[ethbro]

> I cannot imagine a scenario where retaliating against an employee for reporting sexual harassment would minimize a company's risk.

As the initial point of contact for a sexual harassment complaint, beginning to construct a paper trail that explains the superior's behavior and puts blame for the incident on the employee?

I'm not saying this as pro- or anti-HR, just that as the document-keeper of record they have a lot of latitude to influence the narrative if they choose to. Remember: performance reviews tend to go through them at some point as well.

[ruraljuror]

Good point. My point is that if HR were to retaliate against the employee, HR would open the company to a far greater amount of risk.

I think the point should be not to trust HR with the only copies of any documents or evidence. Again, I would argue that if HR does the steps you suggest, they are exposing themselves to much more risk than if they did pretty much anything else. Not to say they wouldn't do it, but that it would be a foolish thing to do.