Behind the Veil of Accountability
This is longer than usual and may be difficult for folks to read who have sought accountability or been engaged in failed accountability attempts
Over the years I have participated in accountability and survivor support for situations as grave and harmful as sexual assault, eviction, and discrimination. I have worked directly with the people harmed, with people who have been responsible for that harm, and with the people and communities indirectly impacted by violent or hurtful events. I believe there is absolutely a necessary place for community-based accountability, that provides people and communities who have been harmed a place to have their needs for healing, separation, and transformation met outside of carceral systems and practices. I believe that most people who call for accountability want and believe in that too—a different, people-driven, people-centered way to achieve change when hurt has happened.
But as I have done this work, I have seen that the way many of us are struggling toward this different way is actually causing profound harm. I’m not referring just to “cancel culture,” here. I am referring to both public and private claims that a “community accountability process” will take place in response to harm, either by request of the person harmed or without their consent (of which, cancellations can sometimes be a part). I’ve come to realize that most people who call for the accountability of others, never really see behind the veil of their demand—what it’s actually like for the people who have been harmed, the people who did harm, their friends, families, colleagues, and the facilitators who are invited in to attend to these calls. Or, if what takes place is known, it is doubted, dismissed, or disregarded because the consequences are shared by people on the “other side” of the situation.
Here is the truth of what I have experienced as a facilitator, support person, and friend to people within these processes.
For People Who Have Been Harmed
When treated with great care, understanding, compassion, and authenticity, I have witnessed people who have been harmed receive support, healing, and closure from a survivor-centered accountability process—even when the person responsible did not ultimately take responsibility.
But, what I have seen more often are these troubling patterns that ultimately harm the people who have been harmed even further:
Organizations, friends, or communities surrounding the person(s) who was harmed take “accountability” into their own hands, making public-facing promises that the person who did harm will be “held accountable” or participate in an “accountability process,” without fully hearing from the person(s) harmed about what they need, want, or what would keep them safe.
The person(s) harmed is non-consensually pulled into an ever-expanding public conflict, which ultimately obscures or ignores their original need or concern; this is additionally traumatizing, harmful, or isolating.
Or, the person(s) harmed ask for accountability to be taken and for an organization/community to take that on, and the organization/community says yes without fully understanding what that looks like, evaluating their capacity to live up to that promise, or reflecting on their role/power in making this promise
The same organizations/communities that claim there will be an “accountability process” ultimately realize the situation is not as black-and-white as they originally thought (it never is), the dynamics are complex, the needs of the person harmed are difficult to achieve or will take more time than they expected, they quickly become overwhelmed and the process is delayed so that they can “prepare.”
The person(s) harmed are left in limbo, as these organizations/communities try to come up with a process and support for a process or Sometimes a process is rushed together, but the needs and desires of the person(s) harmed cannot be resolved in that single process—in both cases, ultimately the person(s) harmed are stuck for months or sometimes years asking for the specific support they need and do not ever receive it. No one ever categorically tells them their needs can’t be met, or more and more promises are made, so they wait.
As they wait for a process to take place, the progress of the person harmed on their journey to heal, transition, recover, is interrupted by a resurgence of energy to make accountability happen—emails that reintroduce the possibility of a process, social media posts and reminders of what happened, outside demands to know whether accountability has taken place. These interruptions can be enormous setbacks that bring a person who has been harmed right back to the pain of the original incident.
The person(s) harmed are not only isolated by the original incident, but experience feelings of rejection, betrayal, dismissal, abandonment, or a sense that they are a burden, when their friends, communities, partners find their needs difficult to meet and try to move on/move forward/leave the incident behind.
The person(s) harmed are stuck in a cycle of random people inserting themselves into their personal lives—on social media, out in their everyday life—with opinions about what did or did not happen to them, often layered with doubt or accusation. They are publicly discredited because their “claims” were never clearly affirmed and accountability that was promised never took place.
I believe this pattern repeats itself over and over because we rush to say we will hold people accountabile or take accountability because we feel (a) social pressure to do so, and (b) a sense of urgency in preventing harm in the future, and (c) a belief that because someone has been harmed we must intervene on their behalf to get whatever they say they want/need or, whatever we believe they want/need. Acting out of this urgency often comes from not having a full understanding of what happened, what people need, and what our capacity is. We can subvert these harms by:
Speaking directly to the person(s) harmed before making any promises or claims that accountability will take place—asking, What do you need? What does support look like to you right now?
Listening to the needs of the person(s) harmed and also being honest about potential risks, costs, consequences, or barriers to meeting those needs. When an event has just happened, emotions are heightened, fear is heightened, tension is heightened. We tend to want to act on the first identifiable request without question. But, when someone has been harmed they may not fully consider that a public declaration will lead to harm coming back on them—public rejection of their truth, massive backlash, doxing, and people not involved getting involved in their deeply personal experience. They may also want things that we cannot reasonably deliver (such as an accountability process we don’t have the capacity or resources to provide). Identify the things you can absolutely do: pay for mental healthcare, provide safe/secure housing, provide food, medical care, social support, escorts to places they are afraid to go, etc. Meet these needs immediately and take a little time to work through what else is possible before making any promises to the person(s) harmed or to the public.
Never, ever make a promise of accountability when the person(s) harmed have not explicitly asked for that and when you have not spoken to the person who did harm, to evaluate where they’re at (see next).
Be honest when you can’t meet someone needs, when it’s over, or when you’re not willing/able to support the requests being made. Accept the potential for backlash, rather than making empty promises that drag out the process and leave the burden on the person(s) harmed to wait in limbo.
Help someone move on/move forward when the person who harmed them is unable or unwilling to do what they are hoping for. People who have been harmed sometimes associate their own healing with some kind of action by the person who harmed them, therefore they are unable to heal or move on until this other person does or says exactly what they want to hear (which is almost impossible to achieve and we cannot promise them). Disassociation between healing/moving on and the other person can produce significant relief.
For People Who Have Done Harm
When treated with dignity and patience, I have seen people who have done harm acknowledge the actions they took that caused pain, admit to responsibility for the impact, and make real efforts to learn, make amends, and change. Even people who no one ever thought would do so.
But what I have seen more often—and usually someone comes to me many months after something happened to say “we don’t know what to do now”—is that the person who did harm is actually prevented from internal or external tranformation (and I won’t repeat here what we all already know about public shame but that as well) by:
Being told there will be an accountability process, but the accountability process never takes place or never includes them; either because meetings and interactions are focused on the person harmed or because they are given certain tasks/demands and expected to complete them on their own;
The person who did harm is so inundated with messages, inquiries, rejections, doubts, questions, suspicions, and consequences that they are neurologically unable to shift out of the fight/flight/fawn response—this initiates a cycle of either defensiveness and denial, avoidance, or shame-based compliance; they are neurologically/psychologically unable to reach the space where true understanding and regulation take place.
People who did harm and are in total denial are expected to come to an understanding of the harm through people who do not understand them and won’t try to (who may in fact be apparently disgusted by having to listen to them or get to know them)—their denial is usually due to deeply held beliefs or formative experiences that are rooted in many aspects of who they are; but they are expected to deconstruct this alone or be accepting of deconstructions that would force them to accept that they are inherently bad, evil, alien, irredeemable, toxic. They are unable to do this.
When engaged with an informal or formal support person, there seems to be no path that leads to repair, amends, or redemption—they are unable to authentically communicate their own experience (even their acceptance of responsibility and growth), because whatever they say is read as manipulative, malicious, or denial, unless it is an exact copy of what they have been told by others. When reciting the exact copy, there are accompanying risks, punishments, or further consequences that often involve violations of their consent or dehumanization. When unable to meet the demands due to legitimate socioeconomic or physical limitations, this is seen as another violation.
The person who did harm is ultimately discarded—either very quickly because the people who claimed they would “hold them accountable” don’t actually intend to, or over months or years of constantly being told something will happen that will resolve the issue but that thing never takes place. Though they no longer have access to a process, they continue to be seen and interacted with as though the lack of an accountability process or public declaration of their innocence is their fault—they are guilty in perpetuity and always subject to answering to these accusations.
While intentions are to bring about change and prevent harm, this approach can actually do the exact opposite of what we intend: reproducing the system we’re trying not to reproduce, and/or the harm happens again because the person who did harm is driven out of town and not given the tools to learn, grow, or change. I have never worked with someone who has done harm who was totally unwilling to talk about what happened and try to understand and make things better. Instead, their every attempt to make things better or to understand what happened is foiled by the forces of “accountability,” until they must resign themselves to the fact that there is nothing they can actually do that will redeem themselves.
We can do better by:
Creating protocols and supports that protect the person who was harmed from having to engage with or interact with the person responsible in any way that is non-consensual; do not expect the person responsible for harm to know how to care for the person they have harmed, or to self-monitor their interactions. As a support person, securing these boundaries in consensual, anti-oppressive ways is your responsibility to own.
Shaping these protocols and consequences around the specific event that occurred, not in abstract. For example, removing them from positions of power that gave them the opportunity to cause harm, rather than getting them fired from their job which had nothing to do with the incident. Limiting access to space where harm was done, but creating support around connection and relationship with people who still feel safe and are not threatened by what happened.
Someone who was not directly harmed by this person talking directly to the person who did harm—treating them like a whole, complicated person and listening to their story of what happened (which does not mean endorsing, supporting, or condoning their behavior). Avoid triggering their instinctive defensive drives.
Acknowledging that most people who do harm do so because of deeply held beliefs, traumas, or instincts that are difficult to unlearn or recognize; it may take weeks, months, or years for them to fully grasp the impact of their actions and plan for working through that with them over the long term, rather than expecting immediate results.
Helping them to hear or understand where their actions caused harm, in what ways, and where their thinking about their actions has led them astray. Be honest, direct, and clear when their thinking is troubling, but without diminishing their humanity. Help them to explore why they think that way, where they learned this, when they may have experienced a similar pain or harm.
Helping them to learn new ways of coping, responding, reacting, or asking for consent—whatever will prevent the harm from happening again. Support them in practicing that, be there to process new situations, encourage their attempts to do better.
Giving them specific timelines, steps, and achievable goals for making amends, repair, or taking responsibility for their actions;
When they have completed those steps, letting the process be over.
Working with someone who is in denial of the harm they’ve caused, or recognizes the harm and does not see why it was wrong, is extremely difficult, emotionally taxing, and time-consuming. But, diminishing their humanity and alienating them from society is easy—and that’s why/how we still have prisons. When we promise accountability to our communities and most importantly to the people who were harmed, we should be able to deliver. If we can’t deliver or intend to replace accountability with something else entirely, we should do what we can rather than promise the things we can’t.
For Facilitators
We are invited into a situation to make someone be accountable or to encourage accountability, to support healing, to bring about repair of a relationship. This is what we do, this is what we’re trained for, we accept the job/role. We assume that the first story we’re told is the whole truth, we begin to initiate a process, we shape it. Maybe we don’t fully understand the roles, needs, goals, or perspectives of everyone involved—we want to let things unfold, we don’t want to monitor or judge, we want to be “neutral” and bring about healing or transformation. We inadvertently assume those involved share (or will ultimately come to share) our values of mutual desire for repair, mutual interest in healing. We look up and sometimes we realize that accountability or repair isn’t possible or—Here’s where things get extremely controversial and tricky—necessary.
As a facilitator, I have been brought into cases where someone has been deeply hurt or they have been made very uncomfortable, and they want or expect another person to take responsibility for that hurt in order to make it go away. Or, they have a need and another person is unwilling/unable to meet their need and they want “accountability” to force that person into meeting their needs. But, the person being asked to take responsibility did not do something wrong, violent, non-consensual. And there is no significant relationship that needs to be repaired—hurt happened between people who are not important to each other, or who would be better off if they parted ways. Sometimes there is hurt without blame. Sometimes there is mutual hurt without intention or a need for change. Humans in societies where blame is the forefront of social responsibility really struggle with the idea that hurt and discomfort can take place without wrongdoing.
For example,
Someone flirts with us in a bar, this makes us uncomfortable, when we are noticeably uncomfortable the person backs off. We want them to account for this discomfort, even though they didn’t violate our consent (or couldn’t have known whether we wanted that flirtation). We label that person a creep or harasser, we expect accountability from them. They apologize for making us uncomfortable, but we want something more than that. This is an inappropriate use of “accountability;” accountability is not about preventing uncomfortable interactions.
Someone says something that we disagree with, that unsettles us, that supports something that we don’t support. We want them to account for this, to change, even though they haven’t violated our consent or forced us to believe what they believe/do what they want. What they said wasn’t directed at us specifically, we just happened to see/hear/notice it. They are willing to/allow separation (where their worldview isn’t expressed in front of us), we want something more than that. This is an inappropriate use of “accountability;” accountability is not about making people with controversial opinions be different.
We need to be comforted, held, supported in our actions and the person we request this from is not available or willing to comfort, hold, or support us in this moment or situation. We feel betrayed and rejected. We want them to be accountable for these feelings, to have to meet our needs. This is an inappropriate use of “accountability,” no one can be coerced into meeting our needs for us.
Someone says something hurtful, they didn’t realize what something would mean or the impact it would have. When confronted, they apologize and won’t do it again. We want something more than this. This is an inappropriate use of “accountability;” accountability has already taken place.
Someone breaks up with someone else, both people are hurting—maybe one more than the other. The person who is hurting the most blames the other person and wants them to take accountability for every hurt that took place in the relationship—no abuse or non-consensual harms took place. They’re using the process as a way to hang on to the relationship or as a site of healing for their reasonable, blameless pain. This is an inappropriate use of “accountability;” we experience pain without wrongdoing.
As facilitators, it is inappropriate to neutrally accept a case when the service they are asking for is inappropriate to the situation. It is also inappropriate to recognize this misalignment and then design our own goals (not claimed or asked for by the participants) to repair their relationship or see the other person’s side. If the participants are asking them to meet a goal that is inappropriate for us to facilitate (e.g. someone taking responsibility for something that wasn’t wrong), it is our responsibility to decline. We may then offer an alternative, such as helping them to understand what happened, a mediation to repair the relationship, a healing or support circle, etc.—but they must ultimately choose that, and identify that as their goal, and relinquish the goal of accountability. We cannot proceed under the guise of producing accountability, but actually aim for something else; it is not our job to trick people into either (a) taking accountability they don’t need to take in order to appease our client, or (b) participating in a process they think will lead to accountability, but actually is intended to lead to something else (them realizing they were wrong, short-sighted, or whatever).
Because of this, I will only take on an accountability case if:
It has been explicitly asked for by at least one person(s) who was directly harmed or someone who has a reasonable expectation that they will be similarly harmed by the person responsible and they are willing and able to fully participate/inform the process; and
There was a violation of consent, and/or an act of violence, and/or a significant material or social loss suffered by the person(s)/communities harmed that someone has not already repaired.
If these two conditions aren’t met, there are certainly other things—rather than an accountability process—that we can do to support people who have experienced pain, loss, or are entrenched in conflict. Such as providing support, mediation, establishing boundaries, coaching through conflict situations, skilling up communication skills, providing referrals for healing, holding a circle for understanding, inviting the community to engage in transformative organizing to culture, systems, and resource distribution.
Opportunities to Learn + Act
Raina LeGrand of Roots to Rise Somatics is holding a workshop in December about balancing needs for connection and space in relational conflict (one person needs space, the other person needs emotional comfort, etc.): register here, $37. Folks who are able are encouraged to sponsor a BIPOC participant.
TONIGHT: Thursday, November 11, 7 p.m. ET. Workshop Series presented by BCRW, Fireweed Collective, and Survived and Punished NY: Building Capacity for Mutual Aid Groups: Decision-Making. Facilitated by Dean Spade. Online
Contribute to the Survived and Punished Mutual Aid Fundraiser: Donate here.
This is all so helpful, especially since I've seen things like what you described happen (from an outside perspective) but never really understood the dynamics at play.