great bodily harm if they so much as move a muscle. I can imagine plenty of scenarios where a person could be intimidated into not attempting escape.
It is my opinion that he intended to do exactly what he did, and that what he did was to harass and threaten in her in such a manner that she was unable to move. I realize that this bothers you and Loach, but I contend that it is as reasonable a reading of the facts as we know them as yours is. No offense, but calling my opinion “ridiculous” is not the way to persuade me otherwise.