Sometimes, an employee who experiences harassment at work wants to report it to HR or to his higher management without having it investigated. An employee might even want to insist on keeping his issue with the alleged harasser between him/her and the manager to whom it was reported.
It’s important, however, that you are aware of the fact that your employer is obligated by law to investigate your harassment complaint once he learns about your allegations regardless of your requests to keep that complaint a secret.
This means that before you share your harassment concerns with upper management, you need to ask yourself whether you are ready for and are ok with having the perpetrator and witnesses interviewed and with many employees at your workplace learn about your allegations. Of course, only you know the answer to this question but it’s something you should think about before coming forward and discussing harassment with your employer.