He said she
Steph Dyhrberg is the lawyer you hope you never have to hire. At her boutique employment law firm in Wellington, one of her specialties is representing survivors of sexual harassment. She interviews potential clients in her firm’s spartan conference room: no windows, a plain table and a forgettable painting on the wall. By now, she’s noticed a familiar process which people go through as they wrestle with whether to go public with their claim.
“They’ve told their story repeatedly and are finally standing in their truth space. They’ve got this confidence and they’re determined they’re going to do something about it. Often by then they’re suffering stress-related illnesses. They’ve got symptoms of anxiety. Everything is quite hard,” she explains.
What happens next also follows a pattern. “Either a human resources person for an organisation or a lawyer for a respondent threatens them with defamation proceedings. Or warns them, in the nicest possible way — particularly HR. And it takes all the wind out of their sails.
“It’s like watching when a snail is crawling along. It’s got its horns out and it’s on its little mission. And then you touch it, and the horns draw back in and it shrivels into its shell. It falls over and it lays there.”
Dyhrberg’s journey to her position as one of Aotearoa’s leading advocates for survivors of sexual harassment started 31 years ago, when she started a job at the prestigious law firm Russell McVeagh. Known as “The Factory” within the profession, she recalls it as a toxic environment where a “work hard, play hard”
