Metro

City workers filed 472 sexual harassment complaints last year

City workers filed nearly 500 sexual harassment complaints last year — and just 8 percent were substantiated, new figures released by City Hall on Friday show.

Investigators only found “probable case” or “substantiated” 37 of 472 allegations of sexual misconduct that were reported between July 2017 and June 2018; while determining that 71 of the complaints lacked supporting evidence.

Only eight of those confirmed complaints resulted in a termination, retirement, demotion, transfer or suspension.

Councilman Mark Levine (D-Manhattan) said he was “troubled” by “such a low number of terminations and suspensions.”

“It’s an incredible tool to monitor the city’s progress in sexual harassment cases,” said Levine, who sponsored the bill that mandated City Hall release the data. “We’ve never had that kind of detailed information before.”

The figures show that Department of Education staffers filed more than a third of the complaints — 186.

“For far too long, survivors of sexual harassment had to suffer in silence. The #MeToo movement has shed light on how disturbingly common harassment is across all industries,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed and overhauled our policies to send a loud and clear message of support to survivors.”
It’s a markedly different tact for de Blasio, who whined in 2018 about a “hyper complaint dynamic” at the DOE when reporters pressed him about the large number complaints filed by employees at city schools.

The city could not provide accurate comparable figures to last year because city agencies, until recently, tracked the reports differently.