How We Have Fulfilled Requests, Part 2 of 10
This post (2 of 10) is a portion of our larger report on “How We Have Fulfilled Requests of People Who Have Reported Harm.” Follow this link for an introduction to our terminology, how we facilitated and organized requests, and for a table of contents for each request.
Accountability Request 2:
For Charlie to pause or reduce his work.
There were several requests for Charlie to limit his professional activities and platform, including one for him to refrain from unsupervised one-on-one coaching. He has continued coaching in order to have enough income to support himself and his necessary expenses, but his coaching has been under consistent supervision since 2015. These supervision sessions are monthly one-on-one calls with his supervisor where they discuss any topics, issues, or concerns that have come up for him or for his clients. (We should explicitly note that this does leave some gray areas where, if the supervisor isn’t bringing something up and Charlie isn’t either, there can be a lack of support or responsibility for issues that arise.) There was also a request for him to publicly name his supervisor. He did not fulfill this request because it would have violated the privacy agreement they had in place prior to this request and his accountability process. However, the pod has shared occasional process updates with Charlie’s supervisor. We have tasked Charlie with discussing particular points of concern with his supervisor as well.
In 2016, Contributors requested that Charlie stop writing about specific topics like consent and boundaries. Charlie complied with that specific request. However, he continued to write blog posts about sex and communication until late November 2018. Soon after the pod formed, we responded to this by working with Charlie to conduct an audit of his blog posts and public writings, cataloging them by potential impact on harmed individuals and tasking him with examining particularly concerning references to consent, boundaries, and abuse. This audit was completed in April 2019. (More on this under Request 7.)
There were also requests for Charlie to pull back from public engagements and teaching. He initially stopped some engagements but not others. For instance, Charlie participated in an AASECT conference panel in June 2018 and again in June 2019. He also continued appearing as a guest on podcasts and participated in interviews through September 2019. So, in September of 2019, we called him into accountability on this matter, as we saw his commitment to “step back from teaching and public speaking” was not fully realized. The pod strongly encouraged Charlie to step back from all teaching and speaking and spoke to him at length about the importance of limiting his reach and ability to harm and/or influence others during our accountability process.
Although Charlie stopped booking podcasts, interviews, and other appearances in 2019, we discovered in March 2021 that at least two interviews were published after the September call-in.
Before confronting Charlie with the discovery, the team communicated, did some research, and decided that a pod member should reach out to the producers of two podcasts and find out when the interviews were recorded and if Charlie was transparent about his accountability process. Both podcasts responded quickly, confirming that the interviews were recorded prior to September 2019 and were delayed in publishing — one in December 2019 and one in January 2020.
At that point, the team confronted Charlie about the situation, letting him know we had been in contact with the producers and tasking him with the following:
- Deep web-research to see where he was tagged by folks who published interviews with him as well as searching his calendar for any bookings that may have been missed.
- Reviewing both the timeframe when the interviews were recorded and the content to see if there should be a disclaimer added; for example, if he talked about consent, boundaries, accountability, or harm.
- Reaching out to the producers/hosts of the podcasts, disclosing this accountability process, and coordinating with them directly to edit any blurbs about the recording or asking them to unpublish the episode if it was problematic.
As a result of the research, Charlie found one additional interview during the timeframe in question (December 2019 - May 2020) which was re-published from a 2015 recording.
He is not currently doing any public engagements or teaching (outside of the kind of education conducted within individual coaching sessions).
Charlie’s evolving understanding of the meaning of “teaching and leadership” and the pod’s concerted effort on this issue will be addressed in detail in its own post.
Finally, some people, including one Respondent, called on Charlie to permanently stop all of his work in the sexuality and coaching fields. While this possibility is and was on the table, our transformative justice-influenced approach focuses on addressing harms and doing the work with Charlie to operate more respectfully and consciously in the future. This approach leaves room for a possible return to his work, or some parts of it, rather than just closing the door forever without consideration for his changes in behavior and motivation and the work he’s done to repair the harms and damage he caused. That said, his participation in this process does not guarantee his return to public speaking, teaching, and writing in the field of sexuality, nor would a positive assessment of his growth mean Charlie is entitled to hold positions of authority or power in his communities. Our role as a team has been to help stop active harm, help facilitate healing and reparation, challenge and transform deep-seated patterns of harm, and then advise Charlie and his communities on future courses of action.
As of now, Charlie plans to resume his teaching, writing, and public appearances at some point after the accountability process concludes. The pod will address our thoughts on his intentions, our assessment of Charlie’s growth and work with us, and any lingering concerns or community considerations in our final posts. Additionally, Charlie has created a post-pod accountability team to make it easier for anyone to report any future concerns or experiences of harm. As of June 2022, he has been working with an accountability coach who specializes in engaging men around these issues. This coach is also serving as a member of Charlie’s post-pod accountability team. Finally, the pod has worked with Charlie to develop a more robust informed consent process for potential workshop co-facilitators and demonstration models.
Follow this link to go to the Request 3: A publicly accessible platform documenting the accountability process.
Follow this link for an introduction to our reporting on requests and a table of contents for each request.
