Sexual Assault Reported at SDCC

Dark Horse logoScott Allie, until recently Editor-in-Chief of Dark Horse Comics, assaulted two people during a party at San Diego Comic-Con reports Janelle M. Asselin in “Enough is Enough: Dark Horse’s Scott Allie’s Assaulting Behavior” at Graphic Policy.

We all know at this point that there is a pervasive sexual harassment problem in comics. This isn’t just about one or two people who behave badly, but about an industry-wide problem where harassers and abusers are protected by their employers — the very institutions that are supposed to operate within human resource rules and harassment policies. Dark Horse Comics has allegedly harbored a boundary-crossing, biting problem for 20 years — a problem named Scott Allie. And at San Diego Comic-Con this year, Allie apparently managed to assault a comics creator who is not willing to remain silent.

Allie, who was the Editor-in-Chief of Dark Horse Comics until September 11th, assaulted two people at a party during the convention….

Joe Harris… has chosen to speak out about what he experienced at the hands of Scott Allie.

During the BOOM! Studios SDCC party at the Hilton on Thursday, July 9th, Allie became extremely intoxicated. A few anonymous sources reported that he licked at least one person and wept openly at someone. The worst of it came when he was face to face with Harris. Harris said:

“Upon walking in, I noticed Scott Allie at the bar and thought to go say hi. I walked up to him and I extended my hand expecting to shake his… when, instead, he reached down and grabbed my crotch. Just went for it and squeezed. I was stunned, I guess? Not what I was expecting, obviously. Not what’s ever happened to me at this or any other convention over many years. So I try to back away a little, still shocked, when he leans in and bites my right ear.”

Dark Horse Founder Mike Richardson has responded with a statement that says in part —

I agree that harassment of any kind, routine or not, is unacceptable. It always has been. We at Dark Horse will renew our efforts to make sure that our company is never again mentioned with regard to this type of occurrence. As quoted in the article, our goal has always been to provide a positive, safe, and respectful environment for its employees, creators, and fans.

Scott Allie has also issued a statement.

I’m deeply sorry about my behavior at San Diego Comic Con 2015 and I apologize to everyone I’ve hurt. I’m completely embarrassed by my actions and how my behavior reflects on Dark Horse Comics, my friends and family. My personal approach and decisions for managing stress were bad. Dark Horse and I have taken the matter very seriously and since this incident, we have taken steps to correct and to avoid any behavior like this in the future. Although apologies can’t undo what has happened, I’ve tried to apologize to everyone impacted by my behavior. To my family, friends, co-workers, and to the industry — please know that I am truly, truly sorry.

And Comics Beat writer Heidi MacDonald, taking Asselin’s article as a starting point, has penned an extensive commentary about “How a toxic history of harassment has damaged the comics industry”.

31 thoughts on “Sexual Assault Reported at SDCC

  1. There have to be a bazillion comics editors looking for work who manage not to lick, bite, and nut-squeeze people; why not replace this guy with one of them? That would keep their company from “this type of occurrence”.

    His “managing stress badly” looks as though it alludes to a problem with alcohol — as if when he gets stressed, he drinks too much, and when he drinks too much, he starts sexually assaulting people. Now, if anything’s stressful, it’s certainly SDCC, so he needs to not go. And not drink in general.

    But no, two non-pologies months after the fact, only after the victim mentions it.

    Also, the HELL, SDCC? You didn’t ban this guy right then, and he’s still not banned now? He committed sexual and regular assault and battery, and you don’t throw his ass out of the con, much less call the cops?

    Does someone need to get sodomized live on stage in Hall H during a movie panel before they admit there’s a BIG problem?

  2. “I’ve tried to apologize to everyone”… and then he doesn’t mention apologizing to the VICTIM. Or any of his previous victims.

    How about just going away somewhere where there’s no booze, no fame and fortune, and no decent people, Scott?

    Dark Horse Comics — where it’s okay to be a violent alcoholic in public!

  3. lurkertype:

    the HELL, SDCC? You didn’t ban this guy right then, and he’s still not banned now?

    I don’t think any con that draws as many people from Hollywood as SDCC does can afford to enforce a harassment policy. Everything I’ve heard indicates that Hollywood, as an industry, has problems with sexual harassment & assault that are even worse than the comics industry’s. Or “problems”, I should say, because it’s my understanding that having a free field for harassment (and rape) is one of the perks of Hollywood power: it’s a feature, not a bug, for many of the most powerful people in the industry.

  4. At least this particular “missing stair” has now been publicly named, so that people can hopefully be somewhat forewarned.

    I understand the desire not to publish harassers’ names because of the giant Internet pile-on which would ensue. But what stops the person who was banned from Wiscon for a pattern of harassing behavior going back years from going to other cons and doing the same thing? How are people going to be warned about that “missing stair”?

  5. Oh, look; a *guy* gets sexually harassed, and sexual harassment is suddenly Big News. I suppose I should be grateful that people are actually talking about such things finally, but still. Apparently this is what it takes for SDCC to take sexual harassment seriously. A guy getting harassed. *sigh*

  6. @Cally

    My take is less ‘Guy gets taken seriously’ and more ‘guy feels secure enough to report this publicly’, which is not actually any better.

  7. The whole “We all know at this point that there is a pervasive sexual harassment problem in comics” and has been for many years, but now when this man reports sexual harassment “Enough is Enough”? Yeah. It apparently takes a man reporting sexual harassment before enough can be enough. Why no, I’m not bitter. Why do you ask?

  8. Cally:

    I don’t know if the “we” in “We all know at this point that there is a pervasive sexual harassment problem in comics” actually includes even half the men in the industry, especially among the ones with power.

    I bet they don’t think it’s pervasive, nor do they think it’s a problem. The only way the culture will change is if men *who aren’t being harassed” notice that it’s going on, and say, “hey, dude, that’s not cool. Stop it.”

    There are Filers who are comics industry regulars: do you notice harassment of women? What happens when men speak up about harassment that’s not directed at them?

  9. There are Filers who are comics industry regulars: do you notice harassment of women?

    For my part, no. Most of it seems to happen when the principles are alone — or, if and when it happens in office or con party situations, I have managed to miss it, probably largely by not going to many con parties or spending much time in offices. I work at home and mostly communicate with colleagues and editors by phone and e-mail.

    What happens when men speak up about harassment that’s not directed at them?

    If you mean in-person, I don’t know, for the reasons given above. If you mean online, same as for anyone else: men get argued with and mocked, women get rape and death threats.

    Last time I was part of a group bracing a guy and saying, “Dude, not cool. Not a good way to treat women,” I was in college.

  10. Not surprised to see there was a sexual harassment incident at SDCC. The details were a little unusual. When stressed the guy sexually harasses or bites people? I don’t think I’ve heard that excuse before. And big surprise he keeps his job.

    we take harassment seriously

    Do they really expect anyone to take that seriously?

    Men #notallmen tend not to see harassment when it’s happening as it’s such a normal part of society. Bigger stuff more will notice and depending on the type of guy they are they will try to intervene.

    The same can be said for white people not noticing “small” racist stuff happening around them. In my office PoC are treated just like everyone else; x, y, z just aren’t good enough for promotion yet and are too thin skinned.

  11. Doctor Science: Scott Allie *has* lost his job as Editor-in-Chief, so there’s that.

    Yes, but they’ve kept him on as “Executive Senior Editor”. One wonders what change in salary and perks, if any, this involves.

  12. “We at Dark Horse will renew our efforts to make sure that our company is never again mentioned with regard to this type of occurrence.”

    That doesn’t come off as very reassuring, considering the history of the company. Perhaps the most sincere comment in that released statement.

  13. One also wonders whether his contact with employees, contractors, and vendors has been curtailed. Is he still in a position to harass the people he has been harassing? Is he in a position to make decisions about their work, if they have a job, payment, references? Will he be attending social events? Will he be attending cons as a representative of the company?

    A title change may or may not be a form of chastisement depending on what else was removed (salary, perks, responsibilities). What it rarely does is make those abused safe from further abuse.

    Is he going into a rehab program and following that up with long term therapy as part of keeping his job willingly because he knows what he’s been doing is wrong? Based on the apologies we’ve seen so far and the fact they didn’t happen until this became public I don’t think he has reached a point where he’s taken responsibility for his behavior. “Stress made me do it”

    As an abuse survivor who has studied “why’d they do that” behavior change is hard to do even when they accept responsibility and want to fix things. Without accepting responsibility and with people in a position of power who are supporting you abuse will almost always continue. There’s no reason to change.

  14. We at Dark Horse will renew our efforts to make sure that our company is never again mentioned with regard to this type of occurrence.

    This is just really weird phrasing. I’m trying to give it a more generous reading of “…to make sure this never happens at our company again,” rather than “…to make sure you never hear about it if it happens at our company again.”

  15. Cons seem to operate in the same fantasy realm as campuses, where both promote the idea that the organization should be relied on to deal with actual criminal issues, to advocate for the interests of both victim and aggressor, rather than bringing in real police.
    For cons there seems to be some kind of cognitive disonance between two realities.
    On the one hand is the pretense is that something as huge as SDCC is rather an intimate fannish space, best governed by gentlemen’s agreements, where bad behavior will be dealt with informally, among friends.
    On the other is the recognition that it has become too big, and is too indebted to real world industry pressures, for mere con strictures to be able to really step in effectively when there are problems.
    Both realities end up silencing victims.

    In this case, apparently there were lots of witnesses to what is indeed criminal assault.
    If a con’s handling of such a thing seems lacking, then calling in the local cops is a good option.
    There is nothing to sober up a guy like talking to an unimpressed uniform about someone (an editor somewhere, so what?) licking, biting and grabbing an unwilling adult.
    You don’t have to commit to ruining someone’s life forever, or testifying two years later in a big trial, to make a complaint.
    Mostly when you call the police they just talk to people.
    There is a lot of space between taking something this all the way to a trial, and simply making a large and immediate flap that is embarrassing and difficult to sweep under the rug.

  16. Lauowolf, maybe your experience is different. But most women are *extremely* reluctant to report even out-and-out rape to the police, for good reason.

    The reason cons have to have harassment policies is because “report it to the police” means it will never get reported at all. It would be foolish for a woman to expect police to take a report of sexual harassment in a party-like situation seriously: they won’t. They won’t listen to her, they’ll talk her out of pressing charges, they’ll take the side of the wealthier/older man and his friends. The only reason to call the police would be to take a calculated risk that Scott Allie (or whoever) would assault the police officer and get into *real* trouble. But it’s a hell of a risk.

  17. The number of actual rape victims I know personally is appalling, let alone people assaulted.
    At this point, if I don’t know someone’s story I tend to assume that simply means I haven’t heard it yet.
    And only one of these was ever a police matter – a friend was sexually abused by her step-father, who ended up in prison for it.
    When the police came – as a result of her reporting it – they started putting her in cuffs as well.
    She was twelve.
    So let us take it as agreed: of course, for quite valid reasons women often will not report harassment.

    I was, however, responding to the actual case described here, which is atypical in that it apparently took place before multiple witnesses and it involved a male target.
    And, more generally, when we are talking about the failure of harassment policies to deal with reported issues, we are, by definition talking about cases where someone was, in fact, already willing to report an incident.
    That is, these are cases where the kind of erasure you talk about happening with the police seems to be happening as well in the enforcement of the con’s own harassment policies.

    The question then becomes, I guess, who you want to be ignored by, and just how much of a fuss you are willing to make.
    My point is that if you call in the real police, even if they refuse to press charges, at least they don’t tend to be impressed by the kinds of things that seem to make con officials back away.
    At the very least, they will come and loom over a person, asking rude questions.
    Of course that is not enough, but it may be more than the con policies will deliver.
    Like campuses, cons have an image to uphold, and their desire to be seen as safe places may well trump their willingness to make the effort necessary to become such places.

  18. My point is that if you call in the real police, even if they refuse to press charges, at least they don’t tend to be impressed by the kinds of things that seem to make con officials back away.
    At the very least, they will come and loom over a person, asking rude questions.

    I believe in cases of a male being harassed the rate of reporting is even lower than for women.

    The police loom over the harassed as well as the harasser & it’s not fun

    All the witnesses confirm is seeing them together and Scott being obviously intoxicated. Not much for reporting to police as its a he said, he said situation.

    For reasons going to a con person is less stressful than going to police. They might want him to stop being permitted to attend con(s) but don’t want to go through all the legal morass which can be as bad or worse than the original harassment emotionally (this was my reason for not reporting rapes not at cons).

    I’ve reread both articles and comments. I don’t see anything about Joe reporting Scott to SDCC just that the harassment happened there.

  19. Tasha Turner
    I’ve reread both articles and comments. I don’t see anything about Joe reporting Scott to SDCC just that the harassment happened there.

    Fair enough.
    Sigh.
    Mostly this is my frustration talking, wanting someone with a Big Whomp Stick to whomp someone.
    Instead of being assured by DH comics that they’re going to “make sure that our company is never again mentioned with regard to this type of occurrence.”

  20. Upon reflection, I’m not at all surprised that Mr. Scott has a history of sexual (and other) harassment that has never been dealt with, because men in positions of power can and do regularly get away with such things. It *does* surprise me that he has a history of *biting* that Mike Richardson and his other friends haven’t intervened to stop.

    Biting is assault; if the skin breaks, it’s potentially very dangerous assault. It’s also considered a banning offense in *preschool*, ffs. Why has this been tolerated in a professional environment? Or is there something about comics industry culture that is fundamentally unprofessional?

  21. Biting is assault; if the skin breaks, it’s potentially very dangerous assault. It’s also considered a banning offense in *preschool*, ffs. Why has this been tolerated in a professional environment? Or is there something about comics industry culture that is fundamentally unprofessional?

    He is a very good editor and known for helping women and minorities get a start in the industry…

    In one of the comments on the 1st post it takes you to a FB post where a friend of his, Dirk, wants people to see a more even picture of him not just the monster that sometimes comes out. It’s an interesting discussion. My above comment is based on that.

    In my experience/reading harassers get more leeway when people are torn between their “good” and their “bad”. Humans like to put people in nice boxes. They are nice, good, or evil, bad. We really don’t like grey.

    When I talk about my past abuse/rapist I talk about how they were nice guys for the most part, people really liked them, they just have this one little problem, they are serial rapist. They aren’t monsters. They are the guy next door, your co-worker, your friends parent who you think of as a 2nd parent, your best friend, someone in your neighborhood, someone in your gaming group.

    But people don’t like that they need harassers and rapist to be monsters. So if the person is generally “good” then people find themself excusing the harassers bad behavior because it doesn’t match the “good” person they know. And people are good or bad not grey. Intellectually we know most people are grey. Each of us can name a few things we’ve done that we aren’t proud of or worse. But when it comes to other people it’s hard.

    That’s why rape culture survives. It’s why we may find ourselves asking a question “why was she there/what was she wearing/why did she drink so much” and have to consciously remind ourselves “no not her/his/their fault” if we are really tired or…

    Yeah the frustration and wanting to hit someone with a big stick each time one of these stories comes to light is really high.

  22. Tasha:

    Thank you for pointing out that FB post by Dirk Wood. The comments at FB are also very valuable.

    I am personally getting really tired of the “black and white versus shades of gray” formulation, and that goes double for people in art. The opposite of B&W, as we all know, isn’t gray, it’s color — gray is just another way of being black & white.

    What I mean by this metaphor is, there’s not a single axis of Good V. Evil that you can sort people on, lining them up from “Superhero” to “Supervillain”. Our good and bad points fall on *multiple* axes, there’s no single, neat way to rank our virtues.

    Wood says, My point is this: Scott is not a monster. I see people calling for his head, wanting him fired, etc. … There are toxic workplaces, bad situations and bad environments, allowing bad behavior. But, picking a different boogeyman every 3 months, calling for his/her head, and then moving onto the next controversy…that’s not going to solve anything (in my opinion –I do not profess to have any actual expertise about any of this).

    He’s gotten some very articulate pushback in the FB comments, from people saying No, Scott *should* be fired. Not because he’s a “monster”, but because that’s the appropriate consequence for his actions. The “boogeyman cycle” Wood perceives is substantially driven by the way harassers (and worse) have built up in the industry: they may apologize, or not, but they don’t get fired. They continue to work, and that’s the lesson they — and their victims, and the industry as whole — learn.

  23. Dirk Wood: picking a different boogeyman every 3 months, calling for his/her head, and then moving onto the next controversy…that’s not going to solve anything

    Does he honestly not get the fact that these controversies aren’t happening because people are going around looking for someone to pillory? That they are happening so frequently because abusive behavior is so common? Does he think that not calling these people out on their abusive behavior “solves anything”???

    From his comments, Wood sounds like a nice guy. But his unbelievable lack of awareness is really mind-boggling.

  24. JJ:

    What’s really scary is that Wood is VP of Marketing for IDW, the 4th-largest US comic book publisher (says Wikipedia). Which means that IDW, too, doesn’t really have a “you break these rules, you get fired” policy about harassment, they’re going by whether you’re a “nice guy”.

  25. @Doctor Science — and Wood thinks Allie is a “nice guy”! So we can expect that things are just as bad at IDW, and I suppose that was what was behind those rumblings in recent weeks about how it wasn’t any single company that was the offender, it was EQUALLY indie comics as well as the major publishers…

  26. I’m hoping Dirk Woods means it about wanting the women who were very vocal on his post to talk to him and he’ll listen. But I have a feeling things have been going on at IDW and not taken seriously.

    The reason these stories are coming out is more and more people are willing to step forward about years of abuse and they are doing it in groups even if anonymously.

    There is a better way to handle the situations:
    1. 1st offense a warning & required therapy & limit the contact someone has: don’t promote to leadership positions, possibly have work from home so only contact is by email/postal. I’m suggesting the therapy thing because the industry seems very invested in keeping these nice guys.

    2. 2nd offense fire. If you really can’t bring yourself to fire admit you have a harasser and put major boundaries around person to limit their contact with anyone but you – all work & correspondence goes through you & they are not permitted to socialize with coworkers or attend cons which could cause them to harass someone – this is going to be really difficult to pull off but if you chose to continue employing a repeat harasser you have to find a way to protect your employees, vendors, contractors, and company from potential lawsuits and looking bad in the public eye and actual harm

    3. Fire, don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, smack yourself in the head for not doing so earlier, pray you aren’t sued and don’t have a major PR mess

    And that’s how we could have avoided a new scandal every few weeks. If people were doing their jobs 1, 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. So maybe get out of denial that this stuff doesn’t happen in “our” worlds and “our” companies because everyone is a “nice guy”.

    This is basic management 101. They’ve been teaching this stuff for over 20 years. Does no one in publishing or comics take basic mgt courses? When I was working in the late 1980s-2000 this stuff was covered in employee handbooks with more than 15 employees. I worked at a number of tech startups, temp agencies, federal government, and Digital Equipment.

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  28. @Tasha Turner — unfortunately, according to reports on harassment at DC, the way that comics have been handling your #1 is by not letting women work/be in the office with the harasser! Thus, no women on the Superman/Wonder Woman titles. So it has to be specified that “we have a harasser on staff” is not to be used as an excuse for workplace discrimination.

    (Which, of course, if they were serious about dealing with the problem, wouldn’t even come up.)

  29. @L.A. Julian I’m not surprised. Comics isn’t the only industry to handle it that way over the years.

    Many companies across the board find reasons to let go of women who file harassment complaints. It’s been changing as each industry has its scandals and hits that 30% of women in the professional and lower level mgt jobs.

    As social media continues to connect people it gets harder for serial harassers to hide and companies will find themselves called to account.

    Consumers have other options now – indie/self-published. People working in the industry can band together and insist on change. Or they can get together and go their own way and become serious competition. Women, PoCs, and other minorities want comics written by people like them which include people like them and we don’t want the creators being harassed/abused while creating the product we want.

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