(Image source from: Greenpeace)

An ex-employee (name withheld) of Greenpeace, through an article has alleged that she had to leave her job in 2013 after being sexually harassed and raped by her colleagues. She said that her ordeal started a year after she had joined the NGO at their Bengaluru office. The first incident had happened during an official trip in October 2012. "I got a call from a senior colleague at 11 pm, asking me to vacate my room and insisting that I sleep in his suite. In another incident, he approached me physically despite my discomfort, insisted on force-feeding me birthday cake,' she said.

She registered a written complaint with the HR manager, but she did not receive any verbal or written communication from the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of the organisation, which looks into sexual harassment cases.

"It was after a party, when a male colleague whom I knew quite well found me unconscious and raped me. You cannot imagine the pain and fear I went through. I was terrified to speak and I knew even if I had, no one in this organisation would come to my aid. I did not have the strength to report my rape, neither to the police, nor to my employers. How could I, when the processes had failed me once already?" she said.

Finally, she decided to tell her story through a Facebook post in. Immediately after her post, Greenpeace issued an apology on their website and promised her to re-investigate the case. Admitting the lax attitude in dealing with the case in 2012.

"The ICC, which convened in March, recommended the termination of the offender, but the executive director overrode the decision on some pretext and the only thing I received was a written apology from the molester,'' she said.

By Premji