“Most of what Frances characterizes as institutional failure, not telling her and not acting against Riley, is actually consistent with proper HR handling.” A Worker Protection Act breach is proper HR handling in the UK?
“I think the simpler explanation is that the document didn’t read the way she describes it.” It was determined to be harassment and then sexual harassment by two independent investigators.
“too much personal detail.” this seems generous to the point of being misleading.
“We’re asked to believe that HR, legal, the CEO, the COO, and multiple managers all independently failed a basic moral test.” this is effectively confirmed by the investigation findings, yes.
“Everything we know comes from fragments read aloud from memory by a colleague, relayed months later in a post written as advocacy.” And from the investigation outcomes? Are you imagining a document that is determined to be sexual harassment in an investigation, that is actually very mild and defensible? What do you think sexual harassment is?
“If Riley was complaining about behavioral issues connected to Frances’s trauma.” This is not the case, to my knowledge. If he was doing so, CEA is welcome to inform me. Again, if this was an HR complaint about me, I have not been contacted regarding anything to that effect. There are no “behavioural issues connected to my trauma.”
“She herself acknowledges worsening PTSD and difficulty functioning, then providing that context in a complaint isn’t sexualization” what a disgustingly sexist thing to say. My difficulty functioning was with respect to focusing at work and managing my stress levels, nothing more. Again, the complaint was determined to be sexual harassment. There is no world in which you would ever need to describe someone being raped. Ever.
There is absolutely no necessity for anyone to be “monsters” in order for the picture painted in Frances post to be accurate and her anger justified though.
All your contributions in this thread seem to be marked by the idea that people would have to be unusually bad in some way to fail to deal well with sexual harassment. But I don’t see why we should be particularly confident that the base rate of orgs dealing badly with sexual misconduct, in ways that-*correctly*-look really bad to outsiders when the facts come out is all that low. There have been numerous cases where schools, universities, religious institutions etc. have covered up far worse conduct than Riley’s: i.e. sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church as one example among many. Now, of course, we typically don’t hear about the cases where sexual harassment or abuse was promptly identified and the perpetrator fired/imprisoned, unless the perpetrator was independently famous. And there are a lot of people and institutions in the world, so maybe those cases are way more common. But I don’t see any particular reason to be confident of that.
But also, people are generally very good at avoiding believing things that are extremely inconvenient for them, without really noticing they are doing it, and without conscious malice. Most of us are much better at doing this in my view than we think we are. When HR originally received Riley’s doc, they had a choice between 1) trying to start sexual harassment proceedings against him, and 2) overlooking the fact that what he had written about Frances was wholly inappropriate, and possibly malicious, and concentrating on his own complaints. Doing 2) was no doubt made easier by the fact that the doc was apparently not “about” Frances specifically. Now, if they took choice 1), that was a lot of hassle and unpleasantness for them:
A) Potentially having to directly punish Riley. People don’t generally like significantly deliberately harming people they know, and have no personal beef with, and will avoid it if they can. This is maybe especially true of the kind of friendly people personish person who wants to work in HR, although that is only a guess on my part.
B) Having to deal with Riley potentially portraying any investigation of him as retaliatory for his complaints. Even a completely baseless accusation of that is likely to be a huge stress for the people on the receiving end of it. This is likely to have been particularly unpleasant with the kind of person who writes a massive doc giving his detailed personal opinions on multiple colleagues, including for at least one person their mental health, sexual victimization and his own romantic feelings for them, because anyone who does something that inappropriate and obsessive can’t be trust to act normally during a complaints process. This is true even if Riley is in fact a vulnerable, naive person with no malicious intentions, let alone if he is actually vengeful.
C) Having to either upset Frances by informing her about the doc, and having an excruciatingly awkward conversation with her about it, or alternatively NOT inform her even while disciplining Riley, and admit to themselves that they are concealing from Frances that one of her colleagues has sexually harassed her.
On the other hand, if they take choice 2) and just fail to recognize how inappropriate the stuff Riley said about Frances was, then they can realistically hope that Frances never finds out, and they don’t have to upset Riley or Frances, or having any awkward conversations about rape and sexualization of rape victims with anyone or face the consequences of being accused or retaliating against a complainant. They could just hope that Frances never found out about the doc, something that may well have happened if Riley himself had not shown it beyond HR. (Unless the person who informed Frances was themselves in HR anyway). Then they could avoid any stress or hurt feelings. Once the CEO and the COO found out, they also had the same incentives to get this wrong, but with the additional incentive that they could decide to defer to HR’s judgments, since they are the orgs experts on well, HR issues.
I say all this not to excuse anyone at CEA. If this is the psychological dynamics of what happened-which I obviously don’t know-that’s not all that exculpatory. Not dealing with sexual harassment properly because you want to avoid awkwardness/fuss/punishment and you’re in HR or management, is like not running into a burning building as a firefighter because you don’t want to get burnt: it’s your job to get past this stuff! But claims that Frances’ account requires an implausible level of malice or incompetence on the part of multiple people seem wrong to me..
On the legal findings: I’m not an expert in UK employment law [. . . .]
Under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010, harassment occurs when “the conduct has the purpose or effect of—(i) violating B’s dignity, or (ii) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B.” In considering whether the conduct has such an effect, “each of the following must be taken into account—(a) the perception of B; (b) the other circumstances of the case; (c) whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.”
See also section 1.28 of this guidance. So there is an objective element to the test, and relevant circumstances must be considered. So I think it is fair to infer that the external reviewer concluded that it was reasonable for Frances to conclude that the conduct violated her dignity or created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. I also think it is fair to infer that the external reviewer concluded that the other circumstances of the case were not inconsistent with a finding of harassment. That would be easy; there is no legitimate reason for a co-worker to be circulating a memo about another co-worker’s rape or mental health.
Your post implies that CEA leadership is cowardly, indifferent, and complicit. But an organization that waived confidentiality, paid for your lawyer, never attempted to silence you, and whose CEO gave you what you yourself describe as a genuine apology is not staffed by monsters.
I submit that there is a sliding scale of moral credit for acceptance of responsibility based on timeliness (also true in the UK criminal justice system). These actions came awfully late for me to give too much credit here, especially to the extent that they came after Frances expressed that she would be going public. They could be construed as damage control—the reputational risk of litigation in which documents would come out and those involved would have to testify under oath would dwarf the risk of an EA Forum post. Even without a confidentiality agreement, a settlement is much quieter than the alternative.
“You say the behavioral complaints weren’t connected to your trauma” No, I’m saying there were no behavioural issues ever discussed with me. Thus, there were no substantiated behavioural issues. I don’t know what the document says, exactly.
“You yourself acknowledge worsening PTSD symptoms and difficulty functioning at work during this period.” If you read the post, you’ll see that my PTSD symptoms worsened as a result of the document being written and circulated, and CEA’s lack of response (i.e. after the document was already written).
“but it may be considerably more technical than the way it’s being invoked in this thread.” This seems to imply there is a difference between “technical” sexual harassment and some other definition of sexual harassment, in your mind, that is more egregious. In such a case, what would change your mind here? You would have to read the document and description of my rape yourself?
“But an organization that waived confidentiality, paid for your lawyer, never attempted to silence you, and whose CEO gave you what you yourself describe as a genuine apology is not staffed by monsters.” Certainly. I say the same thing in my post. I never imply anyone at CEA is a monster, nor do I hold that belief. Not at all. Though, I do stand by my section on cowardice. I can understand us having different opinions on that front.
The CEO confirms Riley was raising behavioral complaints about you.
Where in Zach’s comment did he confirm this? He said: ”In the fall of 2024, Riley went to HR with the document Frances references to share complaints about a colleague’s behavior. Those concerns were the focus of Riley’s writing, and they drove how our team engaged with and shared (or didn’t share) it.” This doesn’t confirm that the complaints were about Frances?
then the inclusion is at least explicable as context
Can you clarify exactly what you’re claiming is explicable to be included as context? Zach’s comment said, “Sharing HR concerns does not require disclosing a colleague’s sexual assault”. Frances said, “But further, it was more than that. He didn’t neutrally “disclose” it in a single, non-specific sentence. He wrote a description of me being raped. He describes it. He muses and speculates about my subsequent mental health crisis.”
Your post implies that CEA leadership is cowardly, indifferent, and complicit. But an organization that waived confidentiality, paid for your lawyer, never attempted to silence you, and whose CEO gave you what you yourself describe as a genuine apology is not staffed by monsters. They got things wrong. That is meaningfully different from the picture this post paints, and I think the people involved deserve to have that said.
Cowardice was largely a description of other people deferring to leadership, but minor quibble aside, these two claims are not mutually exclusive! The folks involved can be reasonably and fairly perceived to be cowardly, indifferent, and complicit to harms, while also getting things wrong, and also not staffed by ‘monsters’.
“Most of what Frances characterizes as institutional failure, not telling her and not acting against Riley, is actually consistent with proper HR handling.” A Worker Protection Act breach is proper HR handling in the UK?
“I think the simpler explanation is that the document didn’t read the way she describes it.” It was determined to be harassment and then sexual harassment by two independent investigators.
“too much personal detail.” this seems generous to the point of being misleading.
“We’re asked to believe that HR, legal, the CEO, the COO, and multiple managers all independently failed a basic moral test.” this is effectively confirmed by the investigation findings, yes.
“Everything we know comes from fragments read aloud from memory by a colleague, relayed months later in a post written as advocacy.” And from the investigation outcomes? Are you imagining a document that is determined to be sexual harassment in an investigation, that is actually very mild and defensible? What do you think sexual harassment is?
“If Riley was complaining about behavioral issues connected to Frances’s trauma.” This is not the case, to my knowledge. If he was doing so, CEA is welcome to inform me. Again, if this was an HR complaint about me, I have not been contacted regarding anything to that effect. There are no “behavioural issues connected to my trauma.”
“She herself acknowledges worsening PTSD and difficulty functioning, then providing that context in a complaint isn’t sexualization” what a disgustingly sexist thing to say. My difficulty functioning was with respect to focusing at work and managing my stress levels, nothing more. Again, the complaint was determined to be sexual harassment. There is no world in which you would ever need to describe someone being raped. Ever.
(comment deleted)
There is absolutely no necessity for anyone to be “monsters” in order for the picture painted in Frances post to be accurate and her anger justified though.
All your contributions in this thread seem to be marked by the idea that people would have to be unusually bad in some way to fail to deal well with sexual harassment. But I don’t see why we should be particularly confident that the base rate of orgs dealing badly with sexual misconduct, in ways that-*correctly*-look really bad to outsiders when the facts come out is all that low. There have been numerous cases where schools, universities, religious institutions etc. have covered up far worse conduct than Riley’s: i.e. sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic church as one example among many. Now, of course, we typically don’t hear about the cases where sexual harassment or abuse was promptly identified and the perpetrator fired/imprisoned, unless the perpetrator was independently famous. And there are a lot of people and institutions in the world, so maybe those cases are way more common. But I don’t see any particular reason to be confident of that.
More importantly. this isn’t even EA’s first scandal where a major org themselves admitted they dealt badly with sexual misconduct: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4CBoJ5jgmGfdMFnAE/ev-investigation-into-owen-and-community-health In the face of that, I don’t see why we should find it particularly implausible that in another case, an EA org dealt badly with sexual misconduct.
But also, people are generally very good at avoiding believing things that are extremely inconvenient for them, without really noticing they are doing it, and without conscious malice. Most of us are much better at doing this in my view than we think we are. When HR originally received Riley’s doc, they had a choice between 1) trying to start sexual harassment proceedings against him, and 2) overlooking the fact that what he had written about Frances was wholly inappropriate, and possibly malicious, and concentrating on his own complaints. Doing 2) was no doubt made easier by the fact that the doc was apparently not “about” Frances specifically. Now, if they took choice 1), that was a lot of hassle and unpleasantness for them:
A) Potentially having to directly punish Riley. People don’t generally like significantly deliberately harming people they know, and have no personal beef with, and will avoid it if they can. This is maybe especially true of the kind of friendly people personish person who wants to work in HR, although that is only a guess on my part.
B) Having to deal with Riley potentially portraying any investigation of him as retaliatory for his complaints. Even a completely baseless accusation of that is likely to be a huge stress for the people on the receiving end of it. This is likely to have been particularly unpleasant with the kind of person who writes a massive doc giving his detailed personal opinions on multiple colleagues, including for at least one person their mental health, sexual victimization and his own romantic feelings for them, because anyone who does something that inappropriate and obsessive can’t be trust to act normally during a complaints process. This is true even if Riley is in fact a vulnerable, naive person with no malicious intentions, let alone if he is actually vengeful.
C) Having to either upset Frances by informing her about the doc, and having an excruciatingly awkward conversation with her about it, or alternatively NOT inform her even while disciplining Riley, and admit to themselves that they are concealing from Frances that one of her colleagues has sexually harassed her.
On the other hand, if they take choice 2) and just fail to recognize how inappropriate the stuff Riley said about Frances was, then they can realistically hope that Frances never finds out, and they don’t have to upset Riley or Frances, or having any awkward conversations about rape and sexualization of rape victims with anyone or face the consequences of being accused or retaliating against a complainant. They could just hope that Frances never found out about the doc, something that may well have happened if Riley himself had not shown it beyond HR. (Unless the person who informed Frances was themselves in HR anyway). Then they could avoid any stress or hurt feelings. Once the CEO and the COO found out, they also had the same incentives to get this wrong, but with the additional incentive that they could decide to defer to HR’s judgments, since they are the orgs experts on well, HR issues.
I say all this not to excuse anyone at CEA. If this is the psychological dynamics of what happened-which I obviously don’t know-that’s not all that exculpatory. Not dealing with sexual harassment properly because you want to avoid awkwardness/fuss/punishment and you’re in HR or management, is like not running into a burning building as a firefighter because you don’t want to get burnt: it’s your job to get past this stuff! But claims that Frances’ account requires an implausible level of malice or incompetence on the part of multiple people seem wrong to me..
Under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010, harassment occurs when “the conduct has the purpose or effect of—(i) violating B’s dignity, or (ii) creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B.” In considering whether the conduct has such an effect, “each of the following must be taken into account—(a) the perception of B; (b) the other circumstances of the case; (c) whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.”
See also section 1.28 of this guidance. So there is an objective element to the test, and relevant circumstances must be considered. So I think it is fair to infer that the external reviewer concluded that it was reasonable for Frances to conclude that the conduct violated her dignity or created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. I also think it is fair to infer that the external reviewer concluded that the other circumstances of the case were not inconsistent with a finding of harassment. That would be easy; there is no legitimate reason for a co-worker to be circulating a memo about another co-worker’s rape or mental health.
I submit that there is a sliding scale of moral credit for acceptance of responsibility based on timeliness (also true in the UK criminal justice system). These actions came awfully late for me to give too much credit here, especially to the extent that they came after Frances expressed that she would be going public. They could be construed as damage control—the reputational risk of litigation in which documents would come out and those involved would have to testify under oath would dwarf the risk of an EA Forum post. Even without a confidentiality agreement, a settlement is much quieter than the alternative.
(I am glad that we have a lawyer to resolve any ‘I am not a lawyer but…’ comments on here)
“You say the behavioral complaints weren’t connected to your trauma” No, I’m saying there were no behavioural issues ever discussed with me. Thus, there were no substantiated behavioural issues. I don’t know what the document says, exactly.
“You yourself acknowledge worsening PTSD symptoms and difficulty functioning at work during this period.” If you read the post, you’ll see that my PTSD symptoms worsened as a result of the document being written and circulated, and CEA’s lack of response (i.e. after the document was already written).
“but it may be considerably more technical than the way it’s being invoked in this thread.” This seems to imply there is a difference between “technical” sexual harassment and some other definition of sexual harassment, in your mind, that is more egregious. In such a case, what would change your mind here? You would have to read the document and description of my rape yourself?
“But an organization that waived confidentiality, paid for your lawyer, never attempted to silence you, and whose CEO gave you what you yourself describe as a genuine apology is not staffed by monsters.” Certainly. I say the same thing in my post. I never imply anyone at CEA is a monster, nor do I hold that belief. Not at all. Though, I do stand by my section on cowardice. I can understand us having different opinions on that front.
Where in Zach’s comment did he confirm this? He said:
”In the fall of 2024, Riley went to HR with the document Frances references to share complaints about a colleague’s behavior. Those concerns were the focus of Riley’s writing, and they drove how our team engaged with and shared (or didn’t share) it.” This doesn’t confirm that the complaints were about Frances?
Can you clarify exactly what you’re claiming is explicable to be included as context? Zach’s comment said, “Sharing HR concerns does not require disclosing a colleague’s sexual assault”. Frances said, “But further, it was more than that. He didn’t neutrally “disclose” it in a single, non-specific sentence. He wrote a description of me being raped. He describes it. He muses and speculates about my subsequent mental health crisis.”
Cowardice was largely a description of other people deferring to leadership, but minor quibble aside, these two claims are not mutually exclusive! The folks involved can be reasonably and fairly perceived to be cowardly, indifferent, and complicit to harms, while also getting things wrong, and also not staffed by ‘monsters’.