There was a culture of complicity around Alex Salmond’s allegedly inappropriate behaviour during his time as first minister where a “blind eye” was turned, according to testimony included in the official report by MSPs from the two women who originally made sexual harassment complaints against him.
In a series of powerful responses, they also set out the “crushing” impact of believing their original intention to make it easier for people to come forward had in fact been detrimental to other women, as well as the ongoing toll of having their motives impugned and ascribed with “nonsensical” political motives.
Ms A and Ms B gave evidence to the Holyrood inquiry in private last week and their testimony is included at length in Tuesday’s final report of the committee on the Scottish government handling of harassment complaints.
They go on to describe how they felt they were “basically just dropped” by the Scottish government following the initial inquiry and left with no support during the subsequent police investigation and trial, after which a jury acquitted Salmond of all charges: Ms A’s complaint was found not proven (an acquittal verdict different from not guilty) and he was found not guilty of assaulting Ms B.
However, both women said they did feel it had been the right thing for the Scottish government to have referred their complaints to the police, even if it was not their preference at the time.
Describing a culture at the heart of government where “making complaints was simply not the done thing”, one of the women recalled that Leslie Evans, as permanent secretary, talked about the concept that “what you permit, you promote”. They reflected: “I think that it is a sad indictment of what happened at that time that such behaviour was permitted and a blind eye was turned to it.”
While there has been much focus on the new harassment policy created towards the end of 2017, which was designed to include former ministers, both of the women explained that it was not the new procedure itself that had spurred them to come forward, but the momentum around the wider #MeToo movement.
Underlining that good procedures were only successful if they operated in a workplace culture that encouraged people to use them, one of the women said that she “did not feel reassured that there has been a meaningful change in culture” since 2013, when the first of the alleged incidents took place. She added that the Scottish government had “given itself a bigger hill to climb because of the failure of the process” and that, if anything, it would be likely to deter people from coming forward.
At the start of their evidence, the women described the “double-edged sword” of anonymity, which had left them – as they put it – “faceless and voiceless” throughout: “After we have been through the original experiences, the Scottish government investigation, the judicial review, the trial and now a committee process that has sparked a lot of public comment, it just feels like the ultimate insult piled on to injury when people ascribe motives to us that fit a particular theory that they have.”
Calling for “a moratorium on party politics” when dealing with matters of sexual harassment, both women described the effect of seeing assumptions about their motivations for coming forward and their involvement with the SNP government appearing in opposition press releases and on social media.
“It has been extremely upsetting to see that something that we entered into in good faith with the intention of making things better for people in future has actually been detrimental not just to the chances of their wanting to raise complaints in the future but to people’s mental health, because of the coverage of this.”
One of the women said that the saga had a “massive” impact on her life: “We are now having our motives impugned and questioned in a way that ascribes all sorts of, frankly, nonsensical political motivation. I cannot possibly imagine what, if I was part of some sort of ulterior plan, I could possibly have achieved from going through this.”
They also talked about feelings of guilt around starting a process that had involved and had an impact on many other women: “It went from feeling that we had made people feel able to speak up – when they thought that they would never be able to – to feeling that we had just created a position that left them open to so much often personally directed abuse and misrepresentation on social media, so it has been completely crushing.”
