There's no such thing as guilty or innocent when it comes to sexual harassment. It's not a crime and only companies can be liable for anything related to it, no

There's no such thing as guilty or innocent when it comes to sexual harassment. It's not a crime and only companies can be liable for anything related to it, not the actual people doing the harassment. So what we're seeing is these incidents being played out in the court of public opinion. And unlike the law, there are no hard and fast rules in that courtroom. There's only cultural norms that are still evolving. We should expect a lot of confusion around this issue given the stakes. We know that harassment is incredibly pernicious for those that are targets while going almost unseen by those who aren't. And yet allegations, regardless of their veracity, can destroy someone's business, career, marriage and reputation. If nothing else, all the attention this issue has gotten recently has at least driven home in people's mind that the issue is important and can no longer be ignored just because you haven't harassed anyone or been harassed. But we should stop using legal terms like innocent, guilty or liable in our discussions on the subject since they act as a subtle framing of the issue in ways that are not accurate. By saying someone is guilty of sexual harassment, you're implicitly saying that the determination of guilt should be made based on criminal procedure. People hear guilty and think "innocent until proven guilty." People hear liable and they think of monetary damages. These kinds of accusations will almost always exist on the continuum between true and false and, unlike the instance in the story, will rarely be as black and white as a legal verdict is. There are subtle forms of harassment and there are more blatant forms of harassment. And our court of public opinion should be more nuanced and be able to come down harder on individuals based on how much proof is provided. There's no sentence or fine being imposed, only social stigma and it's up to every individual to determine how much to stigmatize the wrongful parties, either when they are the accused, or in the rare cases like this one, the accuser.