12 April,2010 01:45 PM IST | | Agencies
An Australian court has awarded $15,000 to a woman who was sexually harassed while working as a teenager at a food chain.
Jasmine Sharma, who began working at the Punchbowl KFC restaurant in 2005 at the age of 15, made 10 complaints alleging sexual harassment by an assistant manager.
The court convicted the man, Matic, after finding him guilty of showing the girl pornographic images and making suggestive comments by telling her she had "a nice ass" and that he "wouldn't mind if the buttons on your top went all the way down", reported The Sydney Morning Herald.
Sharma had also alleged that Matic told her he wanted to take her to Bondi so she could swim nude and that he once bent down and while touching her leg began to "growl" like a cat.
She complained to her boss in May 2007 and did not return to work. The next day she lodged a complaint of sex discrimination and sexual harassment against her former employer, QSR Pty Ltd, trading as KFC Punchbowl.
The Administrative Decisions Tribunal awarded her the money after finding the company vicariously liable for its employee's conduct.
The tribunal, however, did not find all of Sharma's allegations to constitute sexual harassment because it was not satisfied that Sharma did not initially welcome the comments.
The court found that she had exaggerated some aspects of her case and it could not be certain she had not minimised her own involvement in some of the early exchanges.
"Although we have no doubt that Matic made the comments to her that she alleges, we are not persuaded that initially his comments were unwelcome to her," the tribunal said.
The company lost its appeal against the decision last week.
