I’m responding on behalf of the community health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism. We work to prevent and address problems in the community, including sexual misconduct.
I find the piece doesn’t accurately convey how my team, or the EA community more broadly, reacts to this sort of behavior.
We work to address harmful behavior, including sexual misconduct, because we think it’s so important that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment. Ignoring problems or sweeping them under the rug would be terrible for people in the community, EA’s culture, and our ability to do good in the world.
My team didn’t have a chance to explain the actions we’ve already taken on the incidents described in this piece. The incidents described here include:
Ones where we already took action years ago, like banning the accused from our spaces
Ones where we offered to help address the situation and the person affected didn’t answer
Ones we weren’t aware of
We’ll be going through the piece to see if there are any situations we might be able to address further, but in most of them there’s not enough information to do so. If you want to share any information about a problem you know of, you can always contact us (including anonymously).
When I first learned about the problems described in the piece, I felt disappointed and angry. I still feel that way. I recognize that problems happen in every community, but that doesn’t make it ok. That’s why we’ve been working for years to prevent and address community problems.
This isn’t a problem that one team or organization can address alone. We regularly talk with group organizers and organization staff who want to build a healthy and supportive culture. I’ve seen many people in the community stand up for people who experienced harm, and work toward the kind of healthy community they feel so strongly about. That strengthens the determination I feel to keep working on this.
If you’ve experienced a problem, we want to help. You can always contact us to discuss a problem.
There’s a lot of discussion here about why things don’t get reported to the community health team, and what they’re responsible for, so I wanted to add my own bit of anecdata.
I’m a woman who has been closely involved with a particularly gender-imbalanced portion of EA for 7 years, who has personally experienced and secondhand heard about many issues around gender dynamics, and who has never reported anything to the community health team (despite several suggestions from friends to). Now I’m considering why.
Upon reflection, here are a few reasons:
Early on, some of it was naiveté. I experienced occasional inappropriate comments or situations from senior male researchers when I was a teenager, but assumed that they could never be interested in me because of the age and experience gap. At the time I thought that I must be misinterpreting the situation, and only see it the way I do now with the benefit of experience and hindsight. (I never felt unsafe, and if I had, would have reported it or left.)
Often, the behavior felt plausibly deniable. “Is this person asking me to meet at a coffeeshop to discuss research or to hit on me? How about meeting at a bar? Going for a walk on the beach?” I was unsure what crossed into inappropriate territory, and whether it was I who was problematically sexualizing everything. Most of this is only obvious in hindsight, and because I have enough experience to notice patterns in behavior across individuals. Moreover, most of these interactions were respectful, and grew to be a problem only because they happened so systematically—for a while, it felt like every senior researcher I tried to get project mentorship from tried to date me instead, then avoided me after I turned them down, which has had serious career consequences. I didn’t report this because it was unclear what to report—no particular individual was clearly acting inappropriately, and (at least the first few times) I doubted myself.
I moved to the bay a few years ago for a PhD, and access to collaborative workspace, networking events, and supplemental funding (very necessary for me, with health problems on an academic stipend) are all gated by a couple of people here. They are all men (as far as I know), one or more them have asked me out or shown romantic interest (respectfully), and there are few enough women in my field here that I didn’t feel I had any hope of remaining anonymous. I thought making a big fuss about these things would tank my career, or at least lose me the trust I need to access these spaces and resources, and I wasn’t willing to do that. I moved here and made a bunch of personal sacrifices to work on incredibly important problems, after all.
Over the past 7 years, my motivation has developed from mostly-1 to mostly-2 to mostly-3. Regardless, I honestly don’t know of anything that the community health team could do to help with any of this. There were no extreme situations that warranted a specific individual being banned. The problematic dynamics were subtle, and I didn’t see how any broad communication could help with them. I didn’t want the team to take any action that might de-anonymize me, for career reasons. I don’t see anything to blame the community health team for here.
In my personal experience a good deal of sexual assault/harassment etc. goes unreported (especially at universities) because especially if you personally know the perpetrator as a friend or romantic partner you often have pretty complicated feelings about escalating things.
I think making clear the default outcome of reporting is “you have a conversation with someone a good deal more experience than you about what steps tend to be taken in these cases and if they’ve heard anything else and you get agency around the result” rather than “you set in motion a process against this person you have a very hazy understanding of” helps a lot. (the health team’s policy around confidentiality seems good for this reason).
Thank you for sharing your experience here. I’m really sorry to hear about these gender dynamics and how it’s affected you personally, your motivation and your career.
Do you have any suggested actions you’d like to see to help prevent this being repeated?
(I imagine organisations having policies about appropriate professional conduct and actively working on DEI would help to some extent with these issues. But I’m not sure what specifically, how much it’d help, and if there’s other things that you implied that I missed.)
—
Also, on a separate note, my understanding is that the community health team would like to hear about general experiences like this (even if you don’t want to “report” anything/anyone specifically and want any action taken) as they often provide advice to organisations/groups/community spaces/write forum posts about ways of improving the health of the community more generally and hearing things like this would help to put good policies in place and spread ideas around appropriate conduct etc.
To give a little more detail about what I think gave wrong impressions -
Last year as part of a longer piece about how the community health team approaches problems, I wrote a list of factors that need to be balanced against each other. One that’s caused confusion is “Give people a second or third chance; adjust when people have changed and improved.” I meant situations like “someone has made some inappropriate comments and gotten feedback about it,” not something like assault. I’m adding a note to the original piece clarifying.
I think this question is very important. There must be a reason why people are not reporting bad behaviour to the health team. Either they don’t know what the team does, or they know what it’s meant to do, but don’t trust it. Either case points to room for improvement, either in the team or in the wider EA community.
As an example: None of the newcomer resources seem to mention the community health team at all. It seems possible that a significant proportion of people that are new or more casually involved are unaware of it’s existence. Given that predatory behaviour is often focused on newcomers and inexperienced members, this seems like a clear oversight.
I think this is a good point (that lots of people especially newcomers might not be aware of the community health team’s role when they might need it). I’ve been engaging with EA a lot online since maybe 2015, and in person since 2018, and I was aware of the community health team for a while but I wasn’t aware that it played this particular role of investigating claims and taking action e.g. banning people, until I think last year.
Thanks Julia. While I do not want to imply the problem is solved, I think our community is a lot better due to your team’s work, and I deeply appreciate that. Having a thoughtful and proactive team working on this seems very helpful for keeping our movement healthy.
I do think, insofar as is possible, some more transparency and specifics (especially on this one) could be very reassuring to myself and the community.
I’m worried and skeptical about negative views toward the community health team and Julia Wise.
My view is informed by the absence of clear objective mistakes described by anyone. It also seems very easy and rewarding to criticize them[1].
I’m increasingly concerned about the dynamic over the last few months where CEA and the Community Health team constantly acts as a lightning rod for problems they have little control over. This dynamic has always existed, but it has become more severe post-SBF.
This seems dysfunctional and costly to good talent at CEA. It is an even deeper issue because these seem to be one of the few people trying to take ownership and help EA publicly right now.
I’m not sure what happens if Julia Wise and co. stop.
The Guzey incident is one example where a detractor seems excessive toward Wise. I share Will Bradshaw’s view that this is both minor and harmless, although I respect and would be interested in Nuno’s dissenting view.
(Alexey Guzey wrote a book chapter, that he would be releasing publicly, that was critical of MacAskill’s content in DGB, to Julia Wise. Wise sent the chapter to MacAskill, which Guzey asked her not to do. It’s unclear to me why this chapter was sensitive, what Wise was supposed to do with the chapter. I read the chapter, and think there is a large supply of content on the internet and social media similar in quality. I can see how Wise just forwarded it absent-mindedly).
I think this might be partly due to the complex structure (and subsequent re-structure) of CEA. ‘CEA’ used to be a dual name for both a legal entity and the community building organisation.
I think this led me in the past to having a vague idea of what ‘CEA’ was, and thinking that the public-facing Community Health Team was representing all of it and responsible for more than they were.
This is kind of a separate issue though, here I’d just like to say I’m grateful for the work the Community Health Team does, and don’t want to distract from the discussion of the accusations made here.
I believe the TIME article has been updated since its original publication to reflect your response. If you have the chance, would you be able to comment on the updated version?
Excerpt taken as of 18:30 PST 3 Feb 2023:
“In an email following the publication of this article, Wise elaborated. “We’re horrified by the allegations made in this article. A core part of our work is addressing harmful behavior, because we think it’s essential that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment,” Wise wrote to TIME. “The incidents described in this article include cases where we already took action, like banning the accused from our spaces. For cases we were not aware of, we will investigate and take appropriate action to address the problem.””
I suspect a very relevant factor influencing whether people are willing to come forward and talk to the team is “how alienated/ accepted do they feel by EA culture in general”, given that you come across as very much of that culture; for me this is something that helps a lot compared to say your average HR dept?
Wise outlined a variety of considerations she takes into account. On the one side, “take culture seriously” and “take action against bad behavior;” on the other side, she wrote, “don’t unfairly harm someone’s reputation,” “don’t make men feel that a slip-up or distorted accusation will ruin their life, ” and “give people a second or third chance.”
How can any victim of sexual harassment feel comfortable approaching you with any concerns given these comments?
I think the “or third chance” could be phrased differently. Sure, in specific circumstances, that might be appropriate, but it shouldn’t sound like a general rule. Second chances should suffice. People rarely change.
In the article it isn’t presented as a general rule or suitable for all situations, though? It’s presented in the table of things they’re trying to balance as the opposite of “Don’t try to be a rehabilitation space—that’s not a good use of the EA community”, which is also not appropriate in all circumstances.
(Also, at the time this was posted no one pushed back on this, and the top comment is Nuno’s “I appreciate the section on tradeoffs, and I think it makes me more likely to trust the community health team.”)
Okay, that seems right. In the article, it’s worded like this:
Give people a second or third chance; adjust when people have changed and improved
The second part of the sentence adds some nuance, as does the contrast table.
Still, I remember feeling a bit weird about the wording even when that article came out, but I didn’t comment. (For me, the phrase “third chance” evokes the picture of the person giving the third chance being naive.) (Edit: esp. when it’s presented as though this is a somewhat common thing, giving people third chances in “evidence this person is a bad actor” contexts.)
Because at face value it makes sense to tailor the severity of the countermeasure to the severity of the offense, and I imagine that Wise was commenting on incidents order of magnitude less severe than the ones mentioned in the article.
I want to clarify — you did give me info about some concerns, and I really appreciate that. That allowed me to take action to keep the accused people out of CEA spaces.
I agree there’s room for improvement. Thank you for the services you provide here — I’ll be in touch.
I suspect the best way to move this conversation forward is for people who are dissatisfied with the community health team to read the appendix in Julia’s article, identify specific cases from the appendix they believe were likely mishandled, and explain what should’ve been done differently in order for more survivors to come forward. (Of course, it is impossible to say for sure without knowing more details of each case, but I for one would be curious to read your guesses.)
I feel the conversation is more likely to generate productive change if we focus on specific ways things could’ve been done differently in specific cases. I fear that a vaguer, higher-level discussion runs the risk of not going anywhere, and just creating frustration.
I don’t think that appendix has enough information to give people the ability to comment on what would have made people be more or less comfortable coming to us with a concern in those situations. I want there to be room for broader discussion (though if people do have specific ideas, I’m interested to hear them). Our team will be continuing to work on improving our practices here, and we welcome suggestions for what we could be doing better.
If there have really been minors raped in EA or serious infringements by high-up EAs, then EA would be repeating some of the worst ills of the Catholic church, secularly. Why would one want any part in such a community.
Want to confirm that I got this email when I woke up this morning; Julia and I are discussing it right now (it is still morning Eastern Time, so we had not gotten to it by the time you wrote this comment, though we were planning to talk about it during this meeting before we saw your comment). Thank you very much for sending it our way, we will be in touch shortly.
I’m sure J_J knows this, but for everyone else: If you learn of information about abuse of a minor, you may be a mandated reporter of child abuse and have a legal obligation to report it to the local child-welfare agency. Reporting to Community Health does not count.
I’ll join the choir to say I strongly appreciate your work, and am sorry that you get to carry this burden, and for the negative reactions you got in the comments on this post.
I especially appreciate that you’re trying to do what you believe to be “the best approach to preventing SA/sexual misconduct,” rather than any other consideration.
You’re doing great work. That info was for everyone else—in some jurisdictions, everyone is a mandated reporter of child abuse, while in others the categories are broader than people might assume. So I thought it was worthwhile to educate other people about their potential legal obligations.
I’m responding on behalf of the community health team at the Centre for Effective Altruism. We work to prevent and address problems in the community, including sexual misconduct.
I find the piece doesn’t accurately convey how my team, or the EA community more broadly, reacts to this sort of behavior.
We work to address harmful behavior, including sexual misconduct, because we think it’s so important that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment. Ignoring problems or sweeping them under the rug would be terrible for people in the community, EA’s culture, and our ability to do good in the world.
My team didn’t have a chance to explain the actions we’ve already taken on the incidents described in this piece. The incidents described here include:
Ones where we already took action years ago, like banning the accused from our spaces
Ones where we offered to help address the situation and the person affected didn’t answer
Ones we weren’t aware of
We’ll be going through the piece to see if there are any situations we might be able to address further, but in most of them there’s not enough information to do so. If you want to share any information about a problem you know of, you can always contact us (including anonymously).
When I first learned about the problems described in the piece, I felt disappointed and angry. I still feel that way. I recognize that problems happen in every community, but that doesn’t make it ok. That’s why we’ve been working for years to prevent and address community problems.
This isn’t a problem that one team or organization can address alone. We regularly talk with group organizers and organization staff who want to build a healthy and supportive culture. I’ve seen many people in the community stand up for people who experienced harm, and work toward the kind of healthy community they feel so strongly about. That strengthens the determination I feel to keep working on this.
If you’ve experienced a problem, we want to help. You can always contact us to discuss a problem.
There’s a lot of discussion here about why things don’t get reported to the community health team, and what they’re responsible for, so I wanted to add my own bit of anecdata.
I’m a woman who has been closely involved with a particularly gender-imbalanced portion of EA for 7 years, who has personally experienced and secondhand heard about many issues around gender dynamics, and who has never reported anything to the community health team (despite several suggestions from friends to). Now I’m considering why.
Upon reflection, here are a few reasons:
Early on, some of it was naiveté. I experienced occasional inappropriate comments or situations from senior male researchers when I was a teenager, but assumed that they could never be interested in me because of the age and experience gap. At the time I thought that I must be misinterpreting the situation, and only see it the way I do now with the benefit of experience and hindsight. (I never felt unsafe, and if I had, would have reported it or left.)
Often, the behavior felt plausibly deniable. “Is this person asking me to meet at a coffeeshop to discuss research or to hit on me? How about meeting at a bar? Going for a walk on the beach?” I was unsure what crossed into inappropriate territory, and whether it was I who was problematically sexualizing everything. Most of this is only obvious in hindsight, and because I have enough experience to notice patterns in behavior across individuals. Moreover, most of these interactions were respectful, and grew to be a problem only because they happened so systematically—for a while, it felt like every senior researcher I tried to get project mentorship from tried to date me instead, then avoided me after I turned them down, which has had serious career consequences. I didn’t report this because it was unclear what to report—no particular individual was clearly acting inappropriately, and (at least the first few times) I doubted myself.
I moved to the bay a few years ago for a PhD, and access to collaborative workspace, networking events, and supplemental funding (very necessary for me, with health problems on an academic stipend) are all gated by a couple of people here. They are all men (as far as I know), one or more them have asked me out or shown romantic interest (respectfully), and there are few enough women in my field here that I didn’t feel I had any hope of remaining anonymous. I thought making a big fuss about these things would tank my career, or at least lose me the trust I need to access these spaces and resources, and I wasn’t willing to do that. I moved here and made a bunch of personal sacrifices to work on incredibly important problems, after all.
Over the past 7 years, my motivation has developed from mostly-1 to mostly-2 to mostly-3. Regardless, I honestly don’t know of anything that the community health team could do to help with any of this. There were no extreme situations that warranted a specific individual being banned. The problematic dynamics were subtle, and I didn’t see how any broad communication could help with them. I didn’t want the team to take any action that might de-anonymize me, for career reasons. I don’t see anything to blame the community health team for here.
In my personal experience a good deal of sexual assault/harassment etc. goes unreported (especially at universities) because especially if you personally know the perpetrator as a friend or romantic partner you often have pretty complicated feelings about escalating things.
I think making clear the default outcome of reporting is “you have a conversation with someone a good deal more experience than you about what steps tend to be taken in these cases and if they’ve heard anything else and you get agency around the result” rather than “you set in motion a process against this person you have a very hazy understanding of” helps a lot. (the health team’s policy around confidentiality seems good for this reason).
Thank you for sharing your experience here. I’m really sorry to hear about these gender dynamics and how it’s affected you personally, your motivation and your career.
Do you have any suggested actions you’d like to see to help prevent this being repeated?
(I imagine organisations having policies about appropriate professional conduct and actively working on DEI would help to some extent with these issues. But I’m not sure what specifically, how much it’d help, and if there’s other things that you implied that I missed.)
—
Also, on a separate note, my understanding is that the community health team would like to hear about general experiences like this (even if you don’t want to “report” anything/anyone specifically and want any action taken) as they often provide advice to organisations/groups/community spaces/write forum posts about ways of improving the health of the community more generally and hearing things like this would help to put good policies in place and spread ideas around appropriate conduct etc.
To give a little more detail about what I think gave wrong impressions -
Last year as part of a longer piece about how the community health team approaches problems, I wrote a list of factors that need to be balanced against each other. One that’s caused confusion is “Give people a second or third chance; adjust when people have changed and improved.” I meant situations like “someone has made some inappropriate comments and gotten feedback about it,” not something like assault. I’m adding a note to the original piece clarifying.
What proportion of the incidents described was the team unaware of?
I think this question is very important. There must be a reason why people are not reporting bad behaviour to the health team. Either they don’t know what the team does, or they know what it’s meant to do, but don’t trust it. Either case points to room for improvement, either in the team or in the wider EA community.
As an example: None of the newcomer resources seem to mention the community health team at all. It seems possible that a significant proportion of people that are new or more casually involved are unaware of it’s existence. Given that predatory behaviour is often focused on newcomers and inexperienced members, this seems like a clear oversight.
I think this is a good point (that lots of people especially newcomers might not be aware of the community health team’s role when they might need it). I’ve been engaging with EA a lot online since maybe 2015, and in person since 2018, and I was aware of the community health team for a while but I wasn’t aware that it played this particular role of investigating claims and taking action e.g. banning people, until I think last year.
Thanks Julia. While I do not want to imply the problem is solved, I think our community is a lot better due to your team’s work, and I deeply appreciate that. Having a thoughtful and proactive team working on this seems very helpful for keeping our movement healthy.
I do think, insofar as is possible, some more transparency and specifics (especially on this one) could be very reassuring to myself and the community.
I’m worried and skeptical about negative views toward the community health team and Julia Wise.
My view is informed by the absence of clear objective mistakes described by anyone. It also seems very easy and rewarding to criticize them[1].
I’m increasingly concerned about the dynamic over the last few months where CEA and the Community Health team constantly acts as a lightning rod for problems they have little control over. This dynamic has always existed, but it has become more severe post-SBF.
This seems dysfunctional and costly to good talent at CEA. It is an even deeper issue because these seem to be one of the few people trying to take ownership and help EA publicly right now.
I’m not sure what happens if Julia Wise and co. stop.
The Guzey incident is one example where a detractor seems excessive toward Wise. I share Will Bradshaw’s view that this is both minor and harmless, although I respect and would be interested in Nuno’s dissenting view.
(Alexey Guzey wrote a book chapter, that he would be releasing publicly, that was critical of MacAskill’s content in DGB, to Julia Wise. Wise sent the chapter to MacAskill, which Guzey asked her not to do. It’s unclear to me why this chapter was sensitive, what Wise was supposed to do with the chapter. I read the chapter, and think there is a large supply of content on the internet and social media similar in quality. I can see how Wise just forwarded it absent-mindedly).
I think this might be partly due to the complex structure (and subsequent re-structure) of CEA. ‘CEA’ used to be a dual name for both a legal entity and the community building organisation.
I think this led me in the past to having a vague idea of what ‘CEA’ was, and thinking that the public-facing Community Health Team was representing all of it and responsible for more than they were.
This is kind of a separate issue though, here I’d just like to say I’m grateful for the work the Community Health Team does, and don’t want to distract from the discussion of the accusations made here.
I believe the TIME article has been updated since its original publication to reflect your response. If you have the chance, would you be able to comment on the updated version?
Excerpt taken as of 18:30 PST 3 Feb 2023:
“In an email following the publication of this article, Wise elaborated. “We’re horrified by the allegations made in this article. A core part of our work is addressing harmful behavior, because we think it’s essential that this community has a good culture where people can do their best work without harassment or other mistreatment,” Wise wrote to TIME. “The incidents described in this article include cases where we already took action, like banning the accused from our spaces. For cases we were not aware of, we will investigate and take appropriate action to address the problem.””
I suspect a very relevant factor influencing whether people are willing to come forward and talk to the team is “how alienated/ accepted do they feel by EA culture in general”, given that you come across as very much of that culture; for me this is something that helps a lot compared to say your average HR dept?
From the Time article:
How can any victim of sexual harassment feel comfortable approaching you with any concerns given these comments?
These are quotations from a table that are intended to illustrate “difficult tradeoffs”. Does seeing them in context change your view at all?
(Disclosure: married to Wise)
I think the “or third chance” could be phrased differently. Sure, in specific circumstances, that might be appropriate, but it shouldn’t sound like a general rule. Second chances should suffice. People rarely change.
In the article it isn’t presented as a general rule or suitable for all situations, though? It’s presented in the table of things they’re trying to balance as the opposite of “Don’t try to be a rehabilitation space—that’s not a good use of the EA community”, which is also not appropriate in all circumstances.
(Also, at the time this was posted no one pushed back on this, and the top comment is Nuno’s “I appreciate the section on tradeoffs, and I think it makes me more likely to trust the community health team.”)
Okay, that seems right. In the article, it’s worded like this:
The second part of the sentence adds some nuance, as does the contrast table.
Still, I remember feeling a bit weird about the wording even when that article came out, but I didn’t comment. (For me, the phrase “third chance” evokes the picture of the person giving the third chance being naive.) (Edit: esp. when it’s presented as though this is a somewhat common thing, giving people third chances in “evidence this person is a bad actor” contexts.)
Because at face value it makes sense to tailor the severity of the countermeasure to the severity of the offense, and I imagine that Wise was commenting on incidents order of magnitude less severe than the ones mentioned in the article.
How can situations with false accusations be caught and handled, together with real sexual misconduct?
I want to clarify — you did give me info about some concerns, and I really appreciate that. That allowed me to take action to keep the accused people out of CEA spaces.
I agree there’s room for improvement. Thank you for the services you provide here — I’ll be in touch.
Thanks for chiming in.
I suspect the best way to move this conversation forward is for people who are dissatisfied with the community health team to read the appendix in Julia’s article, identify specific cases from the appendix they believe were likely mishandled, and explain what should’ve been done differently in order for more survivors to come forward. (Of course, it is impossible to say for sure without knowing more details of each case, but I for one would be curious to read your guesses.)
I feel the conversation is more likely to generate productive change if we focus on specific ways things could’ve been done differently in specific cases. I fear that a vaguer, higher-level discussion runs the risk of not going anywhere, and just creating frustration.
I don’t think that appendix has enough information to give people the ability to comment on what would have made people be more or less comfortable coming to us with a concern in those situations. I want there to be room for broader discussion (though if people do have specific ideas, I’m interested to hear them). Our team will be continuing to work on improving our practices here, and we welcome suggestions for what we could be doing better.
This is so many levels of concerning. I don’t think people are really understanding this / processing it.
If there have really been minors raped in EA or serious infringements by high-up EAs, then EA would be repeating some of the worst ills of the Catholic church, secularly. Why would one want any part in such a community.
There are some important misunderstandings here. [Username redacted], I’ll reach out privately to clarify.
Thanks so much for all your incredible work. I can only hope the situation improves somehow.
Want to confirm that I got this email when I woke up this morning; Julia and I are discussing it right now (it is still morning Eastern Time, so we had not gotten to it by the time you wrote this comment, though we were planning to talk about it during this meeting before we saw your comment). Thank you very much for sending it our way, we will be in touch shortly.
I’m sure J_J knows this, but for everyone else: If you learn of information about abuse of a minor, you may be a mandated reporter of child abuse and have a legal obligation to report it to the local child-welfare agency. Reporting to Community Health does not count.
I’ll join the choir to say I strongly appreciate your work, and am sorry that you get to carry this burden, and for the negative reactions you got in the comments on this post.
I especially appreciate that you’re trying to do what you believe to be “the best approach to preventing SA/sexual misconduct,” rather than any other consideration.
You’re doing great work. That info was for everyone else—in some jurisdictions, everyone is a mandated reporter of child abuse, while in others the categories are broader than people might assume. So I thought it was worthwhile to educate other people about their potential legal obligations.
Really appreciate what you do. Stay strong and thank you so much.
It’s very understandable you dont want to handle this yourself. But I would strongly encourage you not to tell survivors to trust CEA.