The reason I could have a reaction like that is because it’s not the first time that someone I’ve worked with at a convention has been accused of sexually assaulting someone. The first time was when I first read that Charles Brownstein, the executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, was being accused of sexually assaulting a female comics creator named Taki Soma. The incident had taken place at the Mid-Ohio Comic Con in November 2005, but it was only months later after a friend of Soma’s spoke up in general terms about the incident that her story first started to make the rounds of the comics blogosphere. Even then, Soma or her friend didn’t name the accused. It was much later, after some wrong-headed Internet speculation and some investigative journalism, that it was revealed that Brownstein was the man in question.
I didn’t know who Taki Soma was at all. I did know and have had conversations about comics with Charles Brownstein. In my mind, the Charles Brownstein I met at SPX and for whom I raised a little bit of money couldn’t have maliciously groped a woman in a hot tub… and then he admitted that he did in a piece for Newsarama in May 2006, quoted for posterity by Johanna Draper Carlson:
I feigned to lift up her shirt. It was a stupid, drunken prank, of which I’m ashamed. It was something I’d never done before, nor anything I’d do since. I did not, at any point, grab, fondle, or expose her breast, nor was that ever my intention. I feel terrible for hurting Taki’s feelings. The following day, and on several occasions since, I apologized to Taki for my bad behavior. I also spoke with Ken at several points over the course of the weekend, to see if we could find a way to honorably set matters right. Unfortunately my sincere apologies have all been rejected. I continue to feel genuine regret that I hurt someone I regarded as a friend, and I hoped she would accept my repeated apology, but since that’s not the case, I want to end the speculation surrounding this incident, because it’s not fair to the industry or to the people this was being speculated about.
I know that groping someone in a hot tub is nowhere near to being in the same category of sexual assault as rape, so there’s a little problem with my equating the two events. What links them together in my mind is the fact that someone I thought wasn’t capable of doing a terrible thing outright admitted that he did a terrible, stupid thing.
And then I thought about every interaction that I’ve had with Tom Wayland, and one incident sprang to my mind. In that incident and under those circumstances, it’s possible that the Tom Wayland I knew could have behaved inappropriately with a woman.
It’s with that frame of mind that I started to speak out on her Facebook post, pointing out specifically to voice actor Todd Haberkorn that even though there hadn’t been an arrest, it’s possible that her allegation could be true. It’s possible that the police weren’t able to gather enough information from their preliminary investigation to make an arrest stick. And finally that in every fandom where there’s a strong convention scene, there’s an underground whisper network where female attendees and organizers are told which people it’s okay to be alone with and which people it’s not okay to be alone with and that this whisper network needs to be brought out into the open.
And then I received my second shock of the morning.
