While I understand that people generally like Owen, I believe we need to ensure that we are not overlooking the substance of his message and giving him an overly favorable response.

Owen's impropriety may be extensive. Just because one event was over 5 years ago, does not mean that the other >=3 events were (and if they were, one expects he would tell us). Relatedly, if it indeed was the most severe mistake of this nature, there may have been more severe mistakes of somewhat different kinds. There may yet be further events that haven't yet been reported to, or disclosed by Owen, and indeed, on the outside view, most events would not be suchly reported.

What makes things worse is the kind of career Owen has pursued over the last 5+ years. Owen's work centered on: i) advising orgs and funders, ii) hiring junior researchers, and iii) hosting workshops, often residential, and with junior researchers. If as Owen says, you know as of 2021-22 that you have deficiencies in dealing with power dynamics, and there have been a series of multiple events like this, then why are you still playing the roles described in (i-iii)? His medium term career trajectory, even relative to other EAs, is in the top 20% of pathways that would make these kinds of mistakes happen more, rather than less, often. 

The fact that there has never been precisely the same mistake made twice should give little comfort, while the admission that mitigating these problems has gone "more slowly" than it should is worrying. Problems with sexual harassment usually have a lot to do with personality, so it should not be surprising that this behaviour has been hard to change with therapy.

Owen's altered duties are somewhat underwhelming. His departure from the EV UK board is acknowledged as a temporary one, and while new mentoring connections are currently on hold, existing mentorship will carry on. The planning of events is currently suspended, but participation in them is permissible. Moreover, it is framed as a question of "when" he will resume these responsibilities, rather than "if".

Owen attempts to insert himself into the conversation regarding governance measures. However, the act of a board member providing their opinions to the community health team could potentially disrupt efforts to uncover the truth of what occurred.

So I don't believe that the apology was very reassuring. But what concerns me more is that from skimming the forum, one may think that forum readers are taking Owen's side here. I think two things are going on. Firstly, few seem willing to speak against Owen due to his still considerable power in the EA community (that he indicates he intends to cling onto), so there is an imbalance in the comments. Secondly, people like Owen and his writing, and face cognitive dissonance in contemplating that he might be a bad guy, so there is an imbalance in the votes (e.g. between this post and the one from the EVF board). Understandable though this may be, it could have a chilling effect on those who have their own cases of sexual assault to report. I realise that we are a community who prize ourselves on thinking about the big issues, and striving to do the most good. But here I worry about our ability to handle the basics. For me, it's a matter of decency - we should make righteous whistleblowers feel comfortable, rather than backing powerful members of own tribe. 

I feel there's a bit of a "missing mood" in some of the comments here, so I want to say: 

I felt shocked, hurt, and betrayed at reading this. I never expected the Oxford incident to involve someone so central and well-regarded in the community, and certainly not Owen. Other EAs I know who knew Owen and the Oxford scene better are even more deeply hurt and surprised by this. (As other commenters here have already attested, tears have not been uncommon.)

Despite the length and thoughtfulness of the apology, it's difficult for me to see how someone who was already in a position of power and status in EA -- a community many of us see as key to the future of humanity -- behaved in a way that seems so inappropriate and destructive. I'm angry not only at the harm that was done to women trying to do good in the world, but also to the health, reputation, and credibility of our community. We deserve better from our leaders.

I really sympathize with all the EAs -- especially women -- who feel betrayed and undermined by this news. To all of you who've had bad experiences like this in EA -- I'm really sorry. I hope we can do better. I think we can do better -- I think we already have the seeds of something better -- but first we need to look hard at what we're not doing well.

(Also: I think this apology was necessary, and was also unusually well-done, but I disagree with another highly upvoted commenter about it being "healing". The revelation that Owen Cotton-Barratt did this feels very damaging to my relationship with the UK EA community -- which typically does so much better than the Bay Area community on metrics like this! I hope that healing and a degree of rehabilitation can come in time, but I personally feel that talk about healing, redemption, etc, is somewhat premature, and that now is the time to pause for people's hurt and grief.)

Thanks for everyone's contributions. I am learning a lot. I see that the author made significant mistakes and am glad he is taking action to correct them and that the community is taking them seriously, but I want to make a small comment on the sentence "She was in a structural position where it was (I now believe) unreasonable to expect honesty about her experience." I don't know enough about the specific relationship in the post to comment on it directly, but felt it could describe enough dynamics that it could use a diverse array of perspectives from women in the structural positions described.

I want to encourage other women in early stages of their careers like myself to continue striving to overcome shyness. I don't think it's too much to expect us to be honest if we dislike a higher status man flirting with us who doesn't have direct power over us, or if we dislike any other thing they do.  I hope this post encourages shy lower status women to feel like they would be heard if they were assertive about behaviors they don't like, that one way of making the behaviors stop could be to be more direct.  

I also think in general the Ask Culture norm prevalent in EA is very helpful, and that we should all work to ensure it continues. Cultural norms are so diverse that Guess Culture doesn't really work in cross-cultural environments like EA. 

Lastly, I want to defend dating within EA between people who don't have professional interactions that produce conflicts of interest, but do have different statuses within the movement. EAs are often so unique that building a life with someone in the movement can be very high impact, and  we will never all be the same status at the same time. If there was mutual attraction between myself and a man who happened to be higher status in EA than me, but he didn't pursue a relationship because he felt he couldn't trust lower status women to be honest based on this post, I would feel insulted. Outside a work environment, I want to be viewed as an equal able to speak my mind.

I don't have enough upper class experience yet to be confident what norms would be best on net for EA. I come from a blue collar background where workplace gender relations are more catered to assertive women, and am open to being wrong about how much they could apply here. I just felt like this conversation was benefiting a lot from the voices of early-stage career women that are more shy than me, and that voices like mine have been underrepresented so far. 

I'm sorry to be pushing on this when it seems like you are doing the right thing, but could you elaborate more on this sentence from the article?

After that leader arranged for her to be flown to the U.K. for a job interview, she recalls being surprised to discover that she was expected to stay in his home, not a hotel.

Why was she being put up in your house and not a hotel, if you weren't affiliated with the group she was interviewing for? I think this is the part a lot of people were sketched out by, so more context would be helpful. 

context: I'm relatively new to EA, mid 20s, and a polyamorous woman. Commenting anonymously because I am not yet totally "out" as polyamorous to everyone in my life.

I feel that this post risks conflating and/or unfairly associating polyamory with poor handling of power dynamics and personal/professional boundaries. Such issues can overlap with any relationship structure. Sexual misconduct exists throughout our society, and throughout both monogamous and non-monogamous spaces. 

I've experienced a range of sexual misconduct prior to my involvement in EA, and so far have found my dating and professional interactions with men in EA to be high quality, relative to high personal standards. In particular, the openness to and active solicitation of feedback I've experienced is something I've never really experienced outside of polyamory within EA. Since I learned about EA thanks to polyamory (not the other way around), I think I have a pretty different experience than that shared by women in the Time article. Their experience is not a representation of what polyamory done well actually looks like.

Additionally, the Time article fosters skepticism about restorative justice approaches to  repair following sexual misconduct, and fails to provide context on how broadly such approaches are being adopted in the Bay Area outside of polyamory/EA, due to severe limitations of the legal system (I first encountered the term restorative justice in a racial justice context, before I knew anything about EA). I support restorative practices that balance accountability with growth and forgiveness. Therefore, I appreciate that Owen has shared this publicly, which helps others grow. Our society at large still has lots of room for progress on healing sexual and gender dynamics.  I think that both the people directly involved (Owen and the woman who reported the incident in the Time article), and those indirectly involved (such as Julia at CEA), deserve compassion and support in learning and growing from this. 

Trust is a fragile and important thing in relationships and in communities. Trust in a community happens when its individuals and institutions are living in accordance with their shared values. Transparency helps foster trust, so I think being open about this was an important step towards strengthening that trust.

Thank you for sharing. In particular, I find your mention of shame vs edginess interesting.. But I expect that at least one person reading your story will think "Uh sounds like you need more shame, dude, not less" so I'd like to share a perspective for any such readers: 

If I understand Owen anyway, I'll say that I relate in that I also have had some brazen periods of life, prompted by a sort of cultural rebirth and sex-positive idealism. An outsider might have labelled these brazen periods as a swinging of the pendulum in response to my strict religious upbringing, but that isn't quite right.. It's hard to notice how it is related to shame but in my case:

For a very shame-prone or shame-trained person, it can be very difficult to parse out "What is the actual harm here? What are the actual bad acts and why, when I know that most of these things I'm programmed to feel shame about simply are not wrong or shame-worthy?" This can lead to a sort of idealistically-motivated throwing out of all feelings that look like shame. Anxiety, hesitance, guilt, and self-criticality are examples of possibly-adaptive-feelings that can be mistakenly thrown out here. This, I think, can lead to social permissiveness and lack of boundaries (you might call it "edginess") to a problematic extent. Ironically, I can see this happening more for the people who have been most shame-prone because those are the people for whom shame has been such an omnipresent guide that "feeling something similar to shame" actually loses most of it's compass potential without highly tuned emotional intelligence. Additionally, when such people throw shame out as a compass, they might find that other social-guiding inclinations (social skills which help you realize the unstated preferences of others) are underdeveloped. This is, I think, more likely the more you have used shame as a compass, especially if it was your primary compass during your whole developmental years.

It's actually pretty hard to express in language, but I hope I have helped share one perspective on how, ironically, more shame can lead to worse behavior for a certain type of rational person, especially in their younger, not-at-all-wise-yet, years.  

I found reading this document somewhat healing*, and I bet I am not the only EA woman who has**. With transparency and accountability, maybe we can move forward as a community.  I'm hopeful to know that you are prioritising getting the help you need, and I hope other EA men follow suit. I hope that your therapist (or coach) helps you to develop other (non-shame) social compasses for sorting truly unhelpful acts from neutral or helpful acts. Long periods of focused tumult-free reflection are also important, so I'm glad you are putting polyamory and any extra obligations like board responsibilities on hold til you have things sorted. ***
 
[*Edit 1: "Somewhat healing" = I've been thinking about SA in EA for months now (ramping up since September but obviously peaking now). And my mind has come back to this (Owen's) incident a lot. Why this incident? Well it is probably the most egregious incident in that Time piece that there has (til today) been no public clarity on. I have every day since the Time piece thought to myself "So, who is that man? This one seems the most likely to still, today, be strongly connected to EA. Do we need to be concerned about this actor?" It's embarrassing to admit that it has consumed my mind this much recently, but I think other community builders are struggling similarly. So, this post somewhat heals 3 things for me: (1) this extra-worrying incident can be crossed off the list as handled without a doubt, eg that's one less potential predator or reputational risk around. We don't have to worry about that actor anymore. (2) The man himself is actually stepping up to take responsibility for it. That's one less man's scandal or misconduct that EA women have to clean up/monitor/apologize for. I feel healed in expectation that I and others might be able to get some of our energy back. I am acutely aware of how much energy men's mistakes here cost women (women who are often supposed to be working on other altruistic questions!) (3) this post is also a model for how other men can clarify their pasts. I hope to see more of those Time incidents handled or somehow clarified, (although I still wish it could have happened in a different way). So this post might even signal further upcoming clarity, which will be what the community needs to move forward. And having hope that EA can move forward, improved, and back to impact, is healing too.]

[**Edit 2: I've gotten some fair pushback on the "I think I speak for a lot of EA women" phrasing I had originally. I modified the language to more what I really mean. I don't presume to speak for all readers or any single reader. It would even be perfectly valid if this were your moment of peak fury or despair.. like maybe that's right for you. Personally I am able to take healing from this post, and I bet I'm not the only one who is finding something positive to take out of it]

[***Edit 3: Some people feel this particular paragraph is too warm, and feel it's an example of dialogue being gentler toward men than women. (1) It felt humanly natural for me to flow into my own thoughts once I'd crossed that shame writeup off my list. That was a mistake and in future I'll just start a new comment. (2) I don't regret being warm and leaving out affirmations of ill-fit, because sitting below my comment as I was composing mine was another comment saying how distraught they were at reading this post, and how disappointed in Owen. I did and still do think it was equally important (in expectation to the first part of my comment) for Owen and for this community that someone share a different perspective on reading the piece and also like, wish him well rather than pile the guilt on. Frankly I expected more negative sentiment toward him to come (which has), and some of these responses would make me straight up want to die if I were OP. I don't want anyone to feel that way. The woman seems to have forgiven him herself so I presume no reason to withhold compassion myself.]