When Emily May set up the Web site Holla Back with six friends in October 2005, she didn’t expect much response.

“We thought, ‘Wow, this is a cute idea,’” said May.

Inspired by Thao Nguyen, whose decision to snap a cellphone picture of a subway rider masturbating led to a high-profile arrest and prosecution, Holla Back gives visitors, mostly women, a forum to post photographs and stories about their experiences being groped, catcalled or otherwise sexually harassed in public.

It didn’t take long for the Web site to catch fire. “It was wild,” said May. “All of these women were coming out of the woodwork.” TV stations and local media started calling, and May appeared on the Good Morning America, the Today Show and CNN. Holla Back was profiled in several local newspapers. More than two years later, the site is still thriving, receiving about 1,500 visits a day, according to May. Fifteen different Holla Back sites have been established nationwide, with another in South Korea.

Holla Back gives New Yorkers a forum for expressing frustration about street and subway harassment of women. At the same time, a growing groundswell of anecdotes, opinions and outrage is beginning to reach the attention of government. For example, in December, the City Council passed legislation, sponsored by Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr., that upped penalties for repeat flashers, or individuals convicted more than once for public lewdness within a three-year period, from $500 to $1,000, and from 90 days in prison to a year.

Little is known about the precise extent of harassment, despite an avalanche of anecdotal information and some small-scale surveys. And debate continues over what role, if any, government should play in regulating the behavior. Advocates hope that laws like the one passed by council last month at the very least will stigmatize behavior that has long been accepted or at least tolerated. Others challenge the harm that is posed by harassment, likening it to harmless flirting. And some fear that the enforcement of laws against harassment and flashing will be unfairly directed at gays and racial and ethnic minorities.
Anonymous and Uncounted

Street and subway harassment is anonymous: In almost every case, the harasser and the person being harassed do not know one another. The harassment itself ranges from rude and prolonged stares and inappropriate comments to behavior that can create fears of sexual assault. Women feel threatened by this, partly because they have no way to determine the intentions of the harasser – whether he is a “good guy or not” in the words of Emily May. Even rude comments can be traumatizing, particularly for rape victims. (According to the United States Department of Justice, one in six women have been raped at some point in their lives.)

Many observers believe that street harassment is essentially a “power trip” designed to put women in their place, a reaction to broader social changes in which women enjoy more freedom and work opportunities than previously. “It’s a mechanism designed to reinforce [traditional] status hierarchies,” said sociologist Laura Beth Nielsen.

In a rare attempt to quantify the frequency of street harassment, Nielsen interviewed 100 subjects (including some men) in the Bay Area. Fully 62 percent of the women reported experiencing offensive or sexually suggestive comments “every day” or “often.” An additional 28 percent said they heard comments “sometimes.” Only 10 percent of the women she interviewed said that they “never” heard comments.

In July 2007, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer issued a report on sexual harassment and assault in the New York City subways. Sixty-three percent of survey respondents reported being sexually harassed on the subway, and 10 percent said they had been sexually assaulted. About half said they felt the threat of sexual assault and/or harassment on the subway “sometimes or frequently.”

Critics assailed the survey’s methodology. It relied on self-reporting (individuals were invited to fill out the survey on-line and only a fraction of those invited did so), which may have inflated the findings. The New York Post was particularly harsh, dismissing it as “The Beep Who Cried Wolf.” Even the Wall Street Journal weighed in on the topic, calling it a “Dubious Survey on Subway Safety.”

While the criticisms were somewhat valid, the report generated a huge amount of attention. A story on the subject at the New York Times blog “City Room” received 163 comments, far more than the 5 to 25 comments that blog entries typically generate.

Reliable information about the nature and extent of street and subway harassment is almost impossible to come by. “There’s no research out there,” said May. “We don’t know how often it happens or who it happens to.” The result, according to May, is that “women think it’s their fault. They say to themselves, ‘If only I wasn’t walking there.’”

Stringer believes the government must do a better job of collecting information. “The city has gotten very good at going after crime that it quantifies, so the first step should be tracking sexual harassment and assault in the subway as its own category of crime,” Stringer wrote in an email message. “Having that information will allow us to raise the profile of these crimes, demand more of a response from the police and the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority], and create a public service campaign that embarrasses the perpetrators and empowers victims to move beyond fear to outrage.” His report recommended the establishment of a hotline for subway riders to report incidents of assault and sexual harassment, citing findings that the overwhelming majority of victims don’t bother to report incidents to the police.
The Government Role

Regardless of how widespread harassment is, what can government do about it?

Even efforts to target relatively straightforward behavior such as public lewdness have proved controversial. “It’s a struggle for government to regulate public space, because you almost always capture people acting innocently” or for reasons other than those contemplated by the law, said Vallone.

His bill is a case in point: It was criticized by gay right groups who argued that the police use public lewdness laws to target gay men who have sex in public. An enterprising reporter from Gay City News, Duncan Osborne, obtained records of 359 public lewdness complaints filed in the city and found that a small number involved police operations in locations that gay men frequent for sex. (While some may argue that prohibiting public sex is a legitimate government activity, it wasn’t the express purpose of the legislation.) In response, Vallone agreed to limit enhanced penalties to “serial flashers” arrested more than once for the same offense in a three-year period.

In the 1980s, transit police falsely arresting black and Hispanic men for what was then called “bumping” in the subways in an attempt to raise their productivity and earn promotions. The pattern of arrests created an uproar. “It’s extremely hard in a crowded subway station to tell right from wrong when somebody is up close to somebody else,” Richard Emery, a lawyer who represented the falsely accused men, told the New York Times.

The challenge of targeting street and subway harassment becomes even more difficult when you move from behavior (such as flashing or groping) to speech. The first constraint is constitutional: The Supreme Court sets a very high bar against government intervention. Essentially, the government can regulate only speech that is clearly intimidating, rather than merely offensive. In addition, regulations have to be applied in a “content neutral” fashion that does not target particular kinds of speech. In practice, the court has generally struck down laws aimed at racist or sexist speech, but has upheld laws that restrict panhandling, another form of potentially offensive public speech. In her study, sociologist Nielsen suggests this reflects a judiciary that is largely male and thus unfamiliar with the problem of street harassment. About two thirds of the men in her survey reported rarely or never hearing offensive or sexually suggestive comments directed at other people.

Nielsen herself has a nuanced view of government intervention of sexist speech. In her interviews, she found little support for an expanded government role, even among men and women who believed strongly that sexist speech is offensive and morally wrong. White men tended to cite the First Amendment to support their position, but white women and people of color used a much more pragmatic calculus. In essence, they believed that policing sexist speech would either not work or would backfire on its intended beneficiaries. In other words, women doubt that government is the answer to the problem of sexist speech. Nielsen, though, believes that changes in law would have an “important symbolic effect.” New laws, she said, would help women make the case that harassment “doesn’t just suck, but is illegal.”
Banding Together

Whatever the legal pitfalls, advocates think awareness of harassment has increased. “The important thing is that this is no longer a secret conversation between women,” said documentary filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West. Her 1998 documentary, “War Zone,” in which she interviews men who harass women, has enjoyed an unusually long life. She traveled to Egypt this year to show the film, and it is used routinely for training by the U.S. Department of Defense. “The positive part is that it’s now being recognized culturally as a problem,” she said.

Inspired by “War Zone,” a group of young women organized an anti-street harassment campaign in Brownsville, Brooklyn, developing posters and creating a “harassment-free zone” in their neighborhood. “We work with the girls to own up to their own comfort zone and identify what they think is harassment,” said Joanne Smith, the executive director of Girls for Gender Equity. “A lot of them end up being comfortable telling people, ‘I don’t like this.’”

Of course, there are limits to the self-help approach: In one highly publicized incident, four women were arrested for attacking a man in Greenwich Village they accused of harassing them. One woman stabbed the man in the abdomen with a steak knife she carried in her purse. While vigilantism is one concern, a more practical concern for most women is whether confronting their harasser will expose them to more danger.

To Emily May of Holla Back the most effective approach is education: letting men know that women cannot distinguish a harasser who is basically harmless from one who is genuinely threatening. “I think [a lot of] men really don’t understand what they’re doing when they harass women,” she said. “If they understood that street harassment was scary, they wouldn’t do it.”

(Aubrey Fox is project director of Bronx Community Solutions, aimed at changing the Bronx court system’s approach to low-level crime.)

In Kim C. Jones v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation et. al., the court ruled that Jones, an African-American employee, did not present evidence of triable issues of material fact. Jones claimed that while working as a correctional officer, she faced a hostile work environment due to gender discrimination, race discrimination, sexual harassment and unlawful retaliation by the male correctional officers. She also alleged she had suffered assault and battery, international infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and negligent supervision and retention of employees.

After an altercation with a male employee, Jones reported pain in her neck and right wrist and shoulder, for which she received medical care. Jones then filed complaints with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

The court ruled that Jones did not present sufficient evidence that her race or gender was the basis for her claims of adverse actions, discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation, negating her FEHA claim. Additionally, the court believed that Jones’ complaints did not meet FEHA definitions of an abusive working environment that is “permeated with ‘discriminatory intimidation, ridicule and insult’ that is ‘sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment.”

Ultimately, the court noted that Jones’ claims for emotional distress must be addressed by workers’ compensation, limiting her recovery only to medical-related expenses.

Source: California Courts

Where’s outrage for athletes who abuse partners?

By Leigh Goodmark

A National Football League player is accused of cruelty to animals, and the public’s outrage knows no bounds. But when a star athlete is accused – and convicted – of domestic violence, the court of public opinion is often far more lenient in its judgment. Do we care more about the fate of a dog than we do that of a woman?

For the past several weeks, the media have been buzzing with the story of Michael Vick. The Atlanta Falcons quarterback allegedly hosted and bet on dogfights, and punished dogs that didn’t win by electrocuting and drowning them. Mr. Vick pleaded not guilty to federal conspiracy and dogfighting charges and faces up to five years in prison if convicted. He has been forbidden to return to the Falcons’ training camp, and his endorsement deal with Nike has been suspended. In a recent Sports Illustrated poll, the vast majority of those responding called for Mr. Vick to be suspended from the NFL for life.

If Mr. Vick is guilty of these charges, what he has done is horrific. But I can’t help thinking about how differently Mr. Vick is being treated than the innumerable athletes who chose to abuse their partners instead of their pets. Lawrence Phillips. Raphael Cherry. Jason Richardson. Derrick Rodgers. Bobby Chouinard. Michael Pittman. All were convicted of physically abusing their wives or partners. Few were suspended by their teams; Mr. Chouinard continued to play for the Colorado Rockies after holding a loaded gun to his wife’s head, serving a one-year sentence in three-month increments during the off-season. Mr. Phillips returned to football practice at the University of Nebraska shortly after dragging his girlfriend down several flights of stairs.

Some of these athletes went on to even greater fame after the assaults, signing new endorsement deals and winning more lucrative contracts. None faced the level of public disgust that Mr. Vick has faced since the story broke – even though Mr. Vick has only been accused of crimes, while they were convicted for their violence.

Those who battle against domestic violence used to talk about how there were more animal shelters than shelters for battered women in this country. That may not be true any longer, but the public reaction to the Michael Vick case is another reminder of how much more seriously we seem to take animal abuse than domestic violence. Penalties for animal abuse are still greater than penalties for domestic violence in some states. An injury to “man’s best friend” is cause for public outcry; injury to his partner, the mother of his children, doesn’t seem to be nearly as shocking.

Imagine the message it would send if athletes were sanctioned as seriously for beating their wives as for beating their dogs.

Leigh Goodmark is an associate professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and director of its Family Law Clinic. Her e-mail is lgoodmark@ubalt.edu.

The Protection Battered Spouses Don’t Need

By RADHA IYENGAR

TWO decades ago, in an effort to curb domestic violence, states began passing “mandatory arrest” laws. Police officers responding to a call for help would no longer need to determine whether one person was truly violent or out of control; every time someone reported abuse, the police would simply be required to make an arrest.

It seemed like a good tactic — at least to people who work with victims of domestic violence. (Police officers tended to be less enthusiastic, because they prefer to make arrests at their own discretion.) Arrests would immediately stop the violence and might discourage abusers from further acts of abuse.

But 20 years later, it seems the mandatory arrest laws are having an unintended, deadly side effect. The number of murders committed by intimate partners is now significantly higher in states with mandatory arrest laws than it is in other states.

Support for the laws began in 1984, after a federal district court in Connecticut ruled that the police had inadequately protected a woman whose husband had brutally assaulted her. State lawmakers decided they needed more control over how local police departments enforced restraining orders against abusers and intervened in incidents of violence. One way to get that control was to dictate how the police should respond in each case.

A small but influential study of police responses to domestic violence calls, conducted by criminologists in Minnesota in the early 1980s, found that arrests were the most effective strategy for reducing future violence. Now, 22 states and the District of Columbia have laws that mandate or at least strongly recommend that everyone accused of domestic abuse be arrested.

What the laws did not take into account was that eventually the victims of violence would come to realize that if they called the police, their abuser would certainly be arrested. And over the years, it turns out, that realization seems to have led victims to contact the police less.

I recently conducted my own study of mandatory arrest laws by comparing the rates of murders by intimate partners before and after the laws went into effect. Intimate partner homicides have generally decreased in the past 20 years, perhaps because greater awareness of the problem of domestic violence has led to the creation of more resources for victims. But in states with mandatory arrest laws, the homicides are about 50 percent higher today than they are in states without the laws.

The mandatory arrest laws were intended to impose a cost on abusers. But because of psychological, emotional and financial ties that often keep victims loyal to their abusers, the cost of arrest is easily transferred from abusers to victims. Victims want protection, but they do not always want to see their partners put behind bars.

In some cases, victims may favor an arrest, but fear that their abusers will be quickly released. And many victims may avoid calling the police for fear that they, too, will be arrested for physically defending themselves. The possibility of such “dual arrests” is most worrisome for victims who have children at home.

The situation is different in incidents in which abuse is suffered by people who are not intimate partners — children, for example. The certainty of arrest does nothing to deter the reporting of such cases, usually by teachers, doctors or other third parties. In fact, my research shows that in states with mandatory arrest laws there are fewer murders of non-intimate-partner family members than there are in states without the laws.

Despite two decades of increased public awareness, domestic violence remains a serious problem. Arresting abusers is often desirable, as are efforts to educate the police about domestic violence and effective intervention and to provide treatment and support for victims. But it makes no sense to keep following a strategy that discourages victims from reporting abuse.

Radha Iyengar is a fellow in health policy research at Harvard.

San Diego firefighters have complained that they were ordered to march, and were subsequently taunted. They demand damages for the inability on part of the department to provide them a safe space.

By ALLISON HOFFMAN Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO—Four firefighters are pressing sexual-harassment claims against the city’s fire department after they were taunted while driving a fire engine in a gay pride parade last month, an attorney said Monday.

The men claim their battalion chief ordered them to ride in the July 21 parade through San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood, according to their attorney, Stephen Stirling. The firefighters followed the order out of concern they would otherwise be suspended or punished.

During the parade, the firefighters said, bystanders taunted them with sexually explicit comments and colleagues called to tease them for participating in the event.

“I was forced into a situation that would compromise what I hold true and what I believe in,” engineer Jason Hewitt said in a statement.

The four contend the department failed to protect them from sexual harassment and didn’t immediately act to correct the situation, Stirling said.

Their lawyers sent a letter Wednesday to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing seeking right-to-sue notices, a first step toward a lawsuit. The Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian legal organization based in Michigan, is helping represent the plaintiffs.

Fire department spokesman Maurice Luque said the four men, who were assigned to a fire station in the parade route area, were called in after another crew that had volunteered to participate canceled at the last minute because one firefighter had a family emergency.

Luque said the agency’s engines had participated in San Diego’s LGBT Pride Festival for the past 15 years and never had any complaints.

“At the last minute the crew in that community was asked to step up and represent our agency in the parade,” he said. “We have a responsibility and we take it seriously to participate in these parades.”

Luque said fire Chief Tracy Jarman had met with the firefighters and had asked another city department to investigate their claims.

SAN FRANCISCO — A transgender prison inmate who said she was raped by her cellmate has lost her lawsuit against prison officials.

A Superior Court jury on Thursday ruled in favor of six Folsom State Prison workers whom Alexis Giraldo accused of failing to protect her from being raped. The jury deadlocked on a seventh prison worker.

Giraldo, 30, was born a man but takes hormones to feminize her appearance.

She had asked the court to order prison officials to create a policy to protect transgender inmates, who are currently housed with the general population. But the court dismissed the claim, saying Giraldo could not speak for other inmates and was in no danger herself because she had recently been paroled.

Giraldo was sent to Folsom for shoplifting and a parole violation in January 2006. She said prison guards ignored her complaints and returned her to the cell to be attacked again. State officials said Giraldo was in a consensual sexual relationship with the cellmate and her lawsuit was motivated by greed.

The Associated Press has a policy of not naming people alleging sexual assault. However, Giraldo has spoken out publicly and has been identified by a transgender rights organization that is advocating for her.

Imagine you met someone new, started dating them for a while, and realized that they were a tad bit disturbed. They became possessive and obsessed with you in a short period of time. After noticing their behavior, you quickly ended the relationship and changed your telephone number. A bit of relief came over you because they didn’t know anything vital about you.

Now imagine the person you dumped is sitting at a computer with a pen and paper. Using only your name, he was able to obtain your address, phone number, and birth date from a website. The website also provided them with a picture of your home, a satellite photo of your neighborhood, and mapquest directions to your door. Another website provided a list of your possible relatives and their ages. Scary isn’t it?

There are several websites, accessible to the public, which provides all of that information for free. Unfortunately, websites such as www.ZabaSearch.com and www.usa-people-search.com are legal sites. These sites combine a mix of public records and generate a list of possible matches. These public records can come from something as simple as a change-of-address form filed at the post office or your voter’s registration form.

We live in a world where you cannot return clothes to a store or enter a building without someone scanning your driver’s license. We live in a world where identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes. We also live in a world where an ex-boyfriend or husband will kill you because they cannot be with you. Murder/Suicides are very common lately. The victims are not always married and have only dated the other person for a short while. Some of the victims are teenagers, which is extremely disturbing. This is why I was very alarmed when I learned about sites like ZabaSearch. It not only places the public at risk for identity theft, it also threatens the safety of women, especially victims of domestic violence and/or stalkers.

I’ve included excerpts from an article written by Catherine Seipp on September 2, 2005 entitled Stalking Made Easy. Although the article was written almost two years ago, the same issues remain:

Stalking Made Easy
by Catherine Seipp
9/2/2005
One in 12 women has been stalked at some point in her life…
L.A. prosecutor Rhonda Saunders, who helped write the nation’s first anti-stalking law, is best known for convicting the stalkers of Madonna, Steven Spielberg and Gwyneth Paltrow, among others. But, as she noted at a press conference for her Court TV special (“Stalkers in the Shadows”), most of the cases she handles involve ordinary women stalked at home, work or school.
Online databases have made the situation worse, she said when I asked about it: “We had a victim, and her stalker was about to get out of prison, and we wanted to know how much info was out there, so we actually paid the $25 fee to go on one of these search engines. She had changed her name, changed her address, changed her job, and this search engine turned up her new name, Social Security number, unlisted phone number, where she lived, the names of her neighbors and the names of her family members. So these search engines are extremely dangerous and stalkers are beginning to learn about them.”
“There was some effort, federally, to make these types of things illegal and it just didn’t go through because of constitutional issues,” Saunders added. “It’s something we have to deal with. If you have a magazine subscription, if you have property, if you own a car — all this information winds up on the Internet.”

Recently, I went to update my voter’s registration information at the courthouses where I live. On the form, it asked me for my driver’s license number and/or the last four digits of my social security number. I didn’t include the information. When I handed it to the clerk, she told me I had to include it. I am aware that the information on voter’s registration forms is public information. I was horrified at the thought of the last four digits of my social security number, which is used as identification for almost all credit related business, being on a website somewhere. I simply told the clerk that I would prefer to show my driver’s license, when it is time for me to vote. That option is available, but not well known.

Something has to be done. We are going to have to stop providing information unnecessarily when we can. When we’re asked for our licenses, social security numbers, telephone numbers, and/or addresses, just ask if and why the information is necessary. If you’re moving, try to change your address directly with companies and people who send you mail regularly. Most importantly, if you are dating someone new, be stingy with your personal information. For example, meet them somewhere instead of having them come to your home or job. This is not always foolproof because you may not know the person is disturbed until after you break up with them.

It’s a crazy world for women. The current stalker laws and restraining order process does little to protect us. We are constantly fighting for rights and/or the freedom to just …be. Although these people finder websites can hurt anyone, young and adult females are the ones at risk. Some may call it paranoid, but I am afraid. And I have vowed to find a way to challenge these websites.

Sherri Williams was cited by the police yesterday because she tried to use the restroom at McDonald’s at Olive and highway 99 in Fresno. Williams and her husband Al are regular customer at McDonald’s, they’re homeless and she uses a wheelchair. On that morning, Al bought a cup of coffee and Sherri headed to the restroom. That is when McDonald’s manager Michelle Torres saw Sherri and said “I need you to go, your not purchasing anything, I need you to go.” Al told Torres that Sherri needed to use the restroom and wash her hands and after that she would buy something. Torres went to summons a police officer who was in the restaurant.

Moments later the officer arrived and said “they tell me they are asking you to leave but you aren’t leaving.” Al said “why do we have to leave?” The officer replied that “this is a private restaurant and they can refuse service to anybody.” Al pointed out that they can only refuse service if they have a reason. The officer responded by saying that if she does not leave “she is going to be arrested.”

Sherri was then taken outside and given a citation – PC 602.1 for “Interfering with Business” by officer D.J. Onruh that demands she show up in criminal court on September 5.

I happened across this story in the latest Slate, and I find it relevant both as a story about blogging, and as a very disturbing collateral effect of gender discrimination. Kathy Sierra either disbanded her blog or at least reduced activity on her blog due to repeated attacks against her by anonymous and semi-anonymous posters to her blog and other blogs. The attacks involved the typical language and gender epithets usually expressed to bully a woman into a state of fear, including expressions of sexual violence. Photo-shopped graphics were also posted, apparently with the intention of terrorizing Ms. Sierra.

Ms. Sierra’s blog concerned metacognition and computers, not abortion, the EPA, Equal Pay, Gay rights or any usual incendiary subjects. Yet, the vitriol directed towards her would seem that she had done a disservice to the very essence of manhood (the attacks were more than likely from all male posters). In fact, according to Slate, such posts against females on the net, including bloggers, are on the rise. One question becomes how does a woman handle this—get away as soon as possible, or refuse to be cowed. That probably depends upon the woman and her ability and sensitivity to targeted violence—I doubt Ms. Sierra even imagined that such misogynistic reaction would occur.

A macrocosmic take is that the reaction from these males explains why gender discrimination is still prevalent, and still so hard to fight. Any time a woman is able to professionally and competently, not to mention expertly, present herself as an authority on an issue, it seems to provoke an atavistic response to take her down. This fear, hatred and violence is just under the surface of certain men, and expressed in the freedom of web anonymity, but also in every condescending comment to a female worker, every instance of favoritism towards a male employee, every action taken on a sense of entitlement to a sexual favor (the same under-acknowledged problem of misogynistic attitude exists in the still-unsolved decades-long murder and torture of women in Juarez, Mexico).

In a way, I’m glad this phenomena has occurred, as it may remind women, and men who support womens’ causes, that until such behavior and misogynistic opinions are considered by the populace to be the wrong thing to do, and such sentiment is continually expressed over these actions gender discrimination will never end.

In the British Isles bullying is a very serious, oft-written about workplace issue, whereas in the U.S. it seems to be strictly limited to a school setting.

Here is quite an informative article from Bully Online that elaborates on this interesting topic. Although bullying is not to be confused with hostile work environment, which is still based upon the usual protected categories, the debate over what might constitute this behavior (think of movies such as Boiler Room) is quite pertinent. Bully Online says:

Bullying differs from harassment and discrimination in that the focus is rarely based on gender, race, or disability. The focus is often on competence, or rather the alleged lack of competence of the bullied person. In reality, the target of bullying is often competent and popular, and the bully is aggressively projecting their own social, interpersonal and professional inadequacy onto their target. The purpose of projection is to avoid facing up to that inadequacy and doing something about it, and – mainly – to distract and divert attention away from the bully’s inadequacies, shortcomings and failings. In most cases, the bullying you see is the tip of an iceberg of wrongdoing by the bully.

And are the differential perceptions based on cultural differences? Or are we making certain in-roads in the U.S., as exemplified by the Hawaii Government?