The post on the allegations against the museum volunteer caught my eye and intersects with personal experience:

Last year, I had the rather unpleasant experience of being accused of sexual harassment by an employee with “issues”. The entire organization had known that she has issues for a long time but never managed to deal with her. Screaming matches with other employees, attributing normal performance lapses by the only employee she supervised to great moral defect and accusing the employee of “timing” her vacations to cause disruption were just the prelude to incidents like walking around the hall pointing a banana like a pistol while saying “bang bang” and “pow pow”. On the troubled employee checklist- hits seven of ten warning signs. I've literally been asked "what are you going to do when she finally snaps and brings a gun". Even her benign habits: placing a magazine with a picture of Sandra Bullock in the same position on her desk before scheduled absences-are creepy.

Of course telling said employee that pointing a banana like a gun was inappropriate brought tepid support from higher management. in the "real" world, it gets you a termination or a requirement to obtain counseling as a condition of continued employment.

My immediate superior looked at a performance appraisal with carefully documented “critical incidents” supporting a less than satisfactory rating in “interpersonal relations” and told me “don’t give her anything less than satisfactory, I don’t want the argument”. Of course his boss was a woman who has a reputation for aggressively guarding other females in any dispute with a male. Apparently, no matter what, its an important part of the ya ya sisterhood to believe ANY complaint lodged by a woman against a man is valid, ipso facto.

So when this employee grew tired of attempting to leverage an imagined club of a shared academic credential into allowances for tirades with excuses like “it's passion” and erratic attendance with vague assertions of ill health such as “I could be dying”, it was time for “Plan B”.

Plan B consisted of writing 9 (nine)laboriously handwritten pages of fantastic claims ranging from death threats to sexual contact during work hours (in full view of other employees and in positions that could only have resulted in injury given our relative sizes).

Still, the law is the law and no claim can be dismissed no matter how unlikely-or ridiculous. I could only answer the calumny with indignity. "Do you know what I weigh?"; "Do you honestly think nobody would've seen that"? As I thought about how these accusations were the equivalent of shooting in my house; I really had to withhold what I was thinking. I really wanted to ask "do you think I'm going to casually toss my marriage, profession, job, freedom and everything else into the cra**er on a chain-smoking, gravel-voiced Margaret Hamilton look-a-like with a disaffection for shampoo"?

Thanks primarily to an auditor’s obsession with documentation and the absolute lack of any evidence to support this bitter individual’s calumny, I was delivered the results (after three months of bureaucratic review) that there “was no credible evidence to support the claim(s)”.

Keep in mind, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. But hey, HR isn’t there to get the truth, to exhonerate the innocent -just to limit legal liability,

Just because some allegations weren’t treated properly in the past, doesn’t mean everybody claiming an assault is being truthful. Some are liars, some need psychiatric help. I don’t know exactly how nuts this person is, but a few months after the incident , she approached me to complain that “I sense there’s tension between us, and I’m not going to bring up the past or ask for an APOLOGY…”. I again gagged down the impulse to tell her to get a shrink.

Said employee, protected by the law from “retaliation” suffered nothing by the creation of a series of lies-in fact HR (described by cartoonist Scott Adams as “like lawyers, only without the charm and verbal skills”) couldn’t even suggest badly needed counseling. Oh and I had to get my own legal counsel. HR told me this charming bit; if you're a manager long enough, you'll be accused.

Now its routinely asked why would a woman lie about such a thing? Well, PEOPLE lie all the time. Men lie, women lie. Neither sex is immune; even if the subjects and motivations for spinning a whopper are different.

Actually, it turns out phony allegations are rather useful-an accused supervisor providing reasonable performance counseling and discipline can be accused of “retaliation” (needless to say, I never go into a room with this individual without a witness).

So if you don’t remember Tawana Brawley and the Duke Lacrosse cases-remember this: there’s a dam* good reason for the presumption of innocence. An accusation is just that, so before you file this under “Things we don’t need”, file it under “Reserve Judgment”.

In any case, even IF it’s true and IF its proven in court; its not WE who committed the deed. There's no we, just as if it turns out the allegations can't be proven or are disproven; all women aren't guilty of lying.

May Catharine Alice MacKinnon and her minions burn in hell.

Since I authored the post title in question I will gladly amend the title to be more precise:

"File under: 'Events that can't be considered helpful to the public image of railway preservation.'"

Please note carefully the limits of the statement--it does not presume anything about whether the charges will be sustained as the case proceeds. It simply points out something that borders on a truism: having a museum director charged with a felony is not good publicity.

Ah yes, isn't this world of political correctness, frivolous lawsuits and libbers just great? When is plain common sense ever going to make a comeback.
I lost a job of over 26 years over the same kind of PC garbage, not harassment, but something equally as stupid. True harassment should be dealt with. My philosophy with my lady employees was never to say, do or treat them any differently than I would want my wife treated. As I said, common sense............

Unfortunately, there are cretins out there that treat their wives or significant others in such a grotesque fashion.

"Please note carefully the limits of the statement--it does not presume anything about whether the charges will be sustained as the case proceeds. It simply points out something that borders on a truism: having a museum director charged with a felony is not good publicity."

It may not "presume" anything, but it does spread the charge prior to adjudication.
If I had my way, no charges would be published until there was a conviction, but that will never happen with the printed press in an economic shambles. It may be a rhetorical shortcut to posit that something "borders on a truism", but it doesn't exempt it from examination.

In any case, one of two things has occurred here; either a criminal sexual assault or what should be an equally abhorrent felony-but I suspect, if it is codified as such-is rarely prosecuted, rather disposed of with plea deals involving mandatory psychiatric treatment.

Assume for the minute that the prior is true; should everybody working as a museum director; or just working in a museum be sullied by the actions of an individual? Or maybe the "we" should be all men. How far should the net be cast?

If the other possibility is true-that the charge is fabricated should women (or more precisely victims of sexual assault) be posting something on the order of "this doesn't bode well for us?" I think not, as the validity of this case doesn't offer anything to suggest about the validity of another.

In any case, until this man has his day in court, I do not think its fair to spread the charge beyond the confines of that court, unless you are going to keep watch on the outcome of the proceedings and trumpet his potential exoneration as a "thing we really need". Of course, keep in mind the exonerating verdict is "not guilty", not "innocent".

My sole experience in a criminal proceeding-as a juror-makes me believe that in spite of all of the rules of criminal procedure-there's an awful lot of theater involved, but its far better than most other criminal tribunals, elsewhere or in the past-and its the best thing we have in an imperfect world.

Years ago, a well known railroad videographer was the subject of rumors of scurrilous charges; there's no need to identify the individual or repeat the charges-nonetheless, I remember some people just assuming where there's smoke, there's fire. The sneers, the visible revulsion were all done without even so much as a newpaper article or an indictment, just rumor. The court of public opinion is brutally unfair and its standard for evidence shockingly low. One long dead cleric is said to have advised a chronic gossip in his flock to ascend to the top of a tower and disperse the feathers from a pillow and collect them all after they were out. After weeks of trying, the individual returned to the cleric in exasperation saying he couldn't collect all the feathers. The cleric then drove home the point that freely dispersed gossip can't be reclaimed either.

There's plenty of stuff that needs to be pointed out; but I think long before the public avers from visiting a railroad museum because of the publication of this or any other criminal charge in some other museum, they'll be making that decision based on the experience of friends with other railroad museums (stuff to do? food nearby? enough potties?, or the nebulous "so how'd you like it")

I cannot agree that it is always unfair to discuss a criminal charge in advance of a conviction--that would imply that we could not, for example, discuss the Holocaust Museum shooting case until the shooter is convicted--yet discussion of it now is helping museums reevaluate security procedures.

And I will personally commit to doing as you ask: I will follow the Ohio case and I will make the outcome known here when it is available.

And with that, I've said my peace.

I've seen a couple of good men lose their jobs over the mere accusations of sexual harassment, and neither time were they guilty. Why do I know this? Because at the time of these transgressions, we were out of town working on a project. The female in question was many things which are not printable in a family setting, and not a very good employee (she was also" very friendly" with the boss), and after the event in which those two lost their jobs, she was PROMOTED to a senior management position! They later sued and won, but their reputations were trashed. How are they going to get that back? As a boss or work closely with women, it leaves you in a very touchy situation. A rule I have adopted is never be alone with them,and always have a witness (or two) to make sure there is no issue regarding even the allegation. Even that might not be enough. I know these things can and do happen,but it scars everyone who has it happen to them. I know there are women who read this board and it would be interesting to hear from them concerning this issue.