Filing charges can be humiliating. Victims may feel that their charges will be ignored or down played, or they may be accused of behavior that invited the offensive conduct. Still others don't know their rights, are confused about where the lines are drawn, or simply don't know what to do. Duldt's study indicates that nurses, like most women, rarely reported incidents of sexual harassment to their supervisors. The greater the nurse's distress, the less likely she is to report an incident.
Sexual harassment is extremely costly in terms of both human dignity and human resources.
In addition, victims of sexual harassment pay the intangible emotional costs of anger, humiliation and withdrawal added to the possible monetary costs of counseling and litigation expenses. Fortunately, the laws to protect nurses from sexual harassment are already on the books. Compliance, sound institutional policy, and nurses fully understanding their legal rights continue to be problems. What is clear, is that sexual harassment is against the law. Since 1964, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has prohibited discrimination in employment conditions because of an individual's sex.