| Of course victims should not have to bear the responsibility, yet it's an unfortunate state of affairs that we must rely on victims in order to bring justice and awareness. Not sure how YC would go about proactively screening away bad actors. Most of these people tend to be powerful/rich enough that they very likely are not on any lists to be weeded out from the get go. Sure the (potential) victim shouldn't have to do anything and have a safe environment available, yet the mechanism for determining a group's sex-abuse-potential social credit/standing doesn't currently exist en-masse, neither would most of the population want a sex-assault-credit-score. In your scenario, potential bad financial actors can be screened a la concrete behaviors. Did the VC write the check or not. Does the VC have the balance to show in their bank account. Are they in breach of contract? Even if there were bad financial actors, an anonymous list to report such behavior is not without merit. It could be a useful way to bring a class action to a bad actor without tipping off the bad actor from running away. Then the flip side is, "you are otherwise upstanding, but our list says you looked at a female in a creepy manner 10 years ago, so we don't want your investment." In the case of sexual assault, there's varying degrees of behavior depending on context that may or may not constitute get-on-a-sexual-assault-list behavior. This grayness makes a list hard. Usually, egregious acts are easy to judge by. However, more subtle acts have a shroud of plausible deniability... "We were sort of seeing each other and a partner was unsure about a guy/girl, but decided to feel him/her out on some dates... and also he/she could make a vc intro didn't hurt..." How quid pro quo is this? It's perfectly plausible that the individual in my hypothetical situation is an upstanding person and truly was attracted and only made a single attempt at someone they liked, or it could be that this individual is a serial hit-on-potential-founders, but doesn't necessarily do enough to actually get charged with sexual assault/rape, but probably should be barred from being an investor. The research does show that offenders tend to be repeat actors. Building such a list seems like the step in the right direction. The existence of the list itself does serves as a potential deterrent. It usually isn't until multiple victims come forward where the perpetrator does not have much anything to hide behind as a she-said/he-said debate. Thus potentially getting on the list is something perpetrators need to consider before acting badly. The justice system is innocent until proven guilty, thus an actor must broach a line before they can be dealt with. Unfortunately, it's only the victims that do have the power to bring awareness to the existence of their perpetrators. Every resource we can dedicate to enabling victims is a step closer to where we should be going. |
Victims aren't the only possible witnesses, reporting should be encouraged by anyone who observes (or learns indirectly of) inappropriate behavior.
> Not sure how YC would go about proactively screening away bad actors
The same way any organization screens away bad actors: required training courses, background checks, clear, written codes of conduct with careful monitoring.
> The research does show that offenders tend to be repeat actors.
Which strongly suggests that a single report should be enough to trigger an investigation.