FWIW, the current CEO didn’t join until Feb 2024 and the new growth strategy didn’t come until maybe 6–12 months after. I think the effects of CEA’s current approach wouldn’t be captured in data until later. Although, this is still useful for showing that there isn’t already a significant satisfaction trend that’s been recorded.
Fran
Karma: 3,622
I appreciate this and I think it’s good to just be able to say “I find it hard to engage with your messages,” so in that spirit I will try to keep this one short, I know I tend to write a lot:
first point: reasonable. I held that theory loosely. I wasn’t under the impression that this belief was widespread, but I think it’s very possible that more people think EA is worse than comparable communities than I expect. As a separate point, I also do think this piece has struck a nerve for some and I hear you on that point.
not sure about second point, I think the hypothesis that your methodology is not the main crux is reasonable
thanks for engaging more fully. It’s your post and I don’t want to make your comment section feel super overwhelming, so I’ll just commit to not commenting on this post further.
Nathan, I genuinely think this is more emotional for you than it is for me. Yes, sexual harassment is a personal topic for me, but it’s also one I’ve thought about a lot on an intellectual level. And further, I have no emotional commitment to the question of whether EA is better, the same, or worse. I’ve previously written that I guess it’s probably about the same as comparable communities.
It is definitely true we have had several interpersonal interactions over the years and we don’t get on, but the epistemic feedback that I wrote, I meant sincerely and without prejudice. It has several agree votes. I recommend you try reading it again and really consider it, if you’d like to. As a nudge, my feedback was not “you didn’t respond to each one of my points.” Of course, you also don’t have to read it! I’m sure I am more glib and frustrated in my tone when I talk with you, so I don’t mean to suggest that our personal frustrations don’t come through at all on my end. And as others have pointed out, if the original post contained a better analysis and a more genuinely curious tone, I think this whole post would’ve gone over differently. I genuinely think I could write a post: “how do rates of sexual harassment in EA compare to other communities?” and it would be very well written and it would probably go over great, I’m sure I’d get some pushback but I wouldn’t mind. But I mean it sincerely when I say, I don’t find this question particularly important so this isn’t something I would personally bother writing. I’m sure someone else could also do a great job, or CH could write this very well, but it’s a matter of finding someone who can write these kinds of things well, has the motivation, and the time for it.
Hi Caleb! :)
“My impression is that, if asked, many people would say that EA is significantly worse than other spaces.”
I found this useful! It’s good to know what others are seeing & hearing. FWIW, my personal experience with this is something vague, like:
I know I’ve seen tweets to this effect over the years. I think I remember someone prominent mentioning that they found EA (and EA conferences) to be somewhat worse than econ (on sexism or similar)
My in-person experience with this type of thing is much more nuanced. I.e. when I discuss this with community members or adjacent, I don’t usually hear one claim about whether EA is better or worse, I tend to hear a more nuanced collection of ways in which EA might be particularly bad, and other ways in which it compares to past jobs, industries, communities, etc. I’ve definitely heard from women who were frustrated/tired of the sexism and left. This happens in comparable communities if you consider, e.g., tech comparable.
Several times, I’ve personally mentioned that I don’t suspect EA is particularly worse, both online and in-person. In june, 2025, I wrote “I don’t think the EA community is particularly sexist. As it turns out, sexism is everywhere. I also don’t think it’s particularly not sexist, though that’s tricky for me to gauge as one person with one set of experiences. However, I do feel comfortable saying that EA has a unique flavour of sexism that I had to learn to navigate and defend against.” I’ve personally never had any problems making this claim or faced visible social repercussions for it. FWIW I’m not actually sure I still think this, I basically just don’t know what I think. If someone actually had good data on this or carefully reasoned thoughts, I’d definitely read it.
“Re “why do we even care about a baseline?” Ime, when harassment gets brought up (e.g. on the forum), people say that there were basic/common/cheap/expected mitigations that would have prevented the incident.”
My hot take is that, a lot of the people who suggest this don’t have a super developed understanding of sexual harassment, or they don’t have much real-world experience, or they’re quite young. I personally don’t think there is some quick fix. Partly because EA has unique features that drive its gendered-issues. Unfortunately, this is actually a more doomy view than the idea that there are quick fixes, because it further supports that women who find the community difficult to tolerate/navigate should just leave.
Over the past couple months, I’ve intentionally began to try and distance myself from EA and been much happier for it (I don’t do in-person meetup type stuff much anymore, am trying to do less “directly EA” online stuff, and I don’t know if I’d ever consider doing meta-EA work again). I guess you could say that I’m implying EA is worse than comparable communities, but I don’t mean it that way. It’s just like, these days I do my job and hang out with my friends/family, and I only check the forum if I get an email notification that my post has been mentioned because I forgot to turn off email notifications for mentions :’)
So I guess that’s where I’m coming from when I say that I personally don’t care much for this comparison. I feel like I have enough personal, direct, and specific data to conclude something is going wrong and something isn’t meeting my standards. I’m realising that’s a way in which I’m ill-placed for this discussion. If I didn’t have a pretty thorough view formed over years, base rate might also be the first thing I want to understand. I guess I’m just personally well past that, but I’ve updated that this specific idea is worth discussing on the forum. I’m sceptical it will ever be done well, but alas.
I’ve noticed a pattern of a particular rhetorical move you tend to use, whereby you sidestep engaging meaningfully with people’s points and instead continue to ask pointed questions. With these questions, it’s relatively clear that you have one answer you agree with and expect back. If you don’t get that answer, you tend to simply continue posing further questions, sidestepping other points, and pushing in the direction of a specific answer. If this method eventually produces an answer you’re looking for, or something close, I then see: “great, now that we’ve established [narrow thing of x] to be true through my questioning, we can conclude [original claim I’ve been trying to prove all along].” Sometimes, I’ve noticed you’ll do this even if the person hasn’t exactly agreed with narrow thing of x. I think this is unproductive and poor epistemics.
You said, “The community response to that case was pretty unified,” which was my jumping off point.
Let me explain. The steel man of your point is: to understand a problem, you need to understand its magnitude. Yes, agree. Again, as per my edit, I was being glib. Let me be more precise.
I’ll take my events example. I do want to understand base rates. I want all data, data is great! Let’s pretend at most events, 10% of attendees are harassed. At my event, I find out it’s 40%. Or, in a different example, it’s 0.2%. Both of these are important and significant differences. Now, the base rate becomes quite important to understand and investigate.
Let’s say, I find out that at my event, it’s 8%. This is more comparable to the case presented in your post. My boss wants me to write an internal document about harassment at events. The first paragraph may include a base rate, for grounding. The internal document will not be titled “our events are not worse than baseline!” and the vast majority of the document will not focus on making this case. Because, what’s the point? It would be a waste of my manager’s time. I’ll write about what problems I suspect are occurring at our events (hopefully I have a good model of this, or can investigate), and I’ll talk about potential interventions we might be able to take, if any.
To the second point, you have indeed misunderstood. I’ve never seen a post that says, “The average donation per person within EA per year is so much higher than middle income donations generally! And yet, we still keep trying to encourage giving in the EA community. Are we understanding the scope of the giving problem? Are we somehow implying EAs aren’t already way better than baseline?” And I’ve never seen a post that says, “woah, people are always debating about veganism and whatnot but, EAs are way lower than the base rate anyways, so why are we not explicitly acknowledging that when we try and suggest people should consider veganism? Or offsetting?” My point was never that these numbers can’t be found. My point was that, we do not set our moral standards on baselines. We ask people in this community to care about suffering and to be morally ambitious. Why can’t we ask that of sexual harassment, as well.
There is the wider community, and then there is the professional ecosystem. I would put forward the following: at the point where you are reading a detailed account of sexual harassment supported by two independent investigations and a settlement, it is very easy to write a supportive comment. Especially for those with approximately nothing to lose by offering support. The real test isn’t “when presented with a publicly documented case that has strong evidence, can you say something nice?” It’s “within the professional ecosystem, if instances of potential or substantiated sexual harassment occur in your own organisation, can you respond appropriately.” The second is much harder, but it is also the thing that actually matters for the health of the community. And then we can try to extend this to wider community-building (what happens within your city group? What happens at your events?), these things also matter a lot, but it can really vary by location, group, time, etc.
I hope this doesn’t come across as ungrateful! I’m eternally thankful for the kind words I received, and those words did help me a lot. But the thing that would have helped much more was if the incident had been handled correctly by the appropriate people. The fact that it was handled poorly by so many people for so long has to indicate a systemic issue. The question is then whether CEA is uniquely bad here, or whether their systemic issues echo something that is also true of other organisations in the space. In my personal experience, it really depends and it really varies. I do think CEA is weirdly/uniquely bad, for many reasons (including its convoluted org structure and the complicated process of dissolving EV over the past year or so, and its other unique histories), but I’d also guess some organisations have similar issues and know of some that have had worrying incidinces. Others don’t, to my knowledge and they are just very well run from what I can tell. There are also many exceptional organisations in this community! It all gets quite complicated, really.
In terms of off-line actions taken: Personally, I was very touched by the incredible response of some organisations to my post behind the scenes. While I can’t talk about them, there were some legitimately exceptional and above-and-beyond responses. So anyways, I think regardless of the forum’s debates, there are people who are very sad about this problem the community has (whether or not it is better or worse than baseline), and there are people putting in significant effort to improve things. There are a lot of people who care.
One overall thought: I wonder if what you’re picking up on isn’t an implicit belief that EA is uniquely bad, but the reality that people are very invested in EA. The reactions are strong and strongly worded partly because people in this community want this community to be good. They care about it, many are morally scrupulous, they’re invested in its health and ability to function, they know the people in it. I don’t think they’re implicitly thinking “this is so much worse than anything comparable.” My guess is that if you asked directly whether EA is worse than a comparable community, most would say “I’m really not sure” or “probably not? I don’t know.” That’s been my personal experience.
I also think the comparative framing is somewhat beside the point here. EA isn’t trying to reduce sexual harassment around the world, but it is strongly trying to community-build, and the relevant question for community-building is whether this is a place people can thrive in. Given that trying to answer the question of whether EA is “better or worse” is somewhat difficult, it’s worth asking how important that question really is.
One thing I love about my current organisation is they are incredibly conscientious in how they build community and support their members. As someone who has now done event planning for this community for more than 3 years, I can’t even imagine trying to ask if the baseline of harassment at my events is like other comparable events. I would much rather put my time and effort into making my events safer and more welcoming. In the same way that, I don’t ask if the baseline satisfaction with the content at my events is the same as the average event, because I would rather put my effort into improving the content, and so on. (Edit: I was glib with my events comparison & wording, I like data & base rates are worth knowing and can help provide context and grounding, but I hope my directional point is clear)
I’ll also say this, though I suspect it won’t be well-received: there’s something strange about a community that advocates for reducing suffering and encourages moral ambition retreating into “well, what’s the baseline?” when sexual harassment comes up. What’s the baseline of people who eat meat? What’s the baseline of how much the average middle-income person in a developed country donates? I understand it’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s disheartening to see the baseline framing applied seemingly only here.
Of course it is socially acceptable to disagree with “traumatized” people in EA. I do it all the time. It is very easy for me to say, “I completely understand why you want that, but here is why I disagree,” and then I lay out my arguments. You’ll find that “traumatized” people are just people, capable of conversation and critical thinking. Trauma is just one type of challenge humans have to navigate, but there are many challenges.
The world is not split into traumatized unclear thinkers and non-traumatised clear thinkers. Many people think unclearly, all the time, for a variety of reasons. It is important to learn how to communicate with different people, which is effectively what your comment is saying. We all have emotions. Trauma itself is not a binary thing where you either “are” traumatised or “are not”. Trauma as a diagnosis is a collection of symptoms which crossover with many other diagnoses, such as generalised anxiety, and so on.
Of course there are compromises, society at large is already making these compromises and many people are already thinking creatively about these issues. That is why we have things like laws, policies, codes of conduct, HR, social norms, and so on and so forth.
Yeah so I think they still have strong HR confidentiality obligations regardless of which staff Riley personally shares the document with, but I think at that point it is no longer strictly a “confidential HR complaint” and calling it such is an obfuscation on CEA’s part. Riley’s conduct also immediately triggers obligations to me under both GDPR and the Worker Protection Act. So I think it basically separates into two distinct issues: Riley’s complaint, whatever it was, and then his conduct within the document itself towards me (harassment). I think CEA should basically have treated these as almost independent events, even though they exist within one document.
If Riley had truly only shared it with HR, I think that’s probably still bad but it’s also completely manageable. The flow could be something like: one person, HR, receives document → identifies potential harassment and GDPR violation → sends back something like, “do not share this document further, I intend to quarantine it. Please rewrite your document to exclude any personal information about other employees. We will now need to treat this as two separate issues. First, the complaint you’re disclosing, which is your right to do and which we take seriously. Second, the additional conduct in the document, as it pertains to other employees, which we will need to address separately as it does not constitute a complaint.”
At the point it’s shared outside HR, the whole thing changes and I felt like I couldn’t seem to get that message across internally, even though it feels so obvious to me. Not to mention that the CEO is, well, the CEO. Everyone is in their direct reporting line. I was at the same reporting level to the CEO as Riley, and he had now read explicit sexual content about me without my consent or knowledge. That just seems so obviously indefensible and bad that I sometimes feel like I’m losing it.
Ivy — I haven’t yet had the chance to read this thread in detail nor the linked article (disclaimer that I have not opened the linked article nor read it yet), I’ve only been able to give the thread a full first pass. Thus, I felt I should refrain from commenting. But then, I realised if I don’t leave something now, there’s a strong chance I won’t remember to come back to this. And one of the very dynamics I find sad is: victims who discuss their experiences and logical arguments publicly often resonate with so many readers, but this is not visible because those readers are likely moving quickly and won’t necessarily wade into a public discourse.
So, to echo some of the points you’ve already raised: Hypothetically, let’s say there is a person who fits the quoted description of a “trauma junkie.” The idea that we should have to engage seriously with a subsequent argument that, at some point, equates the need to “isolate” such a person with the need to “isolate” a rapist is deeply worrying. Rape is a profound and violent removal of one’s autonomy and humanity that results in incredibly high instances of PTSD. Rape is a felony charge, and for good reason. Often times in these discussion, it’s missed that some people (i.e., likely the author of the linked post, based on the quoted sections) simply do not think rape is “that” bad and thus they find it congruent to make such careless statements or equations. But in that case, I’m left unable to engage productively because that’s an irreconcilable and fundamental disagreement. I think rape is horrifying and the act of committing rape is horrifying, in quite literally any “context.” I don’t think rape is anything remotely close to as bad as the behaviour of a described “trauma junkie,” though I agree that the described “trauma junkie” behaviour is bad and anti social.
I’d also like to say, there is a terrible circular logic that so often crops up when it comes to using trauma to discredit victims. I wish more people would read about trauma and understand its affects with more clarity and nuance. If Person A breaks Person B’s leg, we do not suddenly discredit Person B as “hysterical” in their perspective because of the pain of their broken leg. Because, of course their leg is broken. Person A broke it. But, if Person A assaults Person B, resulting in trauma, we use the affects and pain of that trauma to discredit Person B so readily as a society. If we decide that victims are unreliable, by the nature of them being victims and not their actual individual behaviour, then we’re both putting the entire class of victims in an impossible situation and we’re falling back to approx. 1950s sexist talking points. Sometimes, I feel so stuck having to argue at a level I simply disagree with. On a meta level, I want us to fundamentally take abuse seriously and understand the actual literature, which shows that sexual assault is incredibly common, whereas false reports have happened and can, but they are not a prevalent issue at this time and no where near as rampant as reported rates of assault.
On a purely personal level: I teared up at the idea of disclosing my sexual assault and being met with the response you’ve faced. I’m so so beyond sorry. I feel like as a victim, there’s this pressure to have to discuss your own assault in a completely detached, third-party observational, logical way. We rarely get to include our very real emotions or ask for extra respect, sensitivity, and awareness given the circumstances, with no actual expectation that people change the substance of their arguments. But some demonstration of compassion should be the very baseline expectation, and I find anything less cruel and unproductive. Otherwise, it makes conversations terribly asymmetric: outside observers can simply make their arguments with no personal stake, while the victim has to make both airtight arguments (fine) and somehow try to hold the very visceral lived experience of what happened and how it affected them and lives in them. So anyways, I just wanted to express a bit of clear, public support that the parts I was able to read thus far made utter sense and I can’t imagine what you’ve had to carry or how disgusting it must have been to read the quotes you’ve shared, and I’m sorry and my heart is with you.
[Edit: I engaged critically with some of the quoted passages, but I want to be clear that I think writing such quoted passages in passive response to a disclosure of sexual assault is cruel and disgusting in my personal opinion.]
Thank you so much Alexander, I really appreciate this comment. I have some related thoughts, which are completely separate to the concerns I’ve raised thus far. The following is a reflection on abuse and disclosure more generally (and I hope you won’t mind that I’m using your comment as a jumping off point):
There are definitely social costs to disclosure in general around negative experiences (which I’m so sorry you’ve faced first hand), and especially so when they also involve mental health disclosures. The latter is unfortunate given that sexual assault is relatively common, and further, incidences of PTSD specifically among rape victims are very high (a quick look at a meta from 2021 is showing me 74.6% of survivors meet PTSD criteria one month post-assault. Another study found 94% experienced symptoms within two weeks and about 40% of victims still meeting the criteria after a year).
For me personally, some symptoms included difficulty sleeping, generally elevated anxiety, and difficulty with dissociation. For many months, I felt unusually detached from my surroundings and it was difficult to reliably access negative emotions. I also found it harder to focus for extended periods of time in a way I hadn’t experienced previously. One example of a concrete way this did impact my work: I found it hard not to zone out in long group meetings, which is not something I’d previously struggled with. Thankfully, I discussed this with my direct manager. He was supportive and encouraged me to flag without embarrassment if I had missed something a team member said. In general, my teammates were fantastic and supportive, though most of them had no awareness of what was happening (only direct managers did). They’re just naturally kind.
Anyways, I say all of this because I don’t want others to feel alone. I don’t want victims to be terrified to admit that assault does affect your health and it can take months or even years to fully recover. Talking about this stuff is scary. I’m so grateful for all the kind and empathetic support I’ve been receiving in response to this post. I hope we can continue to support victims, both in public and in private. And especially when it’s scary or uncomfortable.
thank you Ander, it was a joy to work with you!!
“that CEA leadership knowingly enabled sexual harassment”
For what it’s worth, I personally don’t believe leadership “knowingly” enabled sexual harassment and, importantly, the appeal report comes to that same conclusion. The investigator specifically reported he did not see any evidence that the managers “believed” there was sexual harassment occurring and turned a blind eye. But rather, that they did not identify it and did not take reasonable steps to prevent it, as required in the UK under the Worker Protection Act and their own policies (a point you seem to keep avoiding). I do not mean to lead anyone to a different conclusion, and I’m not currently concerned that I have in my post. I do believe they enabled harassment through negligence and ignorance, which is different.
“Frances’s post drives readers toward several conclusions: that this incident reflects systemic misogyny in EA, that CEA leadership knowingly enabled sexual harassment, that the conduct is comparable to the predatory behavior described in the 2023 Time article, and that leadership changes may be warranted.”
I don’t think you’re representing my post very accurately. Further, I am not the comments nor can I control every conclusion readers come to. I think it would be both reasonable to want a leadership change after reading this and reasonable not to. Everyone has a different perspective on what they’d like to see from CEA and its leadership. I’d like to gently point out that the question here should never be, “is leadership bad and evil?” On a personal level, I basically like leadership. The frame here is: we are discussing a nonprofit funded by philanthropic dollars meant to represent a community that is literally about altruism.
“The organization eventually provided meaningful remediation including an apology Frances herself describes as genuine, payment for her legal representation, no confidentiality clause, and personnel changes.”
Let me be very clear: it took enormous effort on my part to achieve this. It is standard for organisation’s to pay for legal representation when attempting to pursue a settlement. In the UK, I wouldn’t have been able to sign the settlement without representation, so that was a necessary step. It was in the organisation’s best interest to settle, because the alternative is that I bring an employment tribunal claim. I do respect their willingness to forego a confidentiality clause, but again, this may not have been purely selfless. I was unwilling to sign a settlement agreement unless they obliged. You can imagine, it would be worse to have no claim waiver and no confidentiality (i.e. I can bring a claim still) than to have a claim waiver with no confidentiality (i.e. I cannot bring a claim).
“Beyond that, any attempt by CEA to provide exculpatory context would be read as attacking a victim of sexual harassment.”
If I have been at all factually incorrect or misleading, I would strongly encourage CEA to say so. Leadership is very welcome to email me to run statements by me if they are concerned about the reputational risk of correcting me. And then, they can say, “we are issuing x corrections, we have Frances’ full support,” or whatever it may be. Personally, I feel I have been very careful and accurate. I quote the appeal report directly for this very reason.
“Riley acted with predatory intent”
I never discuss Riley’s intent, nor will I. But I will point out, he was unwilling to apologise. I find your framing of “clumsiness” incongruent with this. If the sexual harassment was “clumsy,” he could simply say, “I apologise for the sexual harassment and the impact it had, which was unintentional.” He could do so while still standing by whatever else he deemed necessary in the document. And yet, he declined to do that and continues to refuse (to my best understanding, unless he secretly really wants to apologise but has somehow found himself unable and CEA has somehow failed to inform me of this fact).
“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.
“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.
CEA was aware it was shared with people outside of HR by Riley, even if they themselves did not share it outside HR.
“If the description is accurate.” The document is unequivocally harassment, as determined by two independent investigators. This is not disputable.
Hello Zach. If I may provide my initial reaction up front: CEA failed to uphold the Worker Protection Act and enabled sexual harassment, as determined by an independent investigator, because you were too focused on following a standard HR process? That seems impossible. Riley initially shared the document with five people, and in the end it was shared with at least 11. That’s not a confidential HR complaint, it’s a circulated internal document.
Zach, I spent months working on the above post. But as you know, I also wrote several internal documents to a similar effect. At least two were shared with you. It’s depressing to see that CEA’s response has barely evolved. It contains more apologies now, often echoing my own empathetic language back to me, but it still fails to contain any meaningful information.
I appealed to the board, even after months of swallowing my disgust at what was occurring. I did this because I wanted CEA to finally be able to say something meaningful about what happened. I’ve been working in EA for six years now, I worked on EA Global for three years. I care deeply and I want things to get better. Right now, I’ve been offered what reads to me as: “We were singularly focused on Riley’s complaint, in a way that is relatable, even if it was a serious mistake.”
It isn’t relatable at all, not to me. You personally read a description of my rape without my consent and did absolutely nothing. For months, I continued working as though that didn’t make me deeply uncomfortable, nervous, confused, and embarrassed. You interacted with me like nothing had occurred. I did deserve better and I still deserve better than,“we were focussed on HR process in a mistaken way.” That’s not an answer to me. To me, it is completely illogical. I did sincerely appreciate the call with you in that, I believe you are regretful and I have absolutely no personal qualms with you outside of this situation. But in the context of your role as CEO, I am so deeply disappointed still.
I no longer expect answers to the questions I have posed internally. But for the record, I will restate them. Below is why I have failed to gain any confidence in CEA’s current leadership.
On the document:
“Sharing HR concerns does not require disclosing a colleague’s sexual assault.” Yes, of course. I’m very sad CEA could not arrive at this conclusion themselves. 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 (which was unrelated to work; I went on three weeks of medical leave following the assault). Even the sanitized summary CEA drafted, with his “personal feelings” removed, was deeply disturbing to read. It was also multiple pages. I understand it was not the “focus” of the document, but it is much more than one line that states “Frances was raped”. To my understanding, the document itself is just extremely long and discusses multiple employees and community members at length. I cannot understand how that did not immediately result in me being notified and the matter being referred to legal for investigation.
[Edit: adding the following paragraph] You’ve also said it was unfortunate I had to be proactive. I’d like to point out that based on CEA’s formal processes, I would never have had the chance to report. I would never have known about the document. I only knew about it because one of the recipients went against leadership and informed me. You and the other recipients were the only people that could have done anything, and it is very likely to me that if she had not notified me about this document, it would still be in circulation today without my knowledge. On a human level, did any of you feel even a little worried after reading it? Or concerned/empathetic? Did anyone raise a flag? Anyone?
On the change in outcomes:
Why did the investigation outcomes change so drastically after the appeal? At first, Riley remained with the organisation, could continue working out of CEA’s Oxford office, and could attend all events, and we were given walking paths and designated meal times. After the appeal, I’m told that CEA “initiated a process” which led to his resignation, which I am interpreting as him being pushed out of the organisation. What substantively changed? To my knowledge, only two significant things differed: my stated intention to write publicly. Second, I had begun discussing the situation with a male, more senior, and respected member of the community who reached out to you directly to express deep concern. I don’t know of any other changes, though I’d like to if any exist. To my understanding, I will not be able to get clarity here.
Now that I think about it, I’ve never seen Banksy and 80,000 Hours podcast host Zershaaneh Qureshi in the same room.....