Last week David Letterman, CBS’s longtime late night comic in a misleading routine “confessed” to having had sexual relations with some of his staff.   Until the very end of this carefully worded “confession” the audience thought it a joke.  It wasn’t.  Letterman admitted his sexual dalliances only because Robert “Joe” Halderman, a colleague at CBS had blackmailed him.  Halderman has pleaded not guilty to first-degree grand larceny and is free on bail. What impact this will have on Letterman’s job, however, is a huge question.  CBS claims that no one has brought sexual harassment charges against Letterman, who was a confirmed bachelor before his marriage last March to his long-time girl friend, the mother of his six-year-old son.
 
Human resource personnel and employment lawyers condemn sexual contact between a boss and a member of his -- or her -- staff.  The boss and staff member are not equals; consequently they are not freely consenting adults. The boss has the power to promote and reward his subordinates.  Therefore, the staff member frequently does not feel free to reject him, or fears retaliation if she wishes to end the liaison.  When others in the workplace know of the relationship, they often see favoritism by the boss toward his sexual partner.  Jealousy and workplace morale problems fester.  For these reasons, workplace policies universally prohibit sexual relations between supervisors and staff members.
 
If after these revelations, any of Letterman’s present or former staff bring sexual harassments charges against him, his job will be in jeopardy. If no one does, his job is probably safe. In any case, however, sex with a staff member is not, as Letterman attempted to portray it, a laughing matter.
 
In another case recently in the news, the Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are conducting preliminary investigations into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethic rules.  Ensign tried to conceal a sexual affair with Cynthia Hampton, the wife of Doug Hampton, his longtime administrative assistant. Cynthia Hampton also had been the treasurer for Senator Ensign’s campaign.  The Senate Ethics inquiry began by investigating whether Ensign improperly used campaign money to pay $96,000 to the Hamptons in order to buy their silence. In another inexcusable twist, the Hampton’s teenaged son had also been hired by the Senator, but was fired from his job when his mother’s affair ended.
 
The federal investigation on the other hand is focusing on whether Ensign or Doug Hampton broke the law in violation of the one-year lobbying ban after Hampton left his congressional position. Regardless of the legal outcomes of investigations of the affair and attempted cover-up, this case is a dramatic example of how disruptive and dishonest sex in an office setting can be.
 
Sexual harassment, however, is not limited to the political or entertainment workplace. Here is Suzanne Rich’s story.  She enlisted in the army and was sent to Iraq.  One of Suzanne’s sergeants assured her mother, “Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll take good care of your daughter.”  The mother later discovered that that sergeant was one of the first predators to try to have sex with her daughter and make her his own special “Private.”
 
Suzanne spent a year in Iraq. In her telephone calls home, she told her mother that many of her sergeants and lieutenants were sexually harassing her and making her life miserable for rejecting them. When she reported one to their superior officer, she was treated like a pariah in her unit and the harasser was transferred and promoted. When Suzanne returned from Iraq she was anxious and depressed.  Confronted with going back to Iraq after less than a year home in the States, Suzanne broke down from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  She went AWOL and the Army arrested her.
 
Like the Letterman and Ensign cases, however, the subsequent legalities of Rich’s situation are not the point.  Her superior officers sexually harassed her -- something far too common in our macho military – and the military is reluctant to address the issue. Even though the Army Medical Research Department funded a study that found 30% of women veterans were raped while in service. That’s almost one in three. That’s certainly no laughing matter.
 
A final case, both ancient and new, is the worst of all. Roman Polanski, the academy award winning movie director, was recently arrested on his way to a film festival in Switzerland.  In l977 he had pleaded guilty to sexually abusing an underage girl. When the judge refused a proposed financial settlement, Polanski fled the country. He has been a fugitive in France for the last 32 years.
 
The young girl’s name was Samantha Gailey.  Polanski seduced her with a Quaalude, Champagne and under the pretext of photographing her for modeling pictures had her disrobe.  Then despite her multiple requests for him to stop, Polanski sexually assaulted her again and again.  At the time of her ordeal, Polanski was forty-four years old; Samantha was thirteen!
 
Polanski is fighting extradition; there will no doubt be a protracted legal battle.  People have already begun taking sides. Some including his victim who is now a forty-five-year-old mother does not want another trial.  Others enamored of Romanski’s genius as a producer and the multiple problems in his troubled life are calling the pursuit of his extradition unnecessary and puritanical. What everyone should be saying is that no one is above the law and that Polanski raped a child. Nothing, absolutely nothing, even the passing of three decades, excuses that.
 
These are vastly different cases, but they have one thing in common: sex that is not completely voluntary between freely consenting adults is wrong and sometimes criminal.  It is no laughing matter.     
 
Dan O’Rourke lives in Cassadaga, NY. His column appears in the Observer, Dunkirk, NY on the second and fourth Thursday each month. A grandfather, Dan is a married Catholic priest. He has published "The Spirit at Your Back," a book of previous columns. To read about the book or send comments on this column visit his website http://www.danielcorourke.com/