Matt Brady at Newsarama has done a fairly good piece on the assault/harassment scandal. I'm still working on wrapping my head around the facts, both accepted and disputed.
I'm not having an easy time of it. Possibly because I can see both sides of the issue, and I really don't want to face what I'm seeing.
What I do know is that there are no winners in this, only losers.
CB's reputation is tainted and will stay tainted... perhaps as long as he's in this business. Whether it was a drunken prank gone horribly wrong or something more sinister, the end effect is the same on his life. There will always be women who look at him askance at conventions, and people who will wonder. He's been tried in the court of public opinion, and he's paying a price. If there is evidence that he's done this to other women, perhaps more will come of it. But I believe that the TS part of it is over, whether TS wants it to be or not.
As for TS... she's hurting. She's hurting bad, and wants CB to lose his job. CB apologized, attempted to make amends, but it wasn't enough. I understand that. But I think she needs to realize that she's hurt him back about as hard as she's likely to be able to short of going vigilante on him. Because no charges were filed that night (whether because she didn't understand what the police were asking or because the police didn't think it was serious enough or some other reason, who knows) she isn't going to get justice through the legal system. TS tried very hard to not hurt the organization that CB works for, and if I understand correctly she wasn't even inclined to report this to the comic book community, Ronee did it without asking permission (I may be wrong on that). And the end result is exactly what TS feared. But at the same time, TS's story has raised awareness of the problem, and put women on the alert about this man in particular. That's the tiny silver lining in it all.
Another loser is Ronee, whose initial reports were vague enough and yet specific enough that they implied the WRONG MAN was the attacker. Ronee's writing unintentionally spread the hurt out to far more people. And while I understand exactly why she did it, moreso than many other folks I suspect, it was still a bad decision to report it the way she did. Being guilty of many bad decisions in my life, including at least one that affected somebody in a slightly similar manner, I'm inclined to be forgiving. I'm sure there are a great many other folks who are not. Ronee's reputation has also taken a huge hit from this.
Let's recap:
Ronee's first column. Started the outrage, accidently pointed people at the wrong man. Implied that the man had done this to other women.
TS comes forward. Taki Soma's report on the assault in Ronee's column. Again, Ronee states that other women have been victimized by this man.
Newsarama reports. This has both TS's and CB's version of events, but little more.
Comics Journal Names Names. Charles Brownstein is identified as the man who assaulted TS. The Comics Journal covers the conflicting accounts of the night, the actions of the organization CB works for, and the reports of other victimized women: Nothing the Journal was able to discover, even among the worst hearsay and online gossip, amounted to more than instances of overly familiar touching and one unwanted backrub allegedly given to a volunteer. Huh. I happen to know that "overly familiar touching" and "unwanted backrub"s can be assault, depending on who you are talking to and the situation they occur in, so I'm not sure I can dismiss them as easily as TCJ can. By the same token, I'm not willing to string up a man based on heresay, and except for TS's report, I've heard nothing solid.
In conclusion, and I'm very bad at conclusions, this passage from TCJ's article hit me pretty hard. Yup, this pegs it:
It was as if as long as the story remained on an abstract level -- brutal harassment, heartless industry cover-up -- the silhouette of the man who had allegedly clutched Soma's breast could stand in for every rumored industry harasser, every unreported assault on a comics creator who was too afraid to make trouble. And there are many such anonymous stories, though they seem to evaporate as one gets close to them. If the online bloodlust that followed Bourgeois' initial column seemed over-the-top, it may be because the posters weren't directing their rage at Brownstein, at a single accused harasser, but at a figure that stood as a symbol of all sexual violence and industry injustice.
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