Fired After Sexual Harassment.

So, I was recently fired after working at my job for approximately a year. It is a small family business. A relative of the owner developed a really intense interest in me and I was mostly able to ignore this. By intense interest, he repeatedly made comments about marrying me, my physical appearance, bringing random unwanted gifts, calling my personal number and making threats of self harm & showing up at my house if I did not answer. I regret not making a bigger issue of it when it first happened, but I have never loved a job or been paid as well as with this job aside from dealing with this guy and have always had an issue with the “fawn” response when being harassed.

The owner, my manager, and basically all of my coworkers were aware of this. After talking with them about the situation, my manager basically told me that it made the owner uncomfortable but that he couldn’t address this with his relative as it was “disrespectful in their culture to correct an elder”. The relative also funded the business despite not being the owner on paper. Fortunately I changed positions and didn’t work with him as often and I thought it would end. However, I randomly got a call from the office manager (who I got along with really well) in tears telling me she was very sorry but that the owner asked her to fire me and gave no details why and that she was just as confused as I was.

I genuinely had no idea why I was fired until the person who had been harassing me called me the next day. I answered hoping to get some idea of what happened. He was very upset, crying and apologizing. Apparently his wife had seen the amount of times he attempted to call me, found pictures he’d taken of me without my knowledge. Supposedly he broke down and told her he was in love with me and she understandably did not react well after 40+ years of marriage. He told me that she went to my boss and demanded I be fired or she would self harm (it’s not funny in general, but it’s apparently a theme with this family to threaten this lol). He apologized profusely and offered financial help because this was right before Christmas and I am the sole provider in my family. I declined because I was scared of what strings would be attached. I’m not sure if they think there was an affair happening or not. He said he told them I had never entertained it, but it’s possible they didn’t believe him considering the circumstances.

I’m posting to see if this is worth pursuing legally and if anyone has had any similar experiences. In my state it looks like you can sue for up to $50,000 for harassment/termination like this.