The crisis of sexual harassment in Pa.’s political circles must end

Survivors of sexual harassment and assault know the truth. Our bodies, our voices, our talents, and our trauma have all been treated like political currency: off-the-record news tips to reporters, gossip for the campaign trail, and fodder for mail pieces.

As a survivor of abuse at work — multiple times over — I know that the solutions to end sexual harassment and retaliation in state government will not come from politicians policing themselves. In response to recent allegations made against Pennsylvania lawmaker Mike Zabel, state Democratic leaders told reporters in a statement, “We are concerned by the allegations we learned today, and take such accusations seriously.”

This dishonest response is an insult to all of us. The allegations were not new. When it came to the accusation filed by the lobbyist Andi Perez, House Democratic leadership was abundantly aware of sexual misconduct since 2019.

Rather than hollow words of concern, our state government needs an independent watchdog to oversee personnel policies that allow abusers to maintain their positions of power without consequence. Until a better system is proposed, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and its state counterpart, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, should oversee the vetting of any claim that comes forward.

Both major parties will always put their own political objectives ahead of the well-being of their staff and the public. House Republicans declined to pass any reforms when they were in power, either. A self-enforcement model of reform was not satisfactory then, and it is not enough now.

I’ve read the House rules that just passed. They do not ban the practice of handing out taxpayer-funded settlements paired with nondisclosure agreements. They allow for blackout periods on the investigation of claims around elections, and these rules can be changed as a new session begins, creating a completely unstable foundation for trust for someone considering coming forward. Subpoena power has been handed to a group of elected officials with no requirement for legal training and no accountability to the ethics rules that judges must uphold. Survivors of illegal behavior — including sexual harassment, discrimination, assault, and retaliation — will be required to file their complaints under oath but without being initiated into a judicial process where they’d have more rights, a benchmark that is as punitive as it is impractical.

The rules purport to ban retaliation but do little to go into detail about what retaliation is. These are empty words and definitely not a promise to workers or the taxpayer. The laws that allow retaliatory defamation lawsuits to be filed against victims of this abuse and against newspapers still remain on the books. Additionally, they will go back only five years and broaden the scope of who a victim could be, but also note that the perpetrator must be in the midst of their “official duties.” Campaign workers and the larger public are completely unprotected, and harm caused before someone is elected to office won’t be considered.

We need legislation to ban the use of taxpayer dollars toward these settlements. Those settlements should come from the perpetrators themselves. We also should ban nondisclosure agreements that silence survivors. They should only be used to protect the identity of someone who has faced abuses at work, not to prohibit someone from speaking out about their experiences. We need to end strategic lawsuits against public participation that cast fear in the hearts of those who have been harassed and abused by powerful men.

The only way to know the full scale of harm being perpetrated is to end the culture of silence and the narrative of partisanship when we know both parties are allowing abuse to happen on their watch.

Colleen Kennedy is a nonbinary Pennsylvanian and survivor of abuse in the workplace. They live in Upper Darby.