The 'Hands in the Pants' Conundrum

UN staff members are supposed to report misconduct, the Secretary-General claims to have 'zero tolerance' for sexual misconduct and the UN claims to be committed to defending the rights of women.

Believe what you will.

An audio recording from an OIOS 'Leadership Dialog' meeting in late 2018 however exposes a very different reality.

The voice on the recording is that of OIOS Investigations Director Ben Swanson, told his staff about having been called to a meeting in the Secretary-General’s conference room in February that year where the Secretary-General, the Deputy-Secretary-General, the UN Legal Counsel, and all the S-G's “Special Advisors” were present.

Swanson tried to assure the assure them all that they had no problem with the investigation part of the whole sexual harassment issue “because we (OIOS) know what we’re doing and are able to do the investigations.”  

.......Everyone is entitled to an opinion, after all….

The important part, however, was that Swanson claims he told everyone present at the meeting that he had a D1 female in his office in February, in tears, telling him how an ASG had put his hand inside her pants  - but when she talked about how to complain about this, she was told not to bother because it wouldn’t do her any good; this ASG was “a favored son.”  

According to Swanson, he tried to tell this story, but the Secretary-General cut him short – but this incident was more than any minor “misunderstanding” or some excusable 'boys-will-be-boys' error of judgement. It was more than simply harassment; it was a sexual assault which is serious criminal offence.   

Swanson was the Investigations Director, it was his job to investigate the ASG who was accused of having done this – and we have to ask why this woman had come to his office – in tears – to speak to him if it was not to initiate an investigation, but, it seems, Swanson did nothing….

That simply confirms what the woman had been told - that there was no point in reporting the assault because nothing would be done.  Swanson's inaction confirms that they were rightin to discourage her from reporting it.

That is a very serious criticism of the OIOS Investigations Director…. and particulalry ironic that he was admitting it in an attempt to point the finger of blame at the Secretary-General and his inner circle….  

But was Swanson telling the truth on the recording?

That is obviously a question that cannot be answered by reference only to the recording, but this is not simply about one alleged sexual assault. It is about the entire question of accountability for sexual miscondict in the UN and whether the Secretary-General is serious about what he says in public. 

We are left to consider one of two options here, either:

A)   Swanson was lying to his staff; he never told the Secretary-General anything of about any sexual assault.
 

If that is the case: the investigation of misconduct in the UN is in the hands of a man prone to making up stories to undermine the Secretary-General's efforts to address sexual exploitation and abuse, and who falsely portrays the Secretary-General as a hypocrite.   

The personal integrity of any senior official who would do such a thing would have to be very questionable, and we can only hypothesise about why the Secretary-General would be so tolerant of such a seditious individual in his Organization - especially in such a senior and sensitive post.    

or   

B)  Swanson was telling the truth, he did tell the Secretary-General who did not want to hear it.
 

If that is the case; everything the Secretary-General has ever said to assure staff,  the general public and the member states about there being 'zero tolerance' for sexual exploitation and abuse is patent nonsense, and every woman in the Organization should know that they can be sexually abused by anyone with contacts at a senior level because the Organization (and that includes the Investigations Director) is not interested in doing anything about it.  

Which is it?  

It surely has to be one or the other.

Is there a third alternative altogether?   

Possibly

A third alternative has actually been suggested, and that is that the female D1 in the story simply does not exist and no woman ever approached Swanson with any story about any unwelcomed hands in her pants at all…..

OK, fine…. But if that is the case, it does not really help, because the options are still:

C)  Swanson was lying to his staff, and never told the Secretary-General anything of about any sexual assault because nothing of the sort ever actually happened.
 

That would only reinforce the observation above; that the investigation of sexual  the UN is in the hands of a man prone to making up storiesthat undermine the Secretary-General's efforts to address sexual exploitation and abuse, and he does so in order to impress his staff,  

or

D)  Swanson was telling the truth about having told the Secretary-General and everyone else at the meeting (even if what he told them was a piece of fiction) but the Secretary-General did not want to hear it.
 

That does not help. Whether the story itself turned out to be fact or fantasy does not matter; what is significant is that the Secretary-General would still have been told about a sexual assault and did not want to hear it…..  

Besides, it must be reasonable for the Secretary-General to assume – when he is told something by the Investigations Director – that it is true!  

If the Secretary-General's excuse was that he did not believe what the Investigations Director had told him; it begs the question of how anyone can have any confidence in anything that comes out of OIOS…. 

On 7 June 2020, after this recording came into my possession; I wrote to the Secretary-General to give him an opportunity to comment.  

I heard nothing.  

I obviously cannot speak for Antonio Guterres, but it would appear logical that any reasonable man – when invited to clear my name of something of which he had absolutely no knowledge - would say, very publicly: “Sorry I don’t know anything about this.”

The Secretary-General had ample opportunity to come back and either deny all knowledge of the matter or even ask for more information if he was concerned about it.  His failure to respond only strengthens the suspicion that the truth may have been the unthinkable option B above.  

In the final analysis therefore, this audio recording serves to illustrate why women in the UN should NOT report sexual harassment, or indeed any more serious sexual offences.   

The Organization's failure to answer my letter of 7 June just proves what the victim had been told in this case; that there is no point in reporting sexual misconduct because nobody cares. Anyone who disagrees need only look at what happened to Ms. Martina Bostrom for having the audacity to make a complaint against Deputy Executive Director Luiz Loures of UNAIDS.  

All the women working in the UN, and those working in the field of  “women's rights” in particular, should be very concerned about the implications of this s audio recording  – because if wilful blindness to a sexual assault such as this is not important to them; they might as well go find another job because they cannot claim to be promoting any kind of rights if they are tolerant of a woman at the D1 level in their own workforce being pawed, groped and sexually assualted.

                                                                                                                                                Peter A Gallo 

                                                                                                                                                8 October 2020