All the women who share sextortion issues in this text are listed under false identities to protect sources. However, their statements are recorded and they have consented to their publication.

Monika always thought that once she had finished her studies, when she applied for a job, it would be completely normal. A selection process, an interview, clearly defined rules and – ideally – a job at the end. Monika studied journalism and in her final year she decided to start looking for a job.

Her dream was simple: to return to her hometown and work for a regional newspaper. She knew the editor-in-chief of the paper and he was said to be a strict but fair boss in the town, they had met a few times and he was always interested in her work. She sent a cover letter and some of her writing from her college days and waited to see if anyone would respond. 

Friendly tone

A few weeks later she received a reply, not directly from the editor, but from the editor, along with a straight request for a meeting. The editor suggested to Monika that they could meet at a café in the city where the editorial office was located. “Already the messages had a very friendly tone and it was not clear whether it was to be a date or a business meeting,” Monika recalls. That’s why she chose the place where her friend was working at the time and knew she could feel safe there. 

“But he was very intrusive on the date, making unsolicited innuendos and trying to touch me in various ways,” she adds. Monika convinced herself that nothing would happen in the café where she usually goes, but she was not comfortable. She made it clear to the editor that she didn’t want this kind of behavior, he backed off, they said goodbye and nothing happened for a while.

After a while, however, the editor called again and told Monika that the editors were interested in her texts and that they should meet again. “He suggested that he would come to Prague, where I was studying, but then he added, so strangely, that if he happened to miss his train, he would have nowhere to sleep if he couldn’t stay with me. When I told him I would only stay in the living room, he was offended and distant, adding that he didn’t have to go either,” Monika recalls. 

Dilemma

It was becoming clear to the woman that the situation was not going well and she understood where everything could be heading. But she had a dilemma: to reject the editor altogether, or to meet him again and try to move up through him to the editor-in-chief. She decided to give it one last chance: she not only wanted the job, she needed it badly.

She met with the editor, everything went normally, and at the end he offered her that they were having a company party and she could come to the editorial office to introduce herself. “It seemed like a done deal – he promised me the job, we agreed terms, it seemed like everything was settled. So I went,” Monika says. 

But there was no one in the newsroom. The editor invited her in, closed the door, went to get some wine, and started to make excuses that the party was probably over, but that they would at least have a drink together and discuss the circumstances of her arrival. “That’s when I realized that nothing we had said was valid, that the whole situation was set up so that either I would sleep with him or I wouldn’t get the job,” recalls Monika, who, in her own words, was just trying to suffer through the situation. She sat in a corner as far away as possible, refusing alcohol. But the editor drank and kept approaching the woman until he tried to kiss her, touching her knee. Monika jumped up, pushed the man away and firmly refused. Eventually, she had to flee the apartment. 

“I realized that he was mentally blackmailing me and sexually harassing me, but I didn’t know how to deal with it. It seemed to me that if the man hadn’t raped me, nothing had actually happened. Eventually I confided in a senior journalist with whom I was interning. She immediately supported me in saying that we need to confront the man and ideally go to the editor and alert him that his subordinate was treating women like this.”

Vulnerable situation

Monika was in a challenging and vulnerable situation, but she found the courage to approach the editor. She explained to him, in the presence of her senior colleague, what had happened to her. However, she was met with nothing but questioning from the trany management, and in all this time, the editor-in-chief did not ask her how she was, what he could do for her, or how to generally ensure that the said editor did not continue his predatory behavior. 

“In a system set up like this, there is no way to report work-related sexual coercion. In certain professions it is even taken as part of the interview process, something women have to endure and are not supposed to complain about,” Monika reflects on her story. But for her, it wasn’t just about being able to stand up for herself: she also wanted to create a better environment for other women who might be potential victims of predators.

At the end of the painful months-long anabasis, Monika got a public apology to the editor in front of the entire editorial board. However, he did not fail to mention that “nothing actually happened” and questioning of her experience came from some members of the editorial staff. As a result of the negative experience, Monika decided that she no longer wanted to be a journalist. She turned to a career as a teacher.

In the shadow

The whistleblower protection law was passed by the Czech Republic in June 2023 after years of struggle. It may not be perfect, but at least it provides some protection for those who are not afraid to come forward and report on corruption or violations of the law. However, in the shadow of the newly approved legislation, there remains a problem that is completely invisible in the countries of post-communist Europe. It is sextortion. 

Johanna Nejedlová is the director of Konsent, an organization dedicated to sexualized violence. She is well known Czech activist and he goes by her real name. She confirms that the invisibility of sextortion corresponds exactly with the way some of society feels about sexual violence in general.

“From observing the debate on sexual violence over the years, I have gotten the feeling that a part of society is still convinced that women should be able to resolve any pressure on their own, to speak up, not to be pushed into anything. If they don’t, it’s their failure. In such an environment, we naturally have few people who can share their experiences and talk about them and thus contribute to a greater understanding of the problem. Setting up mechanisms to address sexual exploitation runs up against the idea that the system will be massively abused by people to retaliate against unpopular superiors, even though this idea has never been borne out in practice anywhere else,” explains Nejedlová.

Shame and stigma

The attempt to corrupt through sexual coercion, or the presence of sexual exploitation in the workplace in general, is a problem that is even harder to talk about than “classic” sexual harassment. It is often women who are the targets of this type of behavior.

Moreover, the presence of shame is much greater in sextortion than in classic whistleblowing. It’s not just that there is something to report somewhere. It is that this reporting is of a very intimate and sensitive nature, which places a great demand on the victims: to expose themselves to possible condemnation, to the prejudices attached to the issue of sexualized violence, and to face multiply greater odds that can use the harshest weapons against the victim. 

According to Ondřej Kopečny, the director of Transparency International in Czech Republic, an organization that has been working on the issue of sextortion and trying to start some legislative changes, the scope of the topic of sexual exploitation is serious. Ondřej Kopečný also speaks under his own name.

“Data in the Global Corruption Barometer 2021 shows that the least number of people have personal experience of sextortion, or know someone who has, in Finland. Specifically, two per cent of respondents.” But at the same time, Kopecny warns that reporting sexual exploitation is challenging. “The difference in reporting a corrupt act that involves some form of sexual service in the form of a bribe, for example, is complicated by the sensitivity of the whole situation. The sheer will to report is not very high in society, let alone when it goes to such an intimate level. In addition to the ‘normal’ process of reporting, the whistleblower has to overcome further shame and stigma.”

No space to deal with it

This is far from being a situation similar to the one that happened to Monika. A safe workplace environment in terms of potential sexual harassment is important for all actors. Klara worked as an external lecturer for a language school. Clients chose her, not her them, and there was no way she could turn them down: this was not tolerated in the company. 

“One client came to me, he was older and worked in a very high position in a state-owned company. We agreed to meet regularly. Originally it started at four o’clock, but as time went on, the client insisted that we meet later, and at his home,” Klara begins to recall. The hours stretched into the night and she regularly left the client after dark, and he always tried to convince her to stay together, have some wine, spend some time together. But Klara always politely declined. 

“But the situation began to escalate when we were practicing grammar and vocabulary together, and he turned everything to sex and sexual innuendo. He often spoke in English about me: what kind of breasts, ass or legs I had. Eventually it came out that he expected us to have sex together – that he used to do that with the other lecturers, after all, that’s how he chose them. To please him.” But the problem was that Klara didn’t know what to do. “We didn’t have an ombudsman at work, there wasn’t even a system for reporting problems with clients. There was no space to deal with it at all, so I didn’t know what to do,” Klara says. 

While she was looking for a solution to report her client, the situation escalated to the point of attempted sexual harassment. The woman ran away from home and then quit her job. “It would probably be essential for companies to have some mechanisms to protect their co-workers, even external ones. Some kind of safe environment where a person can confide without fear, some clearly stated rules that everyone must follow, but most importantly, so that the person is not alone, does not have to deal with it alone, but is helped by someone who communicates it for them. But I found it difficult to describe what had happened, I couldn’t define myself in relation to him,” Klára confesses helplessly the reasons why she finally told her work that she was quitting and left. 

Jana had a similar experience, when she turned down a dinner invitation from a wealthy client of the bank where she worked. “He wrote me rude messages at night, constantly commenting on my appearance, wanting me to be at his beck and call,” she recalls. I told the management, pointed out that I was uncomfortable with such behavior, but my boss made me continue my contact with the client, go to dinner with him and do whatever he wanted. 

Victimization

“He argued that the firm could not afford to lose such a client,” she adds. “For a while it even looked like I would lose my job if I didn’t, but eventually I stood my ground, but from then on my boss was constantly nasty to me and there was bossing around because the client was offended and actually left us for a competitor.” Like Monika or Klara, Jana admits that if there was a really transparent and safe way to report something like this, she would do it. “But I’ve only encountered victimization and reproach,” she shrugs. 

But Johanna Nejedlová says there is a need to go further and address the overall representation of women in public space. “Sextortion is fundamentally related to power. Sexual coercion is used by those who have power and feel they can afford such behavior and get away with it. The victim is then someone who has significantly less power and is likely to not report the behavior anywhere. Typically a woman who is existentially dependent on a job and cannot afford to lose it,” the director of Konsent points out. 

“I also encountered a woman who was afraid to address the situation because her case might be talked about throughout the industry. She was understandably worried that she would not find work in the industry afterwards. Until we significantly strengthen protections for employees who need to address sexual exploitation, I don’t think we will be able to better address the problem.”

“People also generally have little awareness of where to turn if they encounter sexual exploitation, and it seems to me that the issue is not being raised in any significant way by the trade unions either,” adds Nejedlová. “Of course, it would also help to have more women in leadership positions.”.