You may (understandably) feel attacked, harmed, and as if your community and anyone who knows about the accusations against you sees you only in the light of those accusations. You may also feel judged, and concerned about how the accusations will affect you and your future. 

Please know that these feelings speak to victimization, which is how your survivor(s) likely also feels. For true accountability and transformation, you will asked to work through these feelings and thoughts, and not repeat whatever harmful behavior you engaged in in the past. Accountability and transformation will ask you to face your deepest trauma, darkest moments, and it will be truly humbling and hard.

You may engage in an accountability process so that you can continue being part of a community/family/workplace/profession (etc, I’ll use community going forward). Remember that even at the end of your process, the community may believe that you have not genuinely changed and are likely to repeat your harmful behavior. 

Please choose to be accountable and transform not for the potential reward of being allowed in the community(s) or to avoid the punishment of being banned, but because you recognize that your harmful behaviors are self-destructive and have harmed you, your survivors, and your community(s). 

Self Care 

It’ll be important to manage your emotions and reactivity. Here is a list of tips on how to do so

Avoid Additional Harm 

Avoid the tropes: victim blaming, credibility biases, false accusations and belief in rape myths. 

Avoid DARVO: deny, attack, reverse victim - offender, manipulation tactics used by wrongdoers (abusers) to draw attention away from the sexual assault/GBV and instead attack the survivors — which increases the survivor’s trauma.

Rethink consent: 

• Mischa Byruck’s Beyond Consent Course (most highly recommended) 

• The Ethical Slut’s Navigating Consent

• The Wheel of Consent 

• The FRIES method of Consent 

Understanding Accountability, Repair, and Transformative Justice 

• What is Accountability (text & video)

• How Shame Can Block Accountability (video) 

• Mia Mingus on Transformative Justice (text) 

• Thinking Through Accountability (text) 

• Compilation of Transformative Justice Resources (text) 

Understand the Basics of Gender-Based Violence:

• The Right to Sex - a balanced view on thinking & talking about sex in our modern era. Recommending reading for those want to look beyond sexual violence and further into the social forces that influence sexuality in the modern era.

• Citadels of Pride - A philosophical look at sexual violence, one that “…shows how sexual abuse and harassment derive from using people as things to one’s own benefit” 

• Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/289845/why-does-he-do-that-by-lundy-bancroft/#:~:text=About%20Why%20Does%20He%20Do,free%20of%20an%20abusive%20relationship.)  (though you might not be angry or controlling) this book can help you understand abuse/assault/gender-based violence. 

Accountability Coaches

An accountability coach is one of two ways you can engage in an accountability process, that is, the wrongdoer An accountability coach will have extensive knowledge and experience in accountability processes, and actively work with you and guide you through the process, which is described in the next section (“accountability pod”). Because you are working with an expert dedicated to working on accountability and transformation with you, the process will be smoother and likely faster than working with an accountability pod. However, it will be costly. Many coaches are quite busy and not always available, and many will not work with you if there is a conflict of interest. 

Accountability Pod 

Putting together an Accountability Pod

• If you decide to go through an accountability process, you may want to consider putting together an accountability pod. Here is a pod mapping worksheet by the Bay Area Transformative Justice Coalition. Mia Mingus also has more information on pod mapping on her new website, SOIL (https://www.soiltjp.org/our-work/resources/pods) 

• Work with at least one “professional”: someone who will genuinely hold you accountable. Examples include accountability coaches, restorative justice facilitators (with the appropriate experience and/or education), gender-based violence advocates (such as us), etc. 

• Don’t choose people who will give you a pass, eg, others accused of sexual assault/misconduct or other gender-based violence, friends that aren’t objective or emotionally intelligent, people without the capacity or understanding of sexual assault/gender-based violence (eg, people who will allow you play the victim, so to speak, to victim-blame, to engage in DARVO tactics). 

• We recommend that you start with 3 - 5 people in your accountability pod. The members of your pod should not all be your closest friends/family/partners; rather, they should be folks that have the capacity - that is, the time, emotional intelligence, and willingness to invest in your improvement - to truly help you transform and to hold yourself accountable. 

What is the Accountability Pod NOT Responsible for:

• The Pod does not do healing, therapy, or counseling work with the accountable person. 

• The Pod does not determine the guilt or innocence of the person being held accountable. They are not to be punitive.

Expectations of You and Your Pod 

• This process might run long — months at a minimum, maybe over a year. 

• If you’re doing it right, there will be very humbling moments.

• Do not expect to be forgiven from the person(s) you harmed. Do not expect that the person you harmed is responsible for helping you in accountability or growth. Many people who experience harm in the form of a consent violation will choose to not to engage. 

• Most of the inner work will be done outside the accountability pod format: in therapy, through classes, reading books. 

The Process, and Role of Your Accountability Pod 

Step One: Begin Repair. Find out what the survivor you are aware needs for repair and restoration. This is an important first step because you want to minimize their trauma. If you are going through a formal restorative justice process with facilitators/mediators, the facilitator/mediator can find this information. If through survivor/wrongdoer pods, the pods can interface with one another. 

• Are they upset that you are going through an accountability process? If so, avoid interfacing them, even through intermediaries. 

• Are they unwilling to be a room or friend group with you? Part of being accountable and repairing harm will be to leave a room or group if it causes additional trauma. If the survivor seems angry and vengeful - yes, they are likely angry (and traumatized), and their actions may not be vengeful but self-protective. 

Step Two: determining behavior. What should you be held accountable for? 

• The coach/facilitator/Pod will report their findings to the appropriate parties after summarizing behavior to make reporting confidential.

• You will do a call for reports. In your call, you are asking others who have experienced harm through you for feedback and reports of harm. In this call, you will:

• State the harmful behaviors you have engaged in (eg, “pushed boundaries”, “violated consent”, “were not cognizant of power dynamics and may have abused power”, “sexually assaulted three women”). 

• Research shows that many people are willing to admit they did not “have [the survivor’s] consent, but aren’t willing to call this sexual assault or rape. Non-consensual sexual activity is sexual assault, and if it is penetrative, it is rape. 

• State what you are doing to reduce your harmful behavior. Examples should include: therapy, mindfulness, consent courses, not continuing to pursue new partners or attend sex parties until the accountability process has completed, and other similar steps.

• Speak with humility and gratitude, express that you recognize that you are asking for emotional labor of your pod and community, and speak to the difficulty in coming forward with reports/feedback.

• Preserve the confidentiality and anonymity of the person/people you have harmed. 

• Take full accountability/responsibility for your actions/harms. Avoid “victim blaming” or holding the person/people you harmed responsible for the harm(s). 

• You will not be directly collecting the reports. Instead, create a form for collecting anonymous reports, name the folks that will review the reports, and make sure that you follow up with those who received the reports. 

Step three: discovering the causes of the harmful behavior. The Pod will have discussions with you to determine if you are thinking about the issues in a way that they feel shows you have gotten new understanding. 

• The Pod receives reports back from you to hear about their transformative process. 

• The Pod keeps all data and knowledge confidential unless there is an agreed upon public statement. 

Step four: restoration. The Pod/you/someone else will engage in the process of reaching out those you have harmed. 

• One priority many people who experience consent violations/boundary violations have is sharing space with the person who harmed them. As part of this, find a way to reach out to the person(s) you harmed or their Support Pod so that you may agree upon how to share space/community with the survivor(s). When you/your Pod/appointed Pod member reaches out, be aware to do so in a way that is least likely to cause harm or trigger the person(s) you harmed. 

• This will be beneficial to the person(s) you harmed, but to you as well. It will dramatically reduce the number of community leaders that will be contacted about your behavior, and will reduce the fear and re-traumatization the person(s) harmed may feel in sharing space with you, especially in the immediate aftermath of the harm. 

• Write an apology letter or make amends with each and every person who has reported harm by you. Have your Pod edit this letter(s) with you. 

• Take full accountability/responsibility for your actions/harms. Avoid “victim blaming” or holding the person/people you harmed responsible for the harm(s). 

• Do not tell the person(s) you harmed how to feel/what they should feel. Remember that your actions caused harm. 

• Use “I” statements instead of “you”

• Find out the most emotionally attuned manner in which you/the Pod can figure out how/if to contact the person(s) harmed or their Support Pod. The person(s) harmed/their Support Pod may choose not to engage with you or your Pod. Remember that it is not per se their responsibility to assist you with accountability, and it may not be healing for them to engage with you. 

• If the person(s) you harm are open to it, post-apology, discuss what the person(s) you harmed needs to feel restored and repaired.

• This should be done by the person who the person(s) harmed and/or their Support Pod is interfacing with. 

• One common ask is that the person who caused harm pay for therapy or similar services for the person(s) who harmed for one year. Whether or not you can do so will depend on your financial resources. 

Step five: finalizing the process.

• Your Pod will help you determine when you have transformed; that is, when you have adequately determined the causes of your behavior, addressed and worked through them to ensure that you will not continue harming others and/or pushing boundaries/violating consent, and a plan for re-intergration. 

• Writing a report/letter to be reviewed by the facilitator of restorative justice (and/or other community leaders) about your transformation, plan to not cause harm to others/be a more safe member of the community, and for reintegration. 

Remember: you are not “owed” reintegration into your community. Even after the work you’ve put into being accountable and transforming, community may believe that you have not genuinely changed and are likely to repeat your harmful behavior.