“If you have been victimized and violated, probably one of the last things you want to do is go to a precinct and relive every detail,” Ms. Gosfield said. Nonetheless, it is important for law enforcement to have access to physical evidence — if there is any — as soon as possible.

You can file a complaint through your employer.

If you are an employee, you can follow your employer’s procedure for filing a complaint. Typically this is the first step you should take, unless there is only one point person to report to and that person was the harasser.

If that situation doesn’t apply, and if you think you may want to file a lawsuit against the employer in the future, you have to report the harassment to your employer first. Otherwise, the employer has a defense, according to a judgment by the Supreme Court. Make sure all of your attempts at reporting the abuse are documented. “Write down everything and put everything in writing,” said Minna Kotkin, a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and the director of the Brooklyn Law School Employment Law Clinic. “You don’t just go and talk to H.R.”

“Employers are given a lot of latitude to draft their policies,” Ms. Gosfield said. “No one says employers must have a policy that requires you to do X, Y and Z and have this reporting structure.”

Check your handbook or your internal company website. Hone in on it. Understand the chain of reporting that you should follow. Remember that employers may never have acted on their policies before and you may need to be diligent in pursuing your complaint. And company policy is not always up to date with the courts.

You can go to a federal, state or local agency.

If you do not want to, or cannot file through your employer, or if you are unsatisfied with the results of your employer’s investigation, you can enter a complaint at the federal, state or local level. (You can also do this together with reporting the incident to your employer.)