OP A woman comes to you who says she has been sexually harassed in the workplace.
Do you allocate the complainant a male investigator?

as a white woman this I would say - people will say racist bigoted things in front of me but they are more likely to hide this or not say this in front of my Asian dh
But I can see your concern - very much depends upon the individual who is investigating

I agree with you. So I won't repeat back to you what you have written.
I spent more years than I care to remember in similar sounding work. Retired now,

To talk generally for a moment.

No one person, is aware of every nuance surrounding a complaint. It's important that the Investigator believes and understands the complainant, as you say. So there is the ideal world, and there is doing the best for the complainant, in the circumstances.

One day to train an investigator, is woefully insufficient in my view. How do you teach someone procedures, interviewing techniques, listening skills, report writing and so on in that time, as well as relevant legislation, awareness raising and so on? It can't be done.

I'd be arguing, at the minimum, for a much more comprehensive programme to train Investigators.

I presume that: they then would place a report of some kind before a panel / other managers.? They ( the panel) need dedicated education sessions too, similar content to that above. No point having diligent investigators, if the decision makers are on another page/ determined to defend the status quo.

The other thing to consider is your investigators should be volunteers, not, ( for instance) the press ganged manager who happens to be BME, or female, being told that they are now in charge of dealing with harassment investigations.

I didn't see the other thread. But women here too .

Thing is, if you have 30 years experience, and you have reached the conclusions you have....do you keep that same system running, as the future will continue to resemble the past? Otherwise thirty years experience could become one years experience repeated thirty times over. With the same end result for the aggrieved.

I've sometimes had two investigators working with a complainant, if needed, in some circumstances. Perhaps one may be less experienced in cases/procedures, but more able to relate to issues raised by the complainant and to give them confidence that they are heard, and believed.

Not sure that takes you any further, but my thoughts for what they are worth.

(We may have met somewhere along the decades )

Re the respondent. It's not a trail, it's an investigation. An insistence that he or she did not want an investigator of a certain background to interview them on the grounds of being " fitted up" would make me raise an eyebrow.

Respondents are always defensive. A thorough investigation should be able to get to work out what has happened. Hence the importance of skills training.

*trial not trail!
Tired now. Off to bed.

Not black, but Asian

If a white person assigned to investigate racial harassment allegation by Asian. Don’t care if white, black, Asian. Fine by me.

If man assigned to sexual harassment allegation by woman. Don’t care man or woman. Fine by me.

I actually think there should be a bank of trained people who can be assigned investigations and the allocation should be random instead of the process you describe which is more “handpicked”

Any process you personally develop to allocate investigators which is not random, will be influenced by your own biases. Your thoughts in your OP clearly exhibit racial and sex based biases that you have which have led you to the conclusion that the most appropriate investigator should match the complainant in race and/or sex.

And this is assuming you are a genuine and good person who would not abuse the allocation process...but other managers in your shoes could easily abuse any allocation system that is run by handpicking an investigator.

And the OP never returned. Uncomfortable to hear responses being rarely welcomed.

I almost always choose black people to do a job over a white person, all things (that I can account for and factor into my decision) being equal. Jobs for black people is my stance, basically. Sometimes you need a stealthy agent to get the job done. In that instances all things aren't equal, and I'd choose the person who was not black. White people will never understand racism or. the experience of being black as `I do, But I sure as heck will never understand white people the way a white person does, and that seems to be important here. It's worth remembering that despite all that I have written above, some white people are truly trustworthy and incredible, dependable, die-hard allies.