The “secret shame” of sexual harassment and assault so many people whispered about is not-so-secret anymore, says Colleen Twomey, coordinator of legal advocacy at the Clarina Howard Nichols Center in Morrisville.
The floodgates opened in October as women took to social media, posting their experiences of sexual harassment and assault with #MeToo.
One in five American women becomes a victim of sexual assault, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource center. That jumps to one in four on college campuses, according to the Association of American Universities.
Since October, people working with victims of sexual assault — crisis hotline staffers, victims’ advocates working through the legal process, residence life staff on college campuses, support centers like Clarina — have seen a change in how people talk about their experiences of sexual harassment and assault.
“I don’t hear that blaming language,” asking what someone was wearing, or if they were drinking, said Denisha Arsenault, a postgraduate student at Johnson State College. “It’s amazing to watch and see the switch.”
Arsenault is also a residence hall adviser and outreach coordinator on campus, a mandated reporter of sexual assault at essentially ground zero of where it happens.
Culture on campus has changed, said Arsenault, and both men and women are being “more supportive because they don’t want to see it happen here.” She’s also “finally seeing more engagement” in programs about consent.
It’s the change from the Brock Turner case in March 2016, where the Stanford University student convicted of sexual assault “didn’t really get anything,” to the trial of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, convicted of serial child molestation in January, where young women could come forward and “not have their sexuality on trial,” Arsenault said.
Arsenault has been working with the on-campus wellness center, the Clarina Howard Nichols Center and AWARE in Hardwick to help students find support after an assault, and plan programs on awareness before it happens.
At the Clarina Howard Nichols Center, Executive Director Becky Gonyea has seen “things really picking up.” She has heard from victims’ advocates and crisis hotline operators that more people are calling to talk about all types of situations, from recent instances of assault and harassment to incidents from years ago, people are remembering by hearing others’ stories.
In the past, it was often intimidating to go to police, Twomey said. Now, people are “feeling more supported by their peers and willing to hold people in power accountable” as she helps them with paperwork and prepares them for trial.
“The #MeToo movement was helpful to set the context for the prevalence of sexual violence,” said Caterina Campbell, director of the safe-space anti-violence program at the Vermont Pride Center in Burlington. It helped open up conversations about the even greater rate of sexual violence among transgender and gender nonconforming people, and people of color and minority groups.
Legislative action
Change is also happening at the Statehouse. Legislators from “both sides of the aisle are more aware and eager to collaborate, even if (the bill) isn’t in their committee,” said Cara Cookson, public policy director for the state-run Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services.
Every day is #MeToo for Cookson — she’s one of the main people helping write legislation and educate legislators on bills that help victims of sexual assault.
Cookson is now helping Rep. Tom Stevens, D-Waterbury, on a bill to protect crime victims from being fired if they have to leave work to testify in court. Now, they can lose their jobs, which could dissuade them from coming forward at all.
“The ramifications are deep,” Stevens said. “If we say we support crime victims, why don’t we support them in court?”
Workplace harassment is also in the Statehouse spotlight. A workplace harassment bill sets up a way to report harassment to the Attorney General’s Office even when both parties settle on a nondisclosure agreement. The legislation includes whistleblower protection for people with nondisclosure agreements in case there are serial harassers.
“The inspiration was the sense of growing frustration. Though we were coming together and having good conversations about #MeToo, there was nothing that was getting to the root of sexual harassment,” Rep. Sarah Copeland-Hanzas, D-Bradford, said in February as her bill was gaining traction in the House.
She wanted to look at the structure for reporting workplace sexual harassment, to “change the landscape to empower the line server and factory worker.”
Copeland-Hanzas is the main sponsor of H.707, the bill the House approved March 14 that would help people report workplace sexual harassment. The bill is now in the Senate, where Gov. Phil Scott has asked legislators to expedite the bill and get it to his desk to sign it.
“I don’t want to increase lawsuits or have people lose jobs,” Copeland-Hanzas said. Instead, this bill gives victims of workplace harassment the ability to say “knock it off,” so people can learn from mistakes.
One issue that has emerged is that nondisclosure agreements have been hiding serial abusers for years.
Stowe resident Lisa Senecal, a member of the Vermont Commission on Women, worked on the bill, and told her story about a nondisclosure agreement to help strengthen the bill.
“I was able to raise issues where there wasn’t an awareness that the issues existed,” she said, “like if you have a nondisclosure agreement and you learn that the same person is harassing someone else, or that the organizational change you have been told is going to happen didn’t really happen, you can’t come forward and do anything to protect other people.
“It is difficult enough to accept silence for yourself. To accept being silent when you know other people are being victimized is a terrible position to put a survivor in. And it’s a terrible position to put other potential targets in.
“Silence on this issue, in my opinion, is the exact opposite direction a company should head in,” Senecal said.
Workplace harassment
The firings of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly in 2017 and Roger Ailes in 2016 for workplace harassment resonated with Senecal, who had her own experiences of workplace sexual harassment and assault. She also understood the difficult position that some of O’Reilly’s and Ailes’ victims were in, as she, too, had a settlement that included a nondisclosure agreement.
Senecal met Scott Labby when they worked on a high-stakes project together; he was later her attorney. Labby, a New York City attorney from a small town in Maine, and Senecal, a Vermonter, shared the small-town New England connection as they worked together, becoming friends over the years.
With her personal experiences and communications background, and Labby’s legal expertise, Senecal thought, “This might actually be the time when I could make a change to working on these issues full-time.”
The duo has launched the Maren Group, a consulting firm that works with victims of workplace harassment, and advises and conducts risk assessments for companies and investors. Their goal is to head off harassment before it occurs and causes harm to employees, companies and investors. The company launched early this month and already has several clients.
The group analyzes company culture, the power dynamic, systems for reporting harassment, and whether women hold leadership positions.
The consultants take on domestic violence issues, sexual harassment cases, and child support avoidance — where someone could “hide” through their company to avoid paying child support. These are all instances of “economic abuse,” Senecal said.
In harassment cases, “It’s the woman that is seen as the problem very often, and then you deal with the problem. You either move her somewhere else, so she is not in contact with that person, or you have some type of settlement agreement,” Senecal said. She has started to see that change in her work with corporate clients.
When workplace sexual harassment is an ongoing problem, absenteeism goes up, turnover goes up and productivity goes down. Ultimately, it can become a publicity issue for companies.
“The many downsides and challenges of coming forward with the allegations of sexual harassment — the bar is so high, and even if women are being believed more than they were, you are still talking about an embarrassing experience,” Senecal said. “Nobody wants to talk about the time they felt degraded, especially in a professional environment. The underreporting of sexual harassment is the problem, not the false reporting.”
Power of being believed
With clients, Senecal said she makes sure they have a good reporting system in place — and a culture of belief.
In corporate environments, that could mean top management takes the same sexual harassment training as everyone else, demonstrating how seriously they are taking the problem. In service businesses — such as restaurants or hotels, where people are working for tips and the rate of sexual harassment is higher, but generally comes from customers — it is important for workers to have someone to report harassment to, knowing they will be believed.
The first thing that should happen is that someone listens to the person coming forward, Senecal said. Then, depending on the situation, an investigation could be opened, or the offending customer could be asked to leave the establishment.
“Why would you lie” about harassment, Senecal asked? “I understand that there is going to be some degree of backlash and there are people who are really questioning behavior in the past and afraid of offending people.
“I actually think that’s a good thing. All of us should be spending a little bit of time feeling uncomfortable and going back over our behavior and wondering, ‘Was I out of line when I did whatever I did? Is there someone I need to apologize to? Do I need to change my behavior so I don’t do that again?’”
At Johnson State, Arsenault says students are more willing to report sexual assaults because of how college administrators and the Lamoille County Sheriff's Department listen to their stories.
Both are “very firmly putting the power in the survivor’s hands” when deciding how to move forward, Arsenault said. After a student reports an incident, an investigation is conducted, and the investigators “determine an outcome based on what they find,” she said.
Centers such as Clarina Howard Nichols can refer victims of sexual assault to support groups, therapy services or legal services, depending on the circumstances.
Ultimately, though, “change can’t just be on the backs of women. It is going to take men as allies, coming forward, being willing to take a risk, and call out bad behavior,” Senecal said. “Men and women need to be having (these) uncomfortable conversations.”
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