CEA's response to sexual harassment
By Fran @ 2026-02-27T19:23 (+631)
In this piece, I discuss the sexual harassment I experienced at the Centre for Effective Altruism, the organisation’s response, the outcomes of two independent legal reviews, and the final settlement. In the second part of this piece, I make cultural critiques of CEA and EA more broadly.
Everything shared here reflects my own experience and perspective. I have anonymised the perpetrator, but I reference specific leadership roles where I believe this to be appropriate and necessary.
Trigger warnings: non-specific reference of rape and specific discussion of sexual harassment
TL;DR (One-page summary)
After I was raped (outside of and unrelated to work), a colleague at CEA wrote and circulated a document that included a sexualised description of my rape, speculation about my mental health, and commentary on my personal life, all without my consent. Several senior leaders, including the CEO and the now-former COO, received this document and took no safeguarding action for approximately nine months. I was never officially informed of its existence; I only learned about it informally through one of the recipients.
After I filed a harassment report, the incident was independently investigated and determined to be harassment. Despite this, I was denied access to the document for the entire investigation (and still have only seen a summary provided by CEA’s legal), I feel the outcomes focused on policy updates rather than safeguarding, and I was expected to continue working in the same office as the perpetrator. He would not be temporarily barred from the events I was responsible for organising. To my knowledge, he did not express any contrition. I found the working conditions to be intolerable. I resigned.
Despite my resignation, I appealed to the board. A second external investigation determined the conduct to be sexual harassment under the Equality Act 2010 and found that CEA failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it, which organisations are required to do under the UK’s Worker Protection Act 2023.
After the appeal concluded, and after I informed the board that I was planning to share my experience, things changed. The CEO stepped in and provided meaningful remediation. CEA initiated a process leading to the perpetrator’s resignation and sent me a written apology that I found genuine. They hired an experienced HR Manager and instituted a new workplace policy. We reached a settlement. CEA paid for a lawyer to advise me on the agreement and obliged by foregoing a confidentiality clause.
Getting to this point took over a year, two external legal reviews, an appeal, my resignation, and, to whatever extent it mattered, my willingness to write publicly. There are two truths here. I am grateful for a final resolution, but I found the past year harmful, often indefensible, and unsustainable. I am writing this post for two reasons: to speak to the cultural issues I believe exist within CEA and EA more broadly, including a culture that continues to enable sexual harassment, and to speak to victims and members of the community directly.
In the rest of this piece, I provide a more detailed account. I then present what I believe to be the main cultural issues and my perspective on them.
A more detailed account
The sexual harassment incident
In the summer of 2024, I was raped. The assault itself is unrelated to CEA and EA. I will not discuss it further in this post.
In November 2024, “Riley” wrote a document about me. He sent it to HR, the CEO, his manager, and two other colleagues. Once the COO joined, HR gave her the document to read as well. It was also shared with the in-house legal team. By the end of the appeal, at least 11 employees had been shared on it. The organisation is only around 50 people.
In this document, Riley wrote out an account of me being raped. Though, he chose to use the word “sex” to describe the incident. He speculated about my mental health, my partner, my friends. He covered years of my life through his perspective. Riley also discussed asking me out twice while we were colleagues, once through text and again at a CEA retreat. He assured CEA that, with everything I now know about Frances, I’m glad she said no.
One of my colleagues who received the document told me about it informally. “You can’t let HR know I told you,” she kept saying, worried about getting in trouble. She wasn’t willing to send me a copy, but she read parts aloud a few months after receiving it. Towards the end, she read something like, I do feel bad winning points on her, since she was just raped.
I messaged CEA’s Community Health team. To my understanding, they tried to step in but CEA said they should not get involved with an HR issue. People Operations claimed they would handle it.
Nine months went by and I heard absolutely nothing. No safeguarding steps were taken. The document remained in circulation.
For a while, I tried to block the harassment out entirely. I was completely overwhelmed and simply did not have the capacity to process it. I was already managing a PTSD diagnosis as a result of the rape and an ongoing criminal investigation with the UK police. I no longer trusted CEA’s HR. Not to mention, I didn’t have access to the document myself.
As the months went on, I became increasingly anxious and embarrassed around leadership and those who had read the document. Increasingly dissociated. I began having nightmares about new documents being circulated. My therapist noted my PTSD symptoms were continuing to worsen. When I ran into Riley at the office, I would often freeze. I started eating lunch in my team’s room to avoid the cafeteria, or skipping lunch altogether.
Eventually, nine months after the harassment, I reached a breaking point. With my partner’s encouragement and support, I finally filed an official complaint to the legal team.
The investigation
When I disclosed my complaint to the director of my team, Amy, she began advocating for me and pushed for an external review. I remain deeply grateful to her; she is an exceptional leader. In terms of those involved with the investigation at CEA, I feel that she was my only source of genuine empathy, care, and true integrity. I don’t know what I would have done without her.
CEA hired an external counsel to reach a determination, but CEA’s legal team conducted the interviews themselves. As they collected my statement, without warning, they began reciting Riley’s perspective: “Riley says he was just trying to explore if he should continue working at CEA. The document is about more than just you.”
“What? But it describes me being raped? It talks about asking me out twice? Who cares if the document also complains about CEA?”
I was told that, from legal’s perspective, that was the worst of the document. I asked to see it myself before they reached a determination, even if parts needed to be redacted. I was given a vague promise that they would “look into it.” I was not provided any access before a determination was reached, something the appeal investigator later criticised.
In October 2025, on a call, CEA’s legal team informed me that external counsel had determined the incident met the definition of harassment. I had wanted Riley to be temporarily barred from attending CEA retreats and EA Global events, especially the latter, given that organising EA Global was my core responsibility and attendance was optional for him. I wanted a working environment that did not trigger an extreme stress response for me.
CEA did neither of these things.
Instead, CEA’s legal team informed me that a “no-contact order” would be issued and that other actions were being taken that could not be disclosed, but that Riley and I would be invited to the same spaces. How do you reasonably manage “no-contact” at an approximately 50-person organisation between two employees who work out of the same office? I have no idea. I don’t believe CEA does either, though they did throw around ideas like “designated walking paths” and “assigned meal times.” I didn’t stay long enough to find out how my teammates would react when I said, “sorry, I can’t walk to lunch that way, my personal path is to the right.”
They offered to pay for me to speak with a doctor and undergo an Occupational Health Assessment. I did not want to speak with a doctor. I wanted to be away from the person who harassed me. I wanted all the senior leaders who read about me being raped and did nothing to apologise. I wanted a normal working environment. It felt like CEA was effectively punishing me for being a victim. Finally, they stated they would be mandating appropriate training for all managers moving forward and they would be updating their policies.
Unfortunately, the anti-harassment policy had already been updated in response to a prior sexual harassment incident that was also mishandled, which the CEO discusses in this post from 2024. The previous policy update only occurred after one of the victims went public (see this Time article discussing a culture of sexual harassment and abuse in EA, from 2023). I’m no expert; however, if a prior policy update wasn’t sufficient, perhaps policies aren’t the problem.
There was no plan for formal acknowledgment nor remediation from Riley. To my knowledge, the same was true for all the senior staff who had read the document and done nothing.
The harassment determination felt meaningless. Most importantly, they were asking me to continue working in what I felt to be an incredibly demeaning and hostile environment.
I quit.
The appeal and final report
Despite my departure, I was still interested in accountability. I did not agree with CEA’s framing of the harassment as, effectively, “an overshared HR document.” That was the exact phrasing a board member used with me during the appeal, despite full knowledge of the initial determination. I did not believe CEA’s decided outcomes were sufficient for an organisation that claims they “want to help build a radically better world.” I did not personally see evidence that they had learned anything from the prior mishandling of sexual harassment. I did not believe Riley’s continued employment after his perpetration, and absence of contrition, left other employees in a safe and dignified position. I wanted a deeper investigation and I wanted written findings directly from an external party, not filtered through CEA. And so, I appealed to the board.
After a second investigation, the board-appointed investigator determined the conduct to be sexual harassment under the UK Equality Act 2010. The investigator also stated, “overall, in my view, reasonable steps were not taken at the time of the writing and circulation of the Document to prevent sexual harassment.” This is a breach of the Worker Protection Act 2023.
The investigator also noted, “I have been told [by CEA] that employees can be unusually transparent with their manager… and they value being able to have very candid conversation.”
This is the same narrative CEA’s legal team kept repeating to me. But, the investigator went on to say, “I do not consider that a mitigating factor here… notwithstanding the culture, it is hard to understand from an outside perspective why for [each manager] individually there was not a recognition that the information contained was highly personal and sensitive and therefore inappropriate, even if they did not recognise it as sexual harassment per se.”
And to that I say, I also find it hard to understand from an inside perspective. I do not understand it at all. My team, the Events Team, was also operating within CEA. We also had an unusually transparent culture and valued candid conversation. And yet, I never sexually harassed anyone. To my knowledge, no one on my team did. I never wrote a document describing my colleague being raped, and my attempts to ask them out, and my personal speculations regarding their mental health, and then shipped it off to the CEO and four other employees in the name of… candid workplace conversation?
If I had received a document like that, I would have recognised it as targeted harassment and I would have done something. I would have been exceedingly alarmed by the set of beliefs one must possess to write such a document at all: that it is acceptable to describe a man having “sex” with a colleague from one’s own perspective; reasonable to assess her mental health and personal life; to reflect on her romantic availability; and to share all of this with other colleagues and those responsible for approving her salary, title, and benefits. We are not discussing a neutral collection of facts that were “overshared.” The document expressed attitudes about myself, women, consent, objectification, and entitlement that I found to be blatantly misogynistic, regardless of “why” it was written.
Public accountability versus internal processes
During the appeal, a board member asked to have an informal call with me, separate from the investigation process. He floated the idea of a settlement agreement. I made it clear upfront that I intended to discuss my experience publicly and I would not sign anything that barred me from doing so.
I understand some may object to me saying this. But in the spirit of a transparent culture, I wanted to be clear: sexism is not something I will tolerate. I have spent years writing publicly about this topic. Writing is an important outlet for me, and while I take care to be honest, accurate, and fair, I do not intend to stop writing. Not to mention, I had already spent months trying to pursue internal resolution at great personal cost.
Some few weeks after this call, the appeal concluded and the investigator shared his report. The CEO reached out to me that same day. Things had significantly shifted.
Riley had left the organisation. CEA had hired a new, experienced HR Manager. CEA had announced a new Professional and personal interactions policy. I’ve reviewed it. It appears to vaguely gesture at what happened to me, in more generalisable terms, and then it instructs employees on what to do in response.
The CEO also sent me a written apology that finally used the words “sexual harassment.” Prior to this, the only apologies I had received were effectively, sorry we didn’t respond to your personal data being shared.
I’m very hopeful regarding the new HR Manager, who apparently brings prior experience at multiple organizations, and who specifically has experience with employee disability accommodations and investigations. I think hiring for this position was an excellent decision.
With respect to the new policy, I personally found it ineffective and scrambled. I simply don’t think they have a policy issue. I mean, the sexual harassment I experienced was literally written down and sent, by the perpetrator himself, to several of the designated points of contact for reporting. I don’t believe the policies at the time were ambiguous on what should have happened next. But fine, it’s not my organisation. As long as no one else is writing about my rape, CEA can continue drafting as many documents as they want.
Which leaves us with a few sad questions: did all of this happen because the appeal genuinely revealed to relevant leaders the scope and severity of what had transpired, something that was apparently unclear after a year, my direct advocacy, and an initial investigation? Or, did something materially change that I am not aware of? Or did all of this finally happen because of my stated intention to write publicly? Unfortunately, it’s impossible for me to know the answer to that question.
The final settlement agreement
After the appeal, I signed an agreement not to bring legal claims in exchange for compensation. I believe it was in both our best interests to settle. However, I will note that they made the process very simple and agreed not to include a confidentiality clause. The latter is genuinely unusual, it surprised my lawyer. CEA has never tried to deter me from writing publicly, which I respect.
My partner and I have now donated $1,135 from the agreement as a kind of closure: $500 to CEDOVIP, $500 to GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund, and $135 to Rights of Women UK. The third is a nonprofit I personally used several times. Alongside advocacy, they operate phone lines that provide free legal advice to women in the UK. Without this charity, I would not have reported my rape to the UK police. And separately, I would have been even more overwhelmed by CEA’s appeal process.
In all honesty, writing this post is deeply depressing because I know the humans on the other side of this at CEA and I assume they are very stressed. I genuinely did appreciate the CEO’s final apology. We had a call after the appeal concluded. He was kind and seemed genuinely regretful.
There was something tragic about the call. By that point, I’d had to fight for myself so much and for so long that each conciliatory sentiment was bound to ring hollow to me, even if it was meant sincerely. And I think he knew that. He said he wished that he, or anyone else, had reported the document the moment it was sent out. Me too.
I really do hope things get better. Truly. And I leave it to each reader to come to their own conclusions.
I still think there is a lot of good in effective altruism
I am grateful to those who speak up when they see issues within EA. I understand why there are many who do not like the community nor the culture. It makes me furious to hear stories of women rightly leaving after they’ve faced harassment or exceedingly poor treatment. I’m glad they took their talents elsewhere.
Effective altruism, as an idea, is certainly not the only way to do good. And, to state another obvious thing: it is by no means the only community doing, or trying to do, important work. That said, I personally still like EA. There are nonprofits within the space, and those heavily supported by the space, whose philanthropic work I find to be exceptional. The core ideas underneath effective altruism helped me to develop my personal values in important ways. I have been truly moved by some of the thinking that has come out of this community and I’ve met many beautifully giving people through it. When I want to make a donation, the first thing I do is check EA-aligned or inspired charity evaluators.
So, I still like it. I’m still around. But, I have no intention of enabling sexism. If I may make a request to others in the community, and especially to those running organisations: let’s be so much better than this. Let’s endeavor not to perpetrate and protect sexism, lest more women continue to be abused and pushed out. Let’s actually stand up for victims. If the community claims to be morally serious, then let’s be morally serious.
Various cultural reflections
For the rest of this piece, I’d like to address some of the cultural issues I’ve observed and the harmful sentiments that were relayed to me. Afterwards, I have a short section intended for those who have experienced harassment.
1) Sexual harassment is not the natural result of an “open” and “high-trust” culture, it is the natural result of misogyny.
When stories like mine are shared with EAs, I regularly hear: “but I like that EA organisations are open. I don’t want people to be scared to say things to their manager.”
To those people, I have great news: sexually harassing women is not the natural result of an open culture. Those are two separate things!
The Events team at CEA had a very open culture. I felt safe with our director, Amy. After I was assaulted, I was transparent with her. She was empathetic and respectful. She advocated for me within the organisation. My teammates and I had a lovely working relationship. We could be open about our emotional states, voice our opinions, and support each other.
And guess what? No harassment.
To suggest that the sexual harassment of women is some kind of foregone and necessary collateral of an open culture is absurd. If that’s what’s happening, you don’t have an open culture. You have a misogynistic culture.
If you cannot discuss your feelings in the workplace without sexually harassing another person, it’s time to sit down and learn the difference between honest, meaningful, relevant communication and the nonconsensual sexualisation of a colleague.
I have no interest in aligning with a community that treats the harassment of women as acceptable because it’s so gosh darn important that men don’t have to “censor” a single thought or genius idea. That’s not a high-trust community. That’s a sexist community catering to the preferences of its most morally and emotionally underdeveloped members. One that apparently believes itself capable of proposing complex solutions to pressing global issues, but not capable of reliably protecting its workforce from sexual harassment.
2) The danger of EA’s fixation on intent and why “he didn’t mean it” is not good enough.
Throughout this process, almost everyone, and most especially CEA’s legal team, appeared to me overly fixated on Riley’s intent. And they seemed to take his stated intent at face value.
In my opinion, EAs keep missing an incredibly important fact: perpetrators of harm are rarely, if ever, reliable narrators of their own intent.
If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse. You’ve made it structurally impossible. And this is how you end up with a culture that enables sexual harassment.
When EAs were faced with what Riley did, I kept hearing some version of: “but surely he didn’t mean it that way.” What way, exactly? As if his intent, self-reported and unknowable, should override the content of the document, the impact on me, and the judgment of independent investigators.
Quite frankly, at this point, I couldn’t care less about what he “meant.” I care about the facts of what he did and wrote. The fixation on his internal experience, at the expense of what actually played out, is precisely how victims become expected to absorb whatever perpetrators decide to do.
3) Cowardice and deference at CEA.
In my opinion, a lot of people at CEA witnessed at least part of what I was experiencing and did basically nothing. The initial document wasn’t reported by any of the recipients. Some of them I’d worked with for years. Later on, there were many senior colleagues who appeared unwilling to disagree with leadership or HR on my behalf. I found there to be a strange amount of deference to legal and to the CEO and COO. From my perspective, almost everyone seemed anxious, uncomfortable, and unwilling to say or do much.
I felt surrounded by minimisation and a fixation on preventing future incidences. I think this happened, at least in part, because prevention efforts are emotionally easier than asking “how can we actually support the victim currently in front of us, who says we’ve enabled all this?” In terms of those involved with the investigation, The Events Director, Amy, truly felt like the only one actually worried about me as a person. Outside of her, the conversations often felt like:
Them: Okay, investigation is done! Let us know if you have any ideas for how to prevent this from happening in the future.
Me: Well, actually, I’d love some meaningful help right now. This is still happening to me. I don’t feel like I can work here anymore. I’m scared that I’m about to lose my job because I don’t think I can stay.
Them: Right, well, we’re updating policies!
This is satire, but it’s also genuinely how these conversations felt to me. Like I was being turned into a cautionary tale while I was literally still there. No one seemed brave enough to sit down and actually admit that, after months, things were still going terribly wrong and I needed help.
I want to name this for what I think it is: cowardice.
I think everything that happened to me was cowardly. I think many of leadership’s decisions were cowardly. I think all the deference and inaction from others was cowardly. The lack of advocacy. The focus on updating policies while I was suffering and no longer able to work. There was so much avoidance. I found it all cowardly.
4) Women in EA are often encouraged to try and settle things “informally” or to trust their organisations — another abuse of “high-trust” culture.
EA organisations love to foster an attitude of “we’re all on the same team.” But informal processes are more likely to fail victims and enable perpetrators. “Same team” does not work in the face of power imbalances. I would strongly encourage women not to defer to their organisations in these cases. Seek external support, trust what you have experienced, and if applicable, know the law.
I found my interactions with CEA’s legal team beyond frustrating. In my opinion, they rarely explained my options or the process. I trusted that they understood the severity of the harassment and I was painfully let down.
As part of the appeal, the legal team claimed they had foregone a formal grievance hearing because they didn’t want me to feel like I had to run the process myself. But they also said they applied a harassment test rather than a sexual harassment test because I never specifically asked them to do the latter.
So, was I supposed to trust them to run the process, or was I supposed to know the law in such detail that only the tests I proactively cited would be applied? A competent investigator would surely inform the victim of their different options. And let them see the document in question. Same team, right?
Another example: CEA’s policies stated that managers who observe suspected harassment “are required to take appropriate steps” and “will be subject to disciplinary action” if they fail to do so. In my appeal, I raised that CEA had not investigated the managers who received the document and did nothing. Their explanation: they wanted to conclude quickly, for my benefit, and felt that investigating themselves would cause delay. They never ran this by me. How convenient that a choice “for my benefit” also meant less scrutiny for them. And what is the point of expediting a determination “for the victim” if the resulting outcomes make her feel as though she must quit.
Same-team assumptions should not be blindly encouraged where power imbalances exist, lest we encourage women into dangerous positions.
5) A harmful misunderstanding of trauma and mitigating vs. aggravating factors.
Some people seemed to believe that my trauma was a mitigating factor in this harassment. That because I was already traumatised by the rape, my reaction was “inflated,” and therefore Riley was somehow less culpable.
I reject this completely. My existing trauma was an aggravating factor. If you know someone is vulnerable and recovering, and then you sexually harass them at their place of work, you are choosing to harm someone with fewer resources to defend themselves. That’s not somehow better. It’s more cruel.
There was a related misunderstanding: that I was incapable of distinguishing between the rape and the harassment. That I was letting everything blur together.
I don’t believe this came from any real evidence, but rather, from other people’s shame and fear. People really don’t like the word rape. As soon as it comes up, they want to distance themselves so utterly that they frame you as over-emotional, unclear, too traumatised. But it’s not my fault that the word rape is necessary to explain the sexual harassment I experienced. That, unfortunately, was a unilateral decision made by Riley.
Let me be clear: I understand the difference between rape and workplace sexual harassment. I’ve got all my nightmares straight, not to worry. That’s why I reported my rapist to the police and filed a separate harassment complaint at work.
And finally: If you ever find yourself defending an action by reminding the victim that it isn’t as bad as a violent felony, it might be time to take a long and reflective walk.
6) I have encountered so many EAs who believe it is easy for victims to speak publicly, or to share their experiences with other community members. And thus, if they aren’t regularly hearing from victims, harassment must be rare.
I’ve repeatedly encountered the harmful notion that it is easy for victims to speak up; that they are immediately rallied behind, celebrated, and believed. This is not true. I was not rallied behind. I had to put in an unspeakable amount of effort for more than a year, and eventually invoke outside legal counsel, to see what I consider basic recognition.
Speaking about the harassment you’ve experienced is devastating. This is one of the reasons sexual abuse is so traumatic; there is the abuse itself and then there is everything that comes after. The cowardice, the inaction, the minimisation, the gaslighting, the complete lack of empathy, the immense ignorance, the never-ending loss of autonomy. For months, I felt voiceless, powerless, and dehumanised over and over.
I have lost count of the number of statements I’ve had to give disclosing that I was raped, disclosing my health, disclosing the sexist comments I endured, all in front of a neutral audience of people I once looked up to. They sat there, took notes, and occasionally threw out an obligatory, “I know this must be hard.” I should never have had to do any of that. But my only other option was to quietly accept the abuse.
The experience of trying to discuss harassment with any random community member isn’t much better. When I write about this topic publicly, I get comments calling me a narcissist, claiming I’m deluded, too sensitive, and clearly manipulative. I am acutely aware that this post is likely to aggravate my harasser, should he read it, and that fact makes me nervous.
I cannot tell you how many women in this community have disclosed harassment to me that they have not reported to Community Health, that I am not allowed to discuss in absolutely any detail, that must be kept confidential. Coming forward sucks. People say incredibly weird things to you. The vast majority of victims will not do it, nor should they ever have to. They will maybe try to seek justice through internal processes, or they will leave. Often, both. Or, they will simply try to continue on. They may try to utilize whisper networks, but such networks face the same cultural issues. In the worst cases, they will rationalise what was done to them and blame themselves.
To any women who have faced something similar
To any victims reading this: I’m so sorry. Many people will never understand how insidious and painful these kinds of experiences truly are. It is so common to hear them minimized. If nothing else, please know that there are many of us who do see the severity. There are many of us who hurt with you. You deserved so much better.
And if I may say one more thing: if you find yourself relaying what you believe to be exceedingly alarming experiences, and the colleagues or people around you appear by and large unperturbed, or they appear deferential, it is not because you are too sensitive. You aren’t missing something. Often, they just aren’t brave enough to look at what’s really happening.
This community, like so many others, appears comfortable with victims absorbing all the costs of failure. They say “we tried our best, sorry!” and then wait for the victim to acquiesce or go away. As my friend said to me: you can stop fighting any time you want. There’s nothing you have to do. But we are so often told that “leaving quietly” is dignified. That it’s more measured. There is nothing dignified or measured about being asked to deny reality and accept abuse.
You do not have to leave quietly. If you want to, go ahead and become an organisation’s biggest problem. If they fail, they should bear some of the cost of that failure.
Thank you to other victims who have written or spoken about their experiences. You have helped me immensely.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the friends and close colleagues who supported me over the past year. Thank you especially to two friends who stepped in and enabled me to self-advocate more effectively, spending hours teaching me about UK law and helping me draft emails. Thank you to my dear roommates for making Oxford a home. Thank you to my future wife for being the most exceptional person I have ever met in my whole entire life. When I didn’t think I could handle it anymore, you joined me on every call. With the board, the investigator, with leadership. You wrote emails, drafted documents, you gathered advice, gathered support, you called me for hours every single day when we were apart. Even when I was scared, you always made sure that I had the chance to speak. All the best things that have happened to me are because of you. I love you.
Liv Gorton @ 2026-02-27T19:47 (+114)
Thank you for speaking up—it takes a lot, especially when women in EA often face such unproductive engagement for doing so. I'm sorry for what you've been through.
There are so many of us who see the issues you're pointing at and want the community to properly reckon with this. As you say, despite what many believe, victims are often not rallied behind and are too often met with a wave of excuses made for their perpetrator.
I have so much I could say, but for now, you have so much support behind you, and I deeply hope this can be a step towards a safer EA 🩷🩷
Zachary Robinson🔸 @ 2026-03-03T07:59 (+107)
I want to begin by apologizing to Frances. I recognize that she experienced real harm from action and inaction taken by people at CEA, including me, and I wish we had gotten this right from the beginning without Frances needing to advocate for herself at such personal cost. Sexual harassment has no place at CEA or in EA more broadly, CEA made substantial mistakes, and it is important that we do better in the future.
I appreciate that Frances and other readers desire more transparency about what happened here. I want to share some additional context because I want to fully acknowledge the nature of how CEA made certain mistakes and how we need to act differently in the future. I also want to acknowledge there are frustrating legal limitations on what I can share, and by default I will be unable to engage with comments or questions that require further disclosure. To be clear, in no way is any of the information I am sharing intended to change the fact that I fully believe CEA made serious mistakes, for which I am very sorry.
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. We have an obligation as an employer to treat such complaints confidentially, evaluate them seriously, and avoid retaliatory action against the person raising the concerns. These obligations exist in part to avoid creating a chilling effect where employees feel uncomfortable raising HR concerns for fear of negative consequences for themselves.
It is now clear the ways in which our approach was too limited, too focused on following a standard HR process, and insufficiently proactive in recognizing the harmful nature of the contents included with the complaints. The focus on evaluating Riley’s concerns meant multiple staff members made a significant error when they did not identify and investigate the inappropriate and excessive content included within his document. Sharing HR concerns does not require disclosing a colleague’s sexual assault. It was not until Frances first approached the Legal Team in August 2025 to express concerns about the contents of the document that we launched an investigation. CEA should have proactively initiated this investigation sooner, without requiring Frances to act first. Failing to do so placed an unfair burden on Frances to self-advocate during what was an already difficult time. I also want to recognize the ways in which poor communication from CEA staff may have contributed to an experience of feeling like an individual needing to navigate a cold bureaucracy, which could have added to the emotional difficulty of this experience and left Frances feeling uncared for rather than supported. These are real failures for which I am deeply sorry, and I want to name them clearly.
While we cannot unwind the harm that has already occurred, it is important to me that CEA learns and makes improvements to prevent similar incidents from happening again. The forward-looking recommendation from the report was to implement training (which we have begun in multiple forms), but I think it is naive to believe traditional HR trainings would address every issue. In particular, we need to create a culture where there is more organizational ownership and proactivity to prevent and address sexual harassment. We’re laying the groundwork for some of those changes via new staffing (Riley no longer works at CEA, we have a new HR manager, and multiple additional hires are on the way). I also recognize laying groundwork means we are far from the desired end state, and that we will need to work hard to improve instead of offering quick fix solutions. The burden to act should never have been on Frances, and CEA needs to do a better job living up to its values.
Frances, I’m sorry. You deserved better from us.
Fran @ 2026-03-03T18:14 (+204)
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.
bruce @ 2026-03-03T10:01 (+79)
Hey Zach, thanks for the response.
I know you are unlikely to be able to reply to this with anything meaningfully helpful, and this might be frustrating for you, but I just wanted to flag some things that from the outside seem at minimum incongruous.
I've typed this quickly and without visibility into all of the considerations and information you have, so apologies in advance if this is more uncharitable than you'd like. (emphasis in quotes added)
Those concerns were the focus of Riley’s writing, and they drove how our team engaged with and shared (or didn’t share) it. We have an obligation as an employer to treat such complaints confidentially, evaluate them seriously, and avoid retaliatory action against the person raising the concerns. These obligations exist in part to avoid creating a chilling effect where employees feel uncomfortable raising HR concerns for fear of negative consequences for themselves.
Sorry but presumably:
- CEA's obligation as an employer to evaluate complaints seriously also applies to Frances?
- CEA's obligations around confidentiality would also apply to the sharing of Frances' experiences in the doc?
- an employee raising concerns about something doesn't shield them from all misconduct or harassment during the process of raising the concern?
What about the chilling effect of staff not feeling comfortable raising HR concerns, or even working in your organisation because empirically CEA don't seem to take harassment / sexual harassment sufficiently seriously? Does the idea that multiple managers, HR, CEO, and COO of an organisation can allow a sexualised description of an employee's rape (etc) to be spread in the organisation without their consent, disregard an offer from the community health team to step in, and take ~no actions for 9 months not seem like it might have some kind of a chilling effect (or more)? I recognise that it's important for HR concerns to be evaluated seriously but it feels like this standard wasn't applied in any meaningful way to Frances?
It is now clear the ways in which our approach was too limited, too focused on following a standard HR process, and insufficiently proactive in recognizing the harmful nature of the contents included with the complaints.
I hope you appreciate that it's difficult to take this statement seriously; it really doesn't seem like the issue here is that CEA was following a standard HR process, both during the 9 months, as well as after the complaint.
What standard HR processes include “designated walking paths” and “assigned meal times” as appropriate responses? Alternatively, it seems like CEA's 'standard HR process' does not capture the fact that the kind of content circulated might very obviously be considered a separate HR issue? (I recognise you explicitly name some of these failings afterwards and I don't want to discount that, I just separately don't really think it's very convincing that HR was 'too focussed on following a standard process' is a good excuse / representation of what happened, and wanted to call that out.[1]
CEA should have proactively initiated this investigation sooner, without requiring Frances to act first. Failing to do so placed an unfair burden on Frances to self-advocate during what was an already difficult time...
Fair enough! Sorry if I'm reading too much into what might just be ~boilerplate. But acknowledging just the start time of the investigation makes it sound like you agree that this investigation should have been done, and once Frances advocated for this you took this seriously[2] (perhaps bar some 'communication issues' that you acknowlege).
But if:
- CEA's own legal team decided this was harassment
- you later acknowledge[3] that creating a culture that prevents/addresses sexual harassment included staffing changes such as removing Riley, etc;
Then why did CEA propose things like "designated walking paths" and "assigned meal times" the first time round, instead of just taking action at that stage? This doesn't seem like it's just an issue of "CEA wasn't proactive about initiating this investigation", but also one where it didn't take the investigation or HR processes for Frances appropriately seriously! Also, this does not appear to just an issue of Riley, or of HR here. This document allegedly crossed multiple managers, as well as your, and the COO's desk! Should readers be concluding that somehow none of the people involved considered taking further action? Or that they did take more actions and it didn't go anywhere? Or something else?
To be more explicit, right now it doesn't seem like there's any public information I can draw on to rule out something like "CEA took actions that appear consistent with them being motivated more by protecting themselves from legal and reputational risk, rather than because they are primarily interested in the wellbeing of their employees".[4]
Given the seriousness of the situation I hope you understand me holding you to the public standard rather than base this off any positive personal interactions I may have had with you and any other CEA staff!
I also recognize laying groundwork means we are far from the desired end state, and that we will need to work hard to improve instead of offering quick fix solutions.
Part of the issue here is that even the groundwork that has already been laid did not help in this case right? What's the reason the EA community, or prospective employees, should trust that things are different this time around?
(written in personal capacity)
- ^
Perhaps I'd be more convinced by something like "existing processes were grossly inadequate +/- not applied consistently", for example
- ^
"We have an obligation as an employer to treat such complaints confidentially, evaluate them seriously..."
- ^
"In particular, we need to create a culture where there is more organizational ownership and proactivity to prevent and address sexual harassment. We’re laying the groundwork for some of those changes via new staffing (Riley no longer works at CEA, we have a new HR manager, and multiple additional hires are on the way)."
- ^
See also the extent to which the effort CEA put into it changed once Frances informed the board that she was considering going public
bruce @ 2026-03-03T18:51 (+36)
I received this in my DMs and am sharing anonymously on their behalf:
Zach says: "Failing to do so placed an unfair burden on Frances to self-advocate ...", but this seems to be obscuring the fact that she wouldn't even have had a chance to self-advocate if it hadn't been for some member of staff (presumably against CEA policy) sharing the existence of the doc with her. I wonder why this wasn't addressed in the reflections.
Indeed, why is it that when someone did have concerns the thing they did was to partially disclose things to Frances rather than raise it within CEA? This does seem to suggest that people reading the document could feel worried about it, and also might be suggestive of issues with internal culture. I feel a bit worried that this isn't a part of what CEA appear to be taking responsibility for addressing.
WobblyPanda5 @ 2026-03-03T15:51 (+21)
CEA's obligations around confidentiality would also apply to the sharing of Frances' experiences in the doc?
The sharing of the document with people who probably shouldn't have seen it seems to have primarily been done by Riley in the original narrative (which is inappropriate, to be clear). The original post says that the people CEA's HR shared it with was the COO and legal team. That seems appropriate to have done including in cases where CEA handled this well, as they would be the people evaluating if harassment occured and how to respond.
It sounds like a lot of really bad things happened in this case, and it may have been handled really poorly, but I don't think from the narrative that has been presented so far there is strong evidence it was shared inappropriately by anyone except Riley (though of course if the description of the contents is accurate, Riley sharing it is a form of harassment).
Fran @ 2026-03-03T19:12 (+35)
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.
titotal @ 2026-03-03T09:31 (+51)
We have an obligation as an employer to treat such complaints confidentially, evaluate them seriously, and avoid retaliatory action against the person raising the concerns. These obligations exist in part to avoid creating a chilling effect where employees feel uncomfortable raising HR concerns for fear of negative consequences for themselves.
To be clear, your organisation also had obligations not to spread around documents describing an employees experience of rape. A quick clauding points to GDPR protections against sharing "data concerning a natural person’s sex life" . I'm not a lawyer but it seems like HR had a clear obligation to redact those parts of the complaint before sending it to the COO and other people, which didn't happen. And to state the obvious, concerns of a "chilling effect" were unwarranted here: a standard of "you can complain about your colleague as long as you don't sexual harrass someone" is pretty understandable to everyone.
I'm glad that you have gained understanding about the serious mistakes that your organisation made. I remain horrified that it took so long for you to reach this understanding.
bruce @ 2026-03-03T10:10 (+4)
Can you check your claude link? this is what it links to for me:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XxXnPoGQ2eKsQx3FE/data%20concerning%20a%20natural%20person%E2%80%99s%20sex%20life
SarahBluhm @ 2026-03-03T13:27 (+43)
I want to raise a concern about the bigger picture that feels important here, which I’m sharing cautiously because I don’t know all the details.
From the public account, it appears that Riley’s document was circulated among multiple members of leadership and discussed internally for months before Frances was even aware of it, so by the time she entered the process, leadership had already been exposed to (and potentially biased toward) one narrative in detail.
Even if everyone involved was acting in good faith, that kind of sequencing can create a significant imbalance because the other person is unknowingly placed in a defensive position. I imagine I would feel overwhelmed, shocked, and powerless when I found out what had been taking place without my knowledge.
In addition, in situations where there has been prior romantic interest / rejection, I worry there is a risk of retaliatory motivations. I’m not asserting that this definitively occurred here, but given the publicly known facts, that there was romantic pursuit, rejection, and a complaint including (unempathetic and callous) speculation about mental health and a description of a rape, I think it’s reasonable for yellow flags to be raised.
I would want to understand:
• Was the inclusion of sexualized and highly personal material treated as a red flag in itself?
• Did anyone consider how the process creates a big information asymmetry that centers one party’s perspective before the other has a chance to respond?
• Were people aware that when prior interpersonal tensions exist (especially romantic and gendered ones), there is a risk of prematurely treating one party as the problem?
To me, neutrality is not the only concern. Holistic appraisal of the situation is probably even more important. I raise this publicly because I hope that discussion of these risk patterns can help prevent harmful events from playing out in the future.
I am responding completely in a personal capacity and not as a representative of CEA.
Liv Gorton @ 2026-03-03T20:32 (+16)
Others have touched on why this response feels unsatisfying, but on a meta level, I'm not sure responding in this level of detail was the right call. The additional context doesn't really contradict Frances's account and it mostly reframes things in ways that, intentionally or not, read as defensive. If CEA genuinely accepts that it made serious mistakes, I think the stronger move would have been a shorter, clearer apology without any explanatory scaffolding.
I also really hope Frances was informed that this response would be posted and, ideally, shown the specific contents beforehand. Based on her reply, that doesn't appear to be the case. Publishing a detailed public explanation of your side of someone's account of being sexually harassed at your organisation without any notification seems like a pretty significant misstep on its own.
Ivy Astrix @ 2026-03-03T19:46 (+1)
Zach, with all due respect:
It's shocking you/CEA didn't see a victim cancellation document for what it was.
EA has a documented cultural problem, from the TIME magazine article to what happened to Kathy Forth and beyond. Your organization is embedded in that culture and needs to set an example. If the substantive change is 'hiring a new HR manager', it is not good enough.
I urge and implore you to seek expertise outside of EA and your organization that has experience in dealing with these issues, and to be transparent about their findings. If Leverage Research could do it, so can CEA.
The exceptionalism inherent in EA / rat communities leads to actions that work out to corrupt police departments investigating themselves and it really needs to stop.
Charlotte Darnell @ 2026-02-27T22:51 (+88)
Fran, thank you for writing this. This is absolutely horrible to read about. I'm so sorry to hear what you went through. This shouldn't have happened.
I think you've singlehandedly done a lot to improve the experience of women in a variety of EA spaces over the past few years, and you've supported so many people — I deeply hope the community can return that. 🩷
(Disclosure: I work on the Community Health team. This comment is personal, not on behalf of CEA.)
Fran @ 2026-03-01T18:51 (+14)
Thank you so much Charlotte, I will always deeply admire how much you care about issues of sexism and all the careful work you've put in to support this community.
bruce @ 2026-02-27T22:00 (+65)
Thanks for sharing this Frances, really harrowing to read. Echoing Liv/Max's comments above. 💜
After I was raped (outside of and unrelated to work), a colleague at CEA wrote and circulated a document that included a sexualised description of my rape, speculation about my mental health, and commentary on my personal life, all without my consent. Several senior leaders, including the CEO and the now-former COO, received this document and took no safeguarding action for approximately nine months. I was never officially informed of its existence; I only learned about it informally through one of the recipients.
This seems wild? Can someone at CEA comment on why at no point anyone thought to say something like "this is an extremely inappropriate message to write about your co-worker", and notify Frances? What was HR / leadership doing over these 9 months? It also seems like action only seemed to be prompted by Frances going to the board that she was going to share her experience?
Even if someone had a conversation with claude 6 months in, while having 0 empathy, understanding of HR, or legal obligations, it seems like you'd have done better than what happened in practice. Is there an alternative explanation to this being (at least) gross incompetence on the HR +/- leadership front at CEA?
======
Other things in the post I wanted to highlight:
Some people seemed to believe that my trauma was a mitigating factor in this harassment. That because I was already traumatised by the rape, my reaction was “inflated,” and therefore Riley was somehow less culpable.
And finally: If you ever find yourself defending an action by reminding the victim that it isn’t as bad as a violent felony, it might be time to take a long and reflective walk.
Really wild to read this coming from people working at an org in the centre of a movement intending to think thoughtfully about the most important and stakes-y problems in the world.
EA organisations love to foster an attitude of “we’re all on the same team.” But informal processes are more likely to fail victims and enable perpetrators. “Same team” does not work in the face of power imbalances. I would strongly encourage women not to defer to their organisations in these cases. Seek external support, trust what you have experienced, and if applicable, know the law.
I strongly agree with this even in general. EA often strongly selects for 'value alignment' and 'mission alignment'. This isn't an excuse for the organisations and their leaders not to do the bare minimum in terms of basic competence, legal obligations, and just being an empathetic human, but it is surprising (and disappointing) that these things like this seem to happen, and I definitely know other scenarios where assuming this high-trust culture would include trusting you would have made things worse for the people involved.
If you cannot discuss your feelings in the workplace without sexually harassing another person, it’s time to sit down and learn the difference between honest, meaningful, relevant communication and the nonconsensual sexualisation of a colleague.
If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse. You’ve made it structurally impossible.
(written in personal capacity)
Peter Wildeford @ 2026-02-28T20:13 (+60)
Wow, this situation is fucked up. You should never have had to go through all of this. I'm deeply disturbed by how this was handled.
Britney Budiman 🔸 @ 2026-02-28T00:50 (+60)
I'm proud of my friend Frances for writing and publishing this!
I'm impressed by her bravery, patience, and generosity - though of course, I wish she was never put in the position to have to exercise them so thoroughly.
Emerging from such a needlessly onerous experience with one's humor and sincerity intact is no small feat. I am a massive fan of Frances and very grateful for all she's done to make me and other girlies (gender neutral) feel seen and celebrated within EA and beyond 💛
Jason @ 2026-03-02T15:10 (+52)
[This is more from a US perspective.]
If anyone else has experienced or is experiencing sexual harassment, disability harassment,[1] or other discriminatory harassment, I'd strongly encourage consulting an attorney early in the response process. At least in the US, many attorneys offer free consultations in this area because they can get their fees paid by the employer if they prevail in litigation or settle. Doing a consultation does not oblige the victim to pursue formal legal remedies or do anything else.
The employer's largest financial exposure is often to the victim's attorney fees, so a rational employer with a losing case has a strong incentive to provide the employee with appropriate relief early rather than drag the process out.
Also, at least in the US, there is a limited amount of time for filing equal-employment claims (often 180 days).
HR works for the company and is not neutral. The company's attorneys are obliged by the rules of professional conduct to zealously "represent[] the organization acting through its duly authorized constituents" with limited exceptions.
Of course, I understand why some victims choose not to involve legal processes, or choose to defer those processes for a while. I support whatever decision they make on this point. But I thought the comment was worth writing to ensure people knew about their options, to normalize that pursuing legal remedies early is an appropriate option, and to explain why bringing in counsel may lead to a quicker resolution.
- ^
I didn't search, and don't know UK law, but I would be very surprised if the conduct in question were not also harassment on the basis of disability (or perceived disability).
Fran @ 2026-03-02T19:11 (+37)
I think this is a fantastic comment, Jason, thank you for writing it. As you've said, victims should do whatever is best for them in any given situation. I think a lot of victims, however, may be under the impression that bringing in legal representation is aggressive or escalatory. This is what I would have felt. But in reality, you are one person trying to navigate an entire organisation that has both HR and likely legal counsel, whose mandated job is to act in the organisation's best interest. If your organisation truly cares about its employees, they should actually be relieved that you have someone whose job is to represent your interests.
I'm not a lawyer, but in the UK, I think there is a misconception that employment claims are not a thing. They absolutely are, though they're more structured and capped. You also have limited time to bring a claim and the deadlines are fairly strict (https://www.acas.org.uk/employment-tribunal-time-limits). I'm not sure about free legal consultations, but I strongly recommend the Rights of Women UK phone lines, and https://www.acas.org.uk/ is a great resource covering how to submit a formal grievance.
The UK also has minimum definitions for harassment, so even if your organisation does not have its own definitions or policies, you can default to the statutory standard and bring a grievance or claim. A less commonly known but interesting thing to consider: In the UK, you can also join a union independently and pay monthly fees. This is worth considering even before any issue arises, as you can ask your union for advice and you are always entitled to ask a union representative to accompany you in meetings and grievance hearings. In my case, I had my partner join me, though CEA technically could have declined (you are legally entitled to have either a colleague or a union representative present, and you need permission to bring anyone else).
GraceAdams🔸 @ 2026-03-02T04:29 (+52)
You shouldn’t have had to go through any of this. I deeply value you sharing your experience and reflections, recognising the personal toll it can take, on a number of fronts.
I am angry at CEA, their response (and lack of) feels unbelievably bad.
As a woman who leads an EA organisation, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings that I cannot properly express at the moment.
You deserved better, women in this movement deserve better.
John Salter @ 2026-03-01T13:49 (+46)
How Fran goes out of her way to acknowledge the good, even after a genuinely awful experience, is a testament to her truth-seeking.
- She calls the CEO's final apology genuine and says she appreciated it.
- She's enthusiastic about the new HR hire.
- She praises her line manager who otherwise might have faced a ton of undue scrutiny.
Perhaps largely due to this, the comment section has remained unusually civil and constructive for something as scandalous. As bad as it would be to punish CEA for allowing this post to happen, it'd be even worse if despite it nothing changes. I really hope this works out for both parties!
pete @ 2026-03-01T15:52 (+1)
Agreed — really lovely to see.
pete @ 2026-02-28T05:52 (+41)
I’m a little concerned by the lack of response from org leaders (unless I missed something), and I think there’s a risk that CEA leaders and others might under-update from this.
Taking a role at CEA, then angling for growth and greater stewardship/control of the brand, is a bet that you would be a better force multiplier for the movement than the next candidate. We’re now expected to believe that a leader could fail the test described here and still somehow out-strategize or out-work the next best person.
Kudos to Frances for her moral courage in the face of significant obstacles. And kudos to all the org leaders with way less experience and fewer resources who are sweating out the development of their culture, HR processes, and accountability systems. It feels like invisible work but I see it, and my advisees see it.
Fran @ 2026-02-28T19:12 (+63)
Thank you very much Pete.
To your point, it was very difficult watching CEA's strategy conversations about community growth while all of this was happening behind the scenes. I couldn't help but feel devastated and even a little bitter, in the sense of: what's the point of trying to grow the community if we can't even treat people with basic respect within our own organisation?
CEA is explicitly positioning itself to grow the community, take more lead on the brand, and provide stewardship. That means it needs to aim far higher than legal compliance when it comes to integrity and people-related decisions, and yet they appear to have struggled even with that. It's hard for me to know whether leadership has truly internalised what this means.
While I did find CEA's final apology sincere, it was somewhat HR-filtered, as most of CEA's official communication is. Especially when it comes from leadership. On my call with the CEO, many of my questions were met with some version of "I wish I could provide more detail, but I legally can't." I understand that, but it means I'm left unable to tell whether leadership genuinely understands the weight of responsibility they carry, or the true severity of what occurred and what it signals about CEA as a central community-building organisation.
I do hope things get better. But I've been concerned for quite some time, and I remain very concerned.
pete @ 2026-03-01T04:51 (+5)
At this point, it’s been more than 24hr, and CEA’s leadership team still hasn’t responded (on the EA forum, which they run!)
I’d like to explore the idea that the CEA leader(s) involved in mishandling this case should step down. The gap between the organization’s stated goals and the choices made here is wide enough to strain imagination. I’d like someone else to have an opportunity to steward community resources and growth who has not made these catastrophic judgement errors.
It’s possible that I am overreacting, but I’m not confident that’s the case. Frances, again, thank you for your courage. Hope that you are safe and well.
Jason @ 2026-03-01T17:06 (+59)
I agree that this situation raises some serious questions about the suitability of one or more people at CEA to continue in certain roles, but ...
I suspect any response would need multiple layers of review within CEA and possibly by external legal counsel. Depending on the content, they probably should offer to run a response by Fran first. And there are likely to be some constraints on what the response can say in light of legal obligations to current and/or past employees. I think we need to consider that before drawing any adverse inferences from silence after a few days.
It's also likely that there is a tension between individual CEA leadership employees/leaders' interest in convincing the community that they are fit to serve in their roles and the institutional interests of CEA itself and/or the employee/leader's obligations to CEA. The lawyers are certainly bound by attorney-client privilege. So I'd exercise caution in drawing negative inferences against an individual employee or leader without considering that their ability to defend themselves may be compromised.
pete @ 2026-03-01T17:15 (+1)
The substance of my concern is how the issue was handled, not the communication delay — although I do think there are 80/20 ways to respond quickly without undue legal risk.
Fran @ 2026-03-02T21:45 (+14)
Thank you Pete. For what it's worth, I have been told informally that CEA does expect to respond publicly. As others have mentioned, I imagine there are several employees/counsel who need to sign off on any response, and there may be internal disagreement or differing perspectives.
More importantly, I have been told CEA intends to provide "additional context." Personally, I am incredibly hopeful that any added context will be in the direction of meaningful reckoning, rather than attempts to soften various leadership decisions by bringing up vague points around "legal obstacles," or "balancing various employee privacy concerns," and so on and so forth. I think the time for vague hedging, obscuring, gestures at "legality," and softening has well passed.
Edit: Thinking about this more, I understand why some disagree and think I should not set a preemptive frame. To be honest, this mostly came from a place of worry/fear that they would use the same excuses they spent the past year using with me to justify their inaction/dismissal of my concerns. I wasn't expecting such a strong response, and while I sincerely appreciate all the comments and messages I've been receiving, I've also now received a lot of messages from CEA staff so am quite overwhelmed/on edge and struggling to process everything.
SiobhanBall @ 2026-03-03T05:44 (+7)
I think it’s important that CEA is allowed to respond without a pre-emptive framing of how they might respond.
Kestrel🔸 @ 2026-03-01T07:55 (+8)
I have disagree voted specifically because I believe waiting at least 24hr before responding is a good practice, as it allows a global audience who check the Forum once per day to see Frances' post before a CEA response.
Jeff Kaufman 🔸 @ 2026-03-01T20:52 (+10)
Why is it good practice to allow a post to be on the forum for some time before the response is available to readers?
Kestrel🔸 @ 2026-03-01T21:41 (+11)
Not "good practice" as in policy but "a good practice", as I was replying to a comment saying that it was a bad thing that there had been no official CEA response in 24 hours on a platform that CEA owns.
I do not think that quick responses will help this situation. The time for a quick response meaningfully fixing things is long past. And I would think that any attempt to respond too quickly would be CEA attempting to control the narrative developing here in a way that is unfair to Frances and to the EA community. The purpose of this forum is to allow the EA community to meet and discuss things of importance to EA (which this is), and CEA hosts this forum to serve the EA community - not to control its brand image.
I also explained my disagree vote in order to imply that I was not disagreeing with the rest of the post. I do agree that allowing a misogynistic culture to develop to the degree an incident like this could happen is indicative of a failure of leadership capacity in EA's leadership organisation. And this raises questions about if some of the leaders involved here really are the kind of people best able to lead the EA movement.
pete @ 2026-03-01T14:47 (+7)
That seems reasonable, and I appreciate folks’ feedback via agree and disagree votes.
AbsurdlyMax🔹 @ 2026-02-27T20:12 (+41)
Thank you for sharing and I'm very sorry you had to even write something like this at all. You've always been such a clear and communicative writer, and I've admired how you've called out bad dynamics in the community before.
I find it so frustrating that in a community dedicated to doing good, where after all our past scandals we hear so much talk about 'deontic constraints' and 'practicing virtue', where we are all dedicated to creating good outcomes not just good intents, there is still such a pervasive culture of sexism. If we look at so many of the defining aspects of EA it seems mind boggling how some people in the community will react or try to justify to harassment.
Rika Gabriel @ 2026-02-28T10:53 (+40)
Frances, thank you for writing this. I am so deeply sorry — this is distressing to read, and it should never have happened.
I admire you for speaking out. As someone who has personally experienced a situation (at another organisation) where the harm was minimised and the person responsible was protected, I know that this really happens. I agree with many of the points you raise, especially this:
"If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse. You've made it structurally impossible. And this is how you end up with a culture that enables sexual harassment."
Thank you for everything you contributed to CEA. You deserved so much better.
(Note: I work at CEA on the People Operations team. I had no awareness of this, and I'm commenting in a personal capacity only.)
Fran @ 2026-03-01T18:50 (+13)
Thank you so much Rika, I'm so sorry to hear about your prior experience <3 I wish I'd gotten to talk with you more, but it was so lovely to get the chance to work with you and I'm glad CEA has you!
Tom Rowlands 🔸 @ 2026-02-28T07:18 (+35)
Just to echo others and thank you very much for writing this. I'm really sorry you had to. You deserved better.
And on a more minor point, what you wrote about your future wife is achingly beautiful.
Manuel Del Río Rodríguez 🔹 @ 2026-02-27T21:05 (+34)
This was such a harrowing read. Thank you for sharing, Frances. What you describe is both terrible and unacceptable, both the harassment itself and how badly it appears to have been handled for so long. You deserved much better.
keller_scholl 🔸 @ 2026-02-28T21:08 (+33)
That was fucked up and wrong. I'm sad and angry that it happened to you. Thank you, not just for speaking up, but for doing so with such clarity and care.
If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse. You’ve made it structurally impossible. And this is how you end up with a culture that enables sexual harassment.
I think that this is going to be the main generalized point I take away (as separate from, say, my opinions about CEA or EA norms). Sometimes people will lie, and if your structure does not interrogate that you will fail to do right by people. I am, of course, also disappointed in and angry with CEA leadership, including the people who received the document without, it seems, so much as a "what the fuck" to Riley.
Chatting with you was something I looked forward to at every EAG.
Vaidehi Agarwalla 🔸 @ 2026-03-04T15:32 (+32)
Thank you for sharing this Frances, and I'm so sad to hear how difficult the past few years have been. Writing with this much clarity and precision is difficult at the best of times, I can only imagine the amount of work that went into this.
I've unfortunately had to help a number of friends raise issues to community health over the years because of how emotionally taxing and difficult it is. Sometimes, it's also a lack of faith that investing time will actually improve things for the better. And even as a third party, trying to communicate clearly, evaluate whether sufficient action has been taken, manage confidentiality etc are all incredibly high cognitive load and emotional tasks.
While I am very glad you were able to advocate for yourself, I'm so sad that you had to.
James Steijger @ 2026-03-06T15:07 (+27)
On behalf of the leadership team and board of GWWC, I wanted to respond to this forum post that has affected a lot of people across the community, including our own team.
Firstly, Fran, thank you for your courage in writing this. We're deeply sorry for what you experienced, the rape, the sexual harassment that followed, and the painful, drawn-out process of seeking accountability. You deserved far better, and we're grateful you shared this so honestly. We hope you can take some time to rest and heal after all of this.
As an organization working in the same ecosystem, we want to say: we are not immune to the inequalities and harm that exist in the world simply because we're trying to reduce suffering. If anything, our missions make paying attention to these inequalities more important, not less. Thank you for flagging the aspects of our ecosystem’s culture that we need to be extra mindful of.
We want to build an organization and wider community where harassment is as unlikely as possible to happen, and where people are genuinely supported if it does. At GWWC, we and our boards are actively working on strengthening our HR capacity as we grow and have safeguarding, whistleblowing and harassment policies in place. This tragic event and your courageous post only underline the importance of doing this well.
On behalf of GWWC,
Thank you again, Fran.
-James (COO @ GWWC)
Benevolent_Rain @ 2026-03-04T05:45 (+25)
I think we may be looking at this at the wrong level of analysis. Individual responsibility matters and people should be held accountable, but if the goal is to reduce incidents like this, focusing mainly on individual cases probably won’t move the needle much. I’d like to zoom out and consider what this might imply about the male part of the EA community more generally.
I previously used the Boeing analogy: a door falls off a plane and we find the missing bolt. But bolts are not the real problem — safety culture is. The real issue is the environment that allowed the missing bolt to go undetected until the plane was already in flight.
Previous EA harassment cases and EA community surveys suggest many women in EA report gender-related concerns. That points to broader cultural and structural dynamics we should examine.
I suspect many of us men in the community (myself included) should reflect more seriously on how we can improve. Some of this may relate to biases or blind spots that are widely documented in the literature. If so, addressing them would not only improve community culture but also help us think more clearly in general.
I’m not sure where this reflection will lead, but it seems like a necessary first step. A few areas that might be worth examining:
- Norms around dating primarily within the community, especially given the gender imbalance.
- Cultural habits that strongly optimize for direct intellectual exchange and efficiency, sometimes skipping the social rituals that in other communities help build trust and mutual understanding.
More broadly, it might be productive for EA to treat this as a structural issue and proactively implement lessons from the large body of research on reducing harassment risk in organizations.
Sean_o_h @ 2026-02-28T13:58 (+25)
This is appalling to read and I'm so sorry Fran. I don't know what else to say, but I felt I should at least say that.
Toby Tremlett🔹 @ 2026-03-02T08:57 (+21)
I've got so much admiration for you Frances, and I'm so sad that you had to be as brave as you have been.
Cowardice is such a good frame for understanding inaction from bystanders. The desire for everything to be normal and fine is so strong, but we have to fight against it when it just isn't true. I'll be thinking about your words if I find myself in a situation like this.
Thanks so much for sharing what you've been through and sharing this valuable analysis. There's no expectation on you to have any distance from this situation - what you've written is deeply impressive.
(written in personal capacity - not privy to any other info than contained in this post)
Fran @ 2026-03-02T11:45 (+17)
Toby, I'm very grateful to have you as a friend and I'm so glad you're in EA. Thank you to you and your partner for frequently coming over to make small clay creations, which was load bearing to my mental health throughout this past year. I think that was a very brave thing to do, because a lot of the clay creations were very ugly and they sometimes bordered scary.
Toby Tremlett🔹 @ 2026-03-02T11:55 (+4)
Thank you for recognising that act of bravery. Yours weren't that scary tbh, but Lara's appear each time I close my eyes.
ozymandias @ 2026-02-28T17:22 (+21)
This is horrifying, Fran, and I wish I could say I was surprised. Thank you for coming forward.
NickLaing @ 2026-02-28T09:24 (+21)
So sorry about all of this, and I'm impressed by your strength in sharing.
This line rang especially true to me.
"I’m no expert; however, if a prior policy update wasn’t sufficient, perhaps policies aren’t the problem."
policies are necessary but not sufficient. Fundamentally humans have to choose to do the right thing.
Alexander Turner @ 2026-03-04T14:59 (+19)
I’ve repeatedly encountered the harmful notion that it is easy for victims to speak up; that they are immediately rallied behind, celebrated, and believed. This is not true. I was not rallied behind. I had to put in an unspeakable amount of effort for more than a year, and eventually invoke outside legal counsel, to see what I consider basic recognition.
The EA community has a significant undersupply of information from victims of abusive conduct, since the victims are often branded as "triggered" or "irrational". I've heard this from female friends, I've read about this (e.g. in the TIME article), and I myself paid social costs in sharing a different kind of negative experience. Victims often pay significant social costs to talk about their experiences.
Community norms should not impose costs on sharing such information. I'm sorry you had to pay these costs, Frances. Thank you for speaking out. Hopefully this post decreases the cost in these communities. In fact, such important information should be socially subsidized, not taxed (since e.g. speaking out often requires reliving trauma, which is unpleasant; and most of the benefit is external).
Fran @ 2026-03-04T20:43 (+20)
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.
HjalmarWijk @ 2026-03-09T04:04 (+18)
I have thought a lot about this post over the past week, and have felt very upset at how this was handled by CEA. I wanted to thank you (as so many others have) for your commitment to sharing this. I also really appreciated all your cultural reflections, which I expect to sit with over the coming weeks.
If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse. You’ve made it structurally impossible. And this is how you end up with a culture that enables sexual harassment.
This rings true and felt especially insightful to me. I can recognize this instinct in myself to shift too quickly and too often into discussing intent (where 'assuming good intent' is often assumed to be the virtuous path), pulling attention away from the actions and the harms themselves. I want to challenge myself to do better here, and I hope others will too.
Thank you again Frances for showing such courage, which we can all aspire to, but which shouldn't have been necessary.
Flo 🔸 @ 2026-02-28T14:59 (+18)
Thank you so much for writing about this. This insight felt especially important to me:
„If you decide, by default, that everyone in your group is self-aware, well-intentioned, and telling the truth, and you then make their intent a central factor in assessing misconduct, you will almost never find abuse.“
So often EAs are used to everyone cooperating that they struggle to notice when someone is actually doing something bad.
Nina Friedrich🔸 @ 2026-03-04T18:02 (+17)
Fran, I’m very sorry you had to go through this. Thank you for choosing to share your experience publicly. I’m grateful that you were willing to speak about it so clearly.
Reading this left me feeling very sad and shaken. I hope you’re able to take the time and space you need to heal, and that we all take seriously the responsibility to ensure situations like this are handled far better in the future.
sawyer🔸 @ 2026-03-03T16:26 (+15)
I'm so sorry you had to go through this. Every part of this demonstrates your strength and bravery in the face of a hostile and uncaring system (and several uncaring individuals) and I have boundless respect for you.
I'm ashamed that some of my deeply-held values are being claimed and represented by an organization as flawed and irresponsible as CEA. I don't really know what to do about this, and everyone here is still posting on the forum CEA runs, so clearly this conflict has no obvious solution.
Even separate from the value to the community of having your traumatic experiences shared publicly, this is the best piece of writing I've read on sexual harassment in the EA community. You didn't have to write it, and I'm sure it was difficult: On top of the emotional toll of reviewing all of this over and over again, it's just genuinely a lot of work to write something this good.
I will be thinking about this post for a long time.
kuhanj @ 2026-03-03T05:04 (+15)
I am really grateful for your courage, and for making it easier for others to speak up about the mistakes senior people in our community are making. I think the world would benefit a ton from more courage from the EA community for many reasons. Thank you for setting such a positive example.
AïdaLahlou @ 2026-02-27T22:17 (+15)
Thank you for this important and courageous testimony. The response from the CEA leadership / individual co-workers involved was nowhere near appropriate here and you are absolutely right to call it out. It sounds like at least some people have shown some level of contrition after the facts which makes me hope that some lessons have been learned and internalised at a level that goes deeper than just making light amendments to the sexual harassment policy.
This is enraging and I am really sorry you had to go through this.
Midtermist12 @ 2026-03-03T21:10 (+13)
(comment deleted)
Jason @ 2026-03-04T01:42 (+71)
Most of what Frances characterizes as institutional failure, not telling her and not acting against Riley, is actually consistent with proper HR handling. You don't tip off the subject of a complaint and you don't retaliate against the person who filed it.
To begin with, it has not been established that Frances was the subject of the complaint. Two, raising a complaint does not give someone the right to comment on a colleague's rape or on her mental health. If Riley had concerns about Frances, those concerns were potentially valid only to the extent they related to specific work-related behaviors.
So, for instance, it would be relevant for one employee to write that another employee was producing only 50 widgets an hour instead of 60. Speculating that the employee's reduced performance was due to age, tendonitis, or sadness that they lost their dog would be unwarranted.[1] None of those things are the co-worker's business.
Employees are not entitled to write whatever they want about their co-workers and get protected status as "complainants." Especially when they have asked said co-worker out multiple times and been turned down; that raises the specter of a "complaint" as payback.[2]
Proper HR handling would have been for the first person to see the document to rip it up, tell Riley that his comments related to rape and mental health were wildly inappropriate, and tell him that if he wanted to raise concerns they needed to be strictly related to work-related behaviors.
The unanimous 500+ karma response with little critical engagement on a forum that prides itself on epistemics tells us more about this community's appetite for moral drama than about the severity of what actually occurred.
This strikes me as an unwarranted demand for rigor. We have to make decisions based on the evidence that is available. This forum does not have power to subpoena documents or depose witnesses. Here, for instance, we do have the following considerations:
- Frances' narrative is quite specific (and acknowledges when she doesn't have information, such as because CEA has so far refused to turn it over).
- There are individuals and an organization who would have an incentive to controvert Frances' statements if they were misleading -- including CEA and its allies.
- CEA has had an opportunity to respond, has done so, and hasn't to my ears controverted the core elements of Frances' statement. It apparently spent significant amounts of time and its donors money on investigation, so should be in a position to correct material misstatements. It already settled with Frances, so should be in a position to correct most misstatements she might have made without compromising any litigating position.
- Frances has engaged with comments and skeptics, while CEA has stated that it is unable to do so.[3]
- Frances left a post at CEA -- one of the marquee jobs in the EA world -- which is consistent with her characterization that something went very, very wrong here. I am not aware of any evidence that she did so for any other reason.
- There is no dispute that independent investigations found in Frances' favor here.
- Several of Frances' former colleagues at CEA have written supportive messages; those individuals are arguably in a better position to discern the truth than we are (and are unlikely to be biased against their current employer).
What additional evidence do you think is required and reasonably attainable here?
- ^
I'm deliberately picking an example that is clearly unrelated to Frances' work tasks or Riley's statements.
- ^
I decline to speculate on Riley's motivation for writing, but I think it's fair to assert that treating all complaints as privileged from disciplinary action facilitates payback for those who would like to obtain it.
- ^
CEA may have valid reasons for not doing so, and so I don't want to score this too heavily. Yet there is no actual evidence that those reasons exist and are substantial, and I don't think blind and total deference to an organization's claim of inability is appropriate. So I am going to adjust slightly in favor of the reliability of Frances' narrative based on her willingness to engage here.
Dicentra @ 2026-03-04T08:30 (+42)
Two, raising a complaint does not give someone the right to comment on a colleague's rape or on her mental health. If Riley had concerns about Frances, those concerns were potentially valid only to the extent they related to specific work-related behaviors.
So, for instance, it would be relevant for one employee to write that another employee was producing only 50 widgets an hour instead of 60. Speculating that the employee's reduced performance was due to age, tendonitis, or sadness that they lost their dog would be unwarranted.[1] None of those things are the co-worker's business
I want to separate what people have a legally protected right to do and what I feel like they have a commonsense right to do. I have approximately no information other than what's here about what actually went down between Riley, CEA, and Fran. But there are versions of "speculating about a coworker's mental health" that I think are commonsense-reasonable, and to which I'm morally sympathetic, even if they might be imprudent and legally forbidden.
For example, I think that noticing that a co-worker is underperforming and speculating that the co-worker might be struggling and need extra support because you heard that their dog died recently and they seemed upset about it, can be the result of normal human sympathy and desire to raise relevant information. For example, it's the kind of thing that I think a normal and well-intentioned person might raise if they noticed a friend of a friend or a cousin struggling.
I'm not saying that you should treat co-workers exactly the same, and there are no risks to doing so. Obviously there are. And I'm not saying anything about Riley-in-particular's intentions here. I just think that having this kind of condemnatory attitude towards the entire class of behavior that involves ever raising information about potential causes of another's struggles in a workplace feels like a really harsh and cold attitude towards workplace relationships, and I don't like it.
GeethaJ @ 2026-03-04T16:39 (+99)
Hi, Frances' partner here. Just want to clarify/provide context for a few things.
Frances and Riley did not work on the same team and did not share any work projects, and didn't work directly with each other. The only thing they used to share was a room in Trajan their teams used to both work out of. Soon after Frances learned about the existence of the document, she went to community health with concerns as she found it overwhelming to see him in the room she had to work in, and this resulted in community health separating the rooms the teams were working in (after which CEA asked them not to be involved further).
In the 9 months the document was circulated, no one (HR, exec, managers) reached out to Frances with concerns (behavioural or otherwise). We know multiple people were mentioned in the document. We don't know (and may never know) if there were HR complaints made by Riley about Frances, but we can say for certain if there were complaints about Frances, no one thought it was necessary to mention to Frances.
In the summary of the document CEA provided, I read Riley describe how she was raped. This was more than what we initially thought, where we thought it was potentially much more tame , and thought he maybe said something like "she is a victim of sexual violence" based on how leadership was discussing the document with us. When I read the summary, I was shocked to see how descriptive it was. The "subsequent mental health crisis" that was discussed took place entirely out of the workplace, and Frances took medical leave. And when it did happen, we contacted multiple members of her team letting them know what happened and that she would be taking time off, and she communicated with her team and managers often about navigating work after the assault. I feel comfortable saying this document was not written due to concern for Frances' wellbeing, given the document also says "I asked her out two times, but now I'm glad she said no".
I also don't know if there is missing context about the investigations so I will note the investigator pointed out that that he could not see a situation where writing this would be appropriate in his report. And this was after the investigator interviewed everyone involved, so all context was provided to the investigator. Unless both investigators are somehow deeply unqualified and lacking common sense, it stands to reason it did not make any sense to include. My interpretation of Zach's comment and my private communication with him also leads me to believe he agrees, or he would not have asked Riley to leave the organisation. And reiterating Frances' point earlier, Riley refused to apologize, and if you accidentally go too far when discussing someone, it is quite easy to apologize.
Note: Frances is probably going to take a break from this post but I'm happy to answer questions!
Fran @ 2026-03-03T21:18 (+43)
- "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.
Liv Gorton @ 2026-03-03T22:01 (+18)
(This isn't attempting to reply to your comment in its entirety, just a few scattered thoughts in response.)
I think one can separate Frances' concern into two issues:
- The initial failure from her point of view to handle this appropriately, i.e., people read it and didn't flag it as harassment and deal with it at that stage.
- The secondary failure to handle it after she found out and felt hurt.
I think the idea that she has uniquely mischaracterised this document and subsequent failings seems to rely on it being true that the independent investigations are also similarly not representing things properly?
We can totally discard almost everything written in her post and it would still seem pretty obviously true that there was something deemed to be sexual harassment and an indentified failing to handle that appropriately. I think that is a pretty significant failure. I don't know what level of failure to handle sexual harassment is typical ("within the range of mistakes real organizations make"). Given EA's goals, I'd argue it's okay to hold them to a high standard. I haven't seen anyone is calling for CEA or any specific individual to be punished unusually. It's important stories like this get shared publicly so that we can improve, and part of improvement does mean actually acknowledging mistakes properly.
An important flag too in my view is that I don't think a document being written that was messy and poorly communicated is the issue in and of itself. I believe we should endorse people writing documents in a way that feels authentic to them and then it being on their manager for them to help communicate what they're trying to say in the most productive way (I've had a previous manager describe part of their job as helping me take any issues I have in the raw, most honest form, and then turn them into more useful comments).
There's nuance in all situations but I find that sometimes in EA we seek out nuance in ways that doesn't actually always guide us towards improving as a community and instead can just make it very hard for people to voice problems. Of course, it is really important to think critically but that doesn't actually have to be in the comments of a post like this.
huw @ 2026-03-04T06:19 (+17)
Given EA's goals, I'd argue it's okay to hold them to a high standard.
I would go further, and say that given CEA’s specific history and promises of change around sexual harassment[1], we should hold them to an even higher standard than that.
CEA was and is a member organisation of EV UK, and the findings partially concerned CEA’s Community Health Team ↩︎
Owen Cotton-Barratt @ 2026-03-05T21:30 (+11)
I am sympathetic to this.
Like many people, I’ve been following this thread with dismay. I think that Frances’s experiences sound terrible, and seem very unnecessary.
I have hesitated to weigh in on this thread. But I agree that the answers can’t just be at the policy level; and I’m keen to see further discussion about cultural dynamics which may contribute to the issues[1]. At this point I’ve given this question a good amount of thought (though I could definitely still be wrong), so I wanted to highlight a couple of things people might want to consider:
Focus on intent
I’m glad Frances calls this out as a problem, as I think it’s underappreciated as a contributing factor to problematic dynamics. I actually think it has more issues beyond what she lists.
A focus on intent:
- Gets in the way of straightforwardly talking about what kinds of behaviour are good or bad
- Moves attention from “person X had bad experiences; what happened there and how could they have been avoided?” to “is person Y bad?” (which is liable to lead to people coming to Y’s defence, in a way that risks invalidating X’s experiences)
- Sends the (potentially dangerous) message “if your intentions are good, there’s nothing to worry about”
Distrust of moral intuitions
(caveat: not sure I’m naming the truest version of this; but I’m pretty sure there’s something in this vicinity)
I think EA teaches people that it’s important to think through the implications of our actions, rather than relying on unconsidered moral intuitions. Which is correct! But I worry that sometimes people can absorb this lesson too far, and start not paying attention to their own moral intuitions when they don’t have explicit arguments for them[2].
A friend put it to me as “I think sometimes EA accidentally encourages a lack of groundedness”.
Anyway it’s pure speculation on my part to imagine this at play in CEA’s (in)actions. But rather than imagine that the people reading Riley’s document didn’t feel any discomfort, I find it easier to imagine them feeling a little uncomfortable about it but not trusting the discomfort, or orienting in a locally-consequentialist way and guessing that it would ultimately create more costs and be worse (possibly including worse-for-Frances) to escalate it rather than leave it be.
TBC, I don’t think that the right amount of focus on intent or distrust of our own moral intuitions is zero! And I absolutely think that it’s possible to do these in ways that are healthy. But if I'm right, then I kind of want people to be tracking the potential vulnerabilities from going too far in these directions; so wanted to share. I'll default to not posting more on this thread.
- ^
For the removal of any ambiguity, I'm not trying to disclaim personal responsibility for my own past mistakes! But when things go wrong to the degree of causing harm, I think they've often gone wrong at several levels at once; it's useful to look at all of these.
- ^
Or further: discount their own sense of right and wrong in order to defer to people who’ve thought about things more.
bruce @ 2026-03-03T21:31 (+17)
We're asked to believe that HR, legal, the CEO, the COO, and multiple managers all independently failed a basic moral test. More likely, in full context, it read like a messy workplace complaint with too much personal detail.
And we haven't seen it. Everything we know comes from fragments read aloud from memory by a colleague, relayed months later in a post written as advocacy. We don't have the information this thread thinks it has.
I would be much more sympathetic to this if it wasn't for the case that two independent investigations subsequently flagged this as harassment/sexual harassment, including CEA's own legal team, and the apparently massive shift in behaviour after Frances opted for public accountability.
If Riley was complaining about behavioral issues connected to Frances's trauma, and she herself acknowledges worsening PTSD and difficulty functioning, then providing that context in a complaint isn't sexualization. It's explanation. Clumsy, probably too detailed, but meaningfully different from the post's framing.
It's entirely reasonable for someone to submit an HR complaint, and it's entirely reasonable for you guess that Riley was well intentioned and clumsy rather than malevolent. But it's not clear to me what your interpretation of the post's framing is. From my perspective, Frances hasn't made any claims about Riley's intent, but just the impact that the circulation of this document.
Nine months went by and I heard absolutely nothing. No safeguarding steps were taken. The document remained in circulation.
For a while, I tried to block the harassment out entirely. I was completely overwhelmed and simply did not have the capacity to process it. I was already managing a PTSD diagnosis as a result of the rape and an ongoing criminal investigation with the UK police. I no longer trusted CEA’s HR. Not to mention, I didn’t have access to the document myself.
As the months went on, I became increasingly anxious and embarrassed around leadership and those who had read the document. Increasingly dissociated. I began having nightmares about new documents being circulated. My therapist noted my PTSD symptoms were continuing to worsen. When I ran into Riley at the office, I would often freeze. I started eating lunch in my team’s room to avoid the cafeteria, or skipping lunch altogether.
To be clear, I don't think that the focus on Riley's intention meaningfully changes the mistakes at CEA here! I'd type more on this, but here's a good passage on that point.
David Mathers🔸 @ 2026-03-03T23:09 (+13)
It's implausible if this is what happened that Riley would have provided a long detailed description of the rape rather than just mentioning it's occurrence. If Frances was mischaracterizing the document so badly it didn't contain such a description then Zachary could have said that and he hasn't.
AnderMorgan @ 2026-03-02T10:08 (+13)
I'm devastated reading this. I'm so sorry you were put through this. Thank you for speaking out and thank you for writing this post with such grace and honesty.
(Disclosure: I work at CEA. This comment is personal, not on behalf of CEA.)
Fran @ 2026-03-04T05:32 (+6)
thank you Ander, it was a joy to work with you!!
Marcus Daniell @ 2026-03-02T00:36 (+12)
I'm sorry you went through this, and thank you for speaking up about it. I hope the bravery of speaking out results in meaningful change, not just at CEA but across the wider culture.
Nicole_Ross @ 2026-03-06T04:24 (+11)
I’m so sorry this happened, Frances. This is shocking and sounds awful.
I’m also really grateful for what you’ve contributed to EA. Sending care your way.
(Note: I used to work at CEA)
Aletheophile @ 2026-03-02T09:11 (+11)
Thank you for sharing; I think it's helpful. And I'm so sorry you experienced this.
If you ever want to see the document for your own closure, you might look into making a Subject Access Request. My understanding (though I am not a lawyer) is that even in sensitive HR cases or if there are settlement agreements, UK law generally gives you a right to see personal data held about you.
Fran @ 2026-03-02T19:22 (+5)
Yes absolutely, thank you so much! I did end up submitting a full data subject access request so I could have everything CEA has stored on me, as I didn't want to think of something a few months from now and need to email them again. The legal deadline for them to fulfill my request is 08 March 2026. I haven't heard a recent update on it, but they've said they're working on the request with external legal counsel so I'm hopeful I will get everything by the deadline.
Ben_West🔸 @ 2026-03-04T22:00 (+10)
I'm sorry you had to go through this, Fran.
tiarakam @ 2026-03-03T16:33 (+10)
Frances, I am so sorry that you had to go through all of this. To hear it now is absolutely heartbreaking. You shouldn't need to be brave or strong, but you are. I am sorry you weren't given a choice.
Thank you for sharing your experience and reflections. I hope you find the peace you deserve moving forward. You always have had, and always will have, my full support.
Arthur Malone🔸 @ 2026-03-02T17:29 (+9)
Hey Frances, I’m so sorry you had to go through all this. I’m impressed and grateful that you’ve shared your experience. I hope that it leads to positive changes at CEA, in EA more broadly, and just generally in the world because it’s good when these stories are brought to light.
I miss working with you all the time. When you were here, and after you left, I elected to listen to the women around you and not try to inquire about what happened or reach out with uninformed and unsolicited offers to help. But now that it’s out in the open, I hope you know that I’m here for you if there’s anything I can do to support you.
[The above is copied from my comment on Frances's Substack.]
I'm adding a comment here as well because this post now has my blog intro post listed in the "Mentioned in" section. I forgot that this was a thing. I asked Frances if she was ok with me linking her post because I wanted to signal boost her (and she said I was definitely welcome to do so); I really didn't intend for any traffic from her post to be directed to mine. But now that it's there, I want to add more gratitude to Frances for helping inspire me to try to actively help more and start writing publicly.
[Disclosure: I work at CEA. This comment is personal, not on behalf of CEA]
Maxtandy @ 2026-03-05T00:50 (+8)
Thank you for documenting all this so clearly Frances, you're a credit to the community. The behaviour from Riley and subsequent lack of response from many CEA members is really disappointing. A very sad hour. I'm glad there was contrition shown by some parties, and I'm sorry you had to deal with all this, and in some ways are still dealing with it.
Frances is clearly an excellent writer, capable of clear communication and nuance. I'm very impressed at the high quality of this piece. Reading this, I got a sense of how exhausting it may have felt to be in the middle of this, with no clear way out. Ironically, because it did such a good job at cataloguing each step and how it affected her & her model of what was happening, it updated me further in the direction of expecting most victim's whistleblowing/reporting of harassment to be quite messy and jumbled, and that it should be taken seriously and respectfully.
andiehansen @ 2026-03-01T15:53 (+8)
I am deeply grateful to the author for her bravery, courage, and moral clarity in the face of this unspeakable horror.
I'm commenting to share how I feel in response to this as someone who has ran an EA club in 2019, led some EA Virtual Programs, been to an EAGx in 2022, has donated ~$7,000 to EA charities, and is now close to finishing my undergraduate degree.
EA has long had a problem with patriarchy in general and sexual harassment in particular. Maybe this has been getting better (at least with the brand imagery), but top positions are still far more likely to privilege equally-qualified men over equally-qualified non-men. This has been more pronounced in certain areas of EA, like the more rationalist-oriented and AI-centric circles. The fact that these are problems in other subcultures and organizations is no excuse. EAs need to be upstanding moral citizens in all domains of their life, not just when working on top cause areas.
Patriarchal norms create power dynamics that make harm more likely, and remedying this through deep structural changes - not just policies - is essential for EA organizations to achieve their missions.
I have benefitted enormously from EA and I intend to engage a lot more with this community for the rest of my life. If anything, I'm coming back from an extended hiatus where I've focused on my undergraduate degree. I care deeply about making the world a better place and reducing suffering, and EA's principles bring out the best in me. I love the fact that many EAs care so much about animals, some are vegan, and so many are willing to buck the status quo of the crazy consumerist culture we live in to either donate a lot of their income or work in a less prestigious job for an obscure cause. That combination of caring deeply with the heart while thinking carefully about how to do the most good is unparalleled to me.
At the same time, I have felt uncomfortable seeing the sexism and male privilege in EA, which is one of the reasons I distanced myself for several years, especially after the FTX collapse. (By the way, that was another instance where top leadership saw serious red flags and warning signs but didn't take sufficient steps to investigate and correct course.)
All of this is to say that I sincerely hope that Frances' courage here will prompt serious structural changes that make it impossible for anything like this to happen again.
Joseph @ 2026-02-28T01:20 (+8)
Riley also discussed asking me out twice while we were colleagues, once through text and again at a CEA retreat.
In addition to what was written about you and shared, I am shocked that the culture and norms at CEA allowed asking out colleagues. It is very basic professionalism to not hit on, flirt with, or ask out colleagues.
I'm so sorry that you had to endure this, Frances. No one should have such deeply personal information shared non-consensually. I wish that this hadn't happened to you.
Joseph @ 2026-02-28T16:38 (+14)
As of now, this comment has 13 disagree votes. I'd be interested to hear the reasoning behind those. Is this a disagreement with my claim that "It is very basic professionalism to not hit on, flirt with, or ask out colleagues," or is this a disagreeing with some other aspect of my comment?
EDIT: I made my comment in the context of a small organization, and I now see that my previous comment is over-reaching. The context of flirting with a colleague at a company of 10,000 and and multiple offices/locations is of course very different that flirting with a colleague at a non-profit of only a few dozen people. I still claim that people should not be flirting or hitting on colleagues within a small team, where you see the same people at work every day. But I do understand that the context is different if there is a person that is employed by the same employer and you won't have any projects with that person, or you won't interact with that person as a part of your normal work. I also suspect that I simply have different norms/standards regarding professionalism than many of the commenters here.
Dicentra @ 2026-02-28T17:23 (+28)
I disagree-voted with your claim. I wouldn't say it's actively professional, but I don't think it's inherently unprofessional either to flirt with, hit on, and ask out a colleague if neither of you is in each other's reporting chain, and your company has no policy against it. My sense is that this is pretty accepted in most of the large organizations that I know of as a matter of course and not considered bad behavior, nor should it be. Of course, given that you work together ongoingly, it's probably prudent to be especially receptive to any signs that it's making them uncomfortable and stop right away if so.
I also thought the tone of your comment was snide and unpleasant, and also just overconfident: most large companies I know don't have a policy against their employees asking each other out (e.g. here's an old discussion of Google and Facebook's policies), so I don't know why you would think would or consider it so obvious.
This is completely separate from the matter Frances is discussing about having a document discussing her rape shared among her colleagues, which sounds exceedingly distressing, and I have a hard time thinking of a reasonable justification for.
ozymandias @ 2026-02-28T17:19 (+25)
I think it's obviously inappropriate to ask someone out at a work retreat (and obviously inappropriate for people to date people in their chain of command, etc.). But I don't think that colleagues asking each other out is always unprofessional, if they know each other outside of work and if a "no" is respected. For a reducto ad absurdam, Google employees don't have to avoid dating all 180,000 other Google employees. Clearly, in a smaller organization, asking people out is more fraught and often wise to avoid. But I don't think it's wrong 100% of the time. I have dated work colleagues before without a problem.
(TBC I don't mean to defend Riley's behavior here, which clearly crosses a line.)
Jason @ 2026-03-01T22:15 (+19)
Another problematic element of Riley's behavior here is that he asked multiple times.
Conditional on asking out a colleague being otherwise acceptable, I submit that it is acceptable exactly once. The best potential argument against a broadly applicable no-asking norm -- that it constitutes employer interference in the highly personal decisions of two people who may both want to pursue something -- is significantly attenuated when Person B is already aware of Person A's interest and can follow up if they change their mind.
An opt-in solution might be preferable here -- such as a norm or policy against asking out colleagues with whom you have more-than-superficial contact at work [1] unless they have (e.g.) opted in on a third-party website (either generally or specifically with respect to you).
- ^
I mean to exclude cases like: there are 1,000 employees and you may see this person across the cafeteria once or twice a month.
Dicentra @ 2026-02-28T20:39 (+11)
I see that you've now made an edit noting that your comment was specifically about small organizations. While I agree that the concerns about asking out colleagues and flirting with them are larger in a smaller organization than in a huge organization, I still definitely don't think it's obvious that such behavior should be disallowed (in fact, I believe it should generally be allowed, as long as people aren't in one another's reporting lines).
Denkenberger🔸 @ 2026-03-01T03:39 (+23)
Quick searching indicates that it is generally allowed in small orgs. Also, in general, ~10% of people meet their spouse at work.
Tristan Katz @ 2026-03-01T17:50 (+3)
For what it's worth I'm also surprised by the reaction. Within government departments in NZ (where I worked before) this is not allowed. Of course it still happens but it seems good to me for the organization to discourage it.
*Edit for spelling
Ebenezer Dukakis @ 2026-03-05T13:23 (+7)
It seems to me that EA has still not updated enough from SBF, and is too willing to trust other EAs and assume they are good actors. Maybe EAs need to offer each other less benefit of the doubt, and reduce incestuous hiring practices which deprioritize work experience from outside the EA community. Having some more "outsider" type employees could help address groupthink where everyone updates based on everyone else apparently believing that a particular response is appropriate.
Furthermore I suspect that the "we are all on the same team" mentality can also exacerbate groupthink, e.g. in this particular case it might've been helpful if a particular person was explicitly chosen to be Fran's advocate, to reduce the burden on her and steelman the case that specific actions are necessary. More generally it seems like the community could potentially use a dedicated survivor advocate, who interviews survivors and lobbies for specific changes. Even now it seems like there still hasn't been a compassionate and effective "root cause" post-mortem of this incident.
Cian M @ 2026-03-03T20:51 (+7)
I’m so sorry you had to go through this Frances. It was horrible to read. I’m very disappointed in CEA, and grateful to you for writing this. You deserved much better.
(Disclosure: I work at CEA. This comment is personal, not on behalf of CEA.)
Henry Stanley 🔸 @ 2026-02-28T22:51 (+6)
Don’t have much to add except that this sounds exceptionally fucked-up and I’m sorry you had to go through it.
SiobhanBall @ 2026-02-28T23:03 (+5)
I appreciate the courage it takes to write about this so publicly, and I hope the supportive responses have been helpful in light of both your experience and the broader cultural reflections you’ve shared.
From a community learning perspective, the document itself is central. Much of the harm and the organisational failure relates to how that document was written and interpreted internally.
Shakeel Hashim @ 2026-03-04T12:10 (+3)
I'm so sorry to read this Frances. What you've gone through is unimaginably awful, and I'm in awe of your bravery at posting this.
I don't particularly have a desire to get into a debate with anyone about this, but IMO the behavior from senior leadership you outlined in this post ought to, in my opinion, count as behavior that should lead to resignations (more than have currently occurred).
(Disclosure: I used to work at CEA.)
Ula Zarosa @ 2026-03-07T22:26 (+2)
Dear Frances,
Some personal thoughts on this:
First, I am so sorry this happened to you. This is extremely bad, and it was horribly handled!
Most of all, thank you for having the courage to write this post, but also for an extremely good analysis of the community, of what could have been better, of patterns that repeat. I am impressed by how on-point, clear, and well-thought-out all of your observations are! It is exactly what needed to be said!
Please remember about those in the community who are on your side, because we want not only to do good, but also to be good! Don't know what else to say. Thank you for sharing this.
Huge lesson for us all!
I hope you got apologies from the people who circulated the document. Seriously, guys, 11 people, have you ever heard of ethics?
Anyways, @Julia_Wise🔸 @Catherine Low🔸 @Charlotte Darnell @Lisanne van den Bosch @Marta Strzyga 🔸, can you make sure the person who harassed Frances is no longer part of this space and EAG events? We're a community for doing good, not harm; as an independently confirmed harasser, they clearly don't belong here. I hope this is obvious.
Ceren D. Karabulut @ 2026-03-03T12:27 (+1)
I am so so sorry that you have to went through all this... It is terrible, shocking and heartbreaking to hear. Thank you so much for sharing and wishing you all the strength in the world. 🙏🏻🙏🏻