Why would anybody stand for Disciplinary Committee?

Content warning: descriptions of sexual violence, abuse and harassment

It was late 2015. I had not long been appointed Green Party Spokesperson for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Unknown to me at this point, a member of Sheffield Green Party made a complaint about a person I'll call Harvey. These were the reasons (as quoted):

• '[Name redacted] offering to pay me money to investigate the death of an MI6 intelligence officer (I declined, to which he replied “you need friends in the secret service or you will die”)

• Repeatedly asking me to visit webpages that don’t exist

• Asking me if I “invest in the arts”, and when I said no, saying “I will tell other Green Party members of your views[...] because it’s fucking offensive[...] you rich f###ing c##ts are all the same[...] you’re a scam artist just like the next politician[...]”

• Asking me if the Green Party will publish a novel and a short story that he has written

• Describing accusations of rape that have been made against him, asking me if I think it is rape and if the Green Party thinks it is rape. Continuing to do so, despite me repeatedly asking him to stop the conversation, then calling me a “f###king wussy” and “such a fake c##t”

• When I told him not to contact me again through any medium, he said:

“I will contact you

I deny your request

wherever you go, whatever you do

you will find the truth awaiting you

in whatever form I can muster”'

A few days later, Harvey sent a PM to me, saying he was lonely because he'd scared friends off for investigating rape and murder. He also talked about the concept of 'meta-consent' and how he'd tried it with a girl once. I got scared and left.

Harvey then posted this as a public comment on a photo of me and a prominent Green Party member:

I blocked him.

In January 2016 a note was put on this member's profile in the database to say that he had left the Green Party for Labour and moved to York.

But when he moved to York, he rejoined the Green Party.

In April 2016 the Party HQ received a further complaint about abusive postings from Harvey. They passed it to the chair of Sheffield Green Party for investigation.

Meanwhile, Harvey continued to make new Twitter accounts to harass me.

In July, he used a pseudonym to send an enquiry through my business website about some work he wanted me to do for him. I told him what my hourly rate was and that I was busy until December. This was among his responses:

I just think £400 is a bit much for HTML tuition
unless you're throwing in a little bit of correction with a wooden cane,
and even then...

He then made a stream of defamatory and abusive tweets, including these:

A fellow spokesperson suggested I take this issue to the party's CEO. I sent an email that same day - July 29, 2016. The CEO wrote back straight away to say that he would raise the concern with Harvey's local party and it might be referred for…

…dispute resolution. (Because that's best practice for a woman who is being sexually harassed and stalked, right?)

I emailed Harvey requesting he never contact me again or I would report him. Of course, he emailed me straight back.

During this time I discovered that Harvey had harassed two other prominent Green Party women. He had sent emails to both, describing what he wanted to do to them sexually.

After talking to me they both realised this was a matter for the police.

He then emailed me: "Rachel, if you think this will stop me from investigating your financial affairs and my deep deep suspicions of impropriety regarding your charitable dealing, or from publicising my discoveries on and around social media you frequent you are ABSOLUTELY wrong on every level. This is information in the public interest and relating to possible fraud on your part. I am well aware you retain the emails as do I."

He used more Twitter accounts to harass me and current / potential business clients, including a charity I volunteered for:

These are just a small sample of the tweets and accounts he used; there are many more.

Meanwhile, a further prominent Green Party woman got in touch to ask what on earth was up with Harvey, as he'd been harassing her too.

By this point, I was done with it all and - with some hesitation - reported him to the Met. Two police officers – one woman and one man, made a visit to my flat to take a statement.

As you might expect, they were spectacularly unhelpful. Even the woman officer said he was 'just a dick' and I should block the Twitter accounts.

I tried to explain to them that when I blocked him, he'd just make a new Twitter account and restart, or use another social media channel. Two unblinking faces regarded me, silent. I guess this was not in their playbook for wriggling out of dealing with misogyny, and they weren’t sure what they should say.

The governance manager of the party asked me to file a complaint about Harvey. A member warned me to be careful if I used the party's complaints process, as it was leaky and unfit for those subjected to sexual harrassment.

I still ploughed ahead, because I couldn't bear the thought of him staying a member of the party and me having to leave to avoid him. Or the other women he had harassed, for that matter.

The form I submitted requested anonymity and contained screenshots of the behaviour in question and a crime reference number:

Soon after, another member raised a concern about a creepy post Harvey had made on the members’ forums. It was a fictional story about one of the prominent Green Party women mentioned above. The CEO responded to say he would bar Harvey from the site.

He went on to advise that if the subject of the post would file a complaint, then they could move to suspend Harvey temporarily while the national party investigated. In the meantime, the governance manager chased Sheffield to find out where they were up to with their own investigation.

Sheffield replied to say that they had paused it, as he had changed local party.

Meanwhile, this man's sister, also a Green Party member, posted on the members’ forums to apologise for his behaviour and offered to be a point of contact for members who had been targeted by him. I emailed her.

The governance manager emailed to say that without extra completed complaint forms from other members no disciplinary case could be initiated. She asked if any attempts had been made to contact Harvey to ask him to stop (!!) and if we had reported him to Twitter.

I replied:

It seems obvious to me that he left Sheffield Greens and rejoined in York in order to evade disciplinary procedures.

If you look at my complaint form, you will see that I emailed him with a request, in no uncertain terms, to cease contact in any form, after which the harassment and accusations of fraud, hypocrisy and misrepresentation continued.

The report button on Twitter is next to useless as [name redacted] has clearly amassed a number of Twitter accounts for the purpose of harassment and can easily create more.

Since I raised the alarm at the end of last week, prominent Greens, and the reputation of our party, have continued to suffer.

Please can you suspend him immediately from both the forums and the party, pending investigation?

At last, Harvey was suspended from the party four days later on the 8th August 2016. This was over 8 months after members had raised initial concerns.

In early October 2016, Harvey rejoined the party using different details. The local executive emailed him to ask if he would stand as a councillor.

The only reason I know this is because Harvey, bizarrely, copied me in on his response, which I forwarded to the governance manager. She responded to say that his membership had been disabled.

And yet, he still managed to attend a national deputy leadership husting in person.

On the 8th November, the governance manager emailed Harvey a zip file containing evidence materials for my complaint hearing. My name had not been redacted. I raised this immediately with her and received an apology in reply.

On the 8th December 2016, one full year after initial alarm bells were raised, the governance manager emailed me to tell me that Harvey had been suspended for two years.

The next day, he CCd me in on his appeal email.

In January 2017, further Twitter harassment followed, from more new accounts.

In February, he sent me this string of threatening messages via Facebook Messenger.

I reported this death threat to the police.

He also emailed me using a fake Gmail account pretending to be concerned about vandalism of my Wikipedia page. I was taken in by this and thought it was a Green Party member reaching out to help me. Harvey used this to extract a lot of information from me about what information I had on him, that he would later use against me.

Then, he wrote an erotic fiction story about me and posted it online.

The police passed the case to Special Branch.

Harvey emailed me with a further threat of violence: "Why are you still fighting this... Do you really want to carry this on? You want to keep on trolling me so I hurt you? Right not a see the bait and refuse it. Because I don't want to do that." and sent me 51 text messages in 3 minutes.

Later that February, two York residents contacted me, concerned that Harvey may be dangerous. They were anxious about their safety and the safety of a meet-up group they ran. Harvey had been targeting one of their members. I forwarded this to the police, too.

He tagged my Green Party Facebook page, asking me to stop stalking him. One of his friends replied, teasing Harvey that he was in love with me. I looked at the friend's profile; turned out he was a Green Party member in Lowestoft.

By this point I felt there was nothing I could do except help to fix the party's broken systems myself.

The Yorkshire police issued a harassment warning notice to Harvey, and passed it on to Suffolk police to serve on him. They confirmed the notice was served and it 'did not go down well'.

On the 18th March 2017, Harvey posted a series of defamatory comments and lies about me on Green Party Youtube videos. He also emailed me a request to stop 'my crew' harassing him on Instagram.

After further contact from him I went back to the police who issued an arrest warrant. He denied everything and claimed that somebody had hacked his phone and his computer to send the messages.

The police dropped the charges.

After this, Harvey set up yet another new Twitter account to further harass a prominent Green Party woman. He also requested to connect with me on LinkedIn.

I've since heard on the survivors' grapevine that Harvey has raped several women. I have no evidence of this except their words and his pattern of behaviour.

I was terrified that this man would rejoin the party in Lowestoft, and his suspension would time out, leaving him free to rejoin Green Party meetings.

At no point had anybody told me about the party's whistleblowing procedure. I ended up trying to speak out at conference about the party’s broken governance processes and was no-fault suspended the same day.

Consider that it took the party roughly 200 times as long to suspend an actual sexual predator.

During the 12 months I languished on no-fault suspension, his slate was wiped clean.

How do I know this?

Some years later, I noticed Harvey was again posting on the party’s forums under his real, original name and the name of his cat. (I wish this was fiction, but that is what actually happened.)

So, hands shaking with rage and anxiety, I emailed my representatives on Green Party Council.

Eight minutes later I received this response from one of them:

“Thank you for raising this concern,
I will enquire regarding their membership status.”

I heard nothing further for over a month. I chased by email. No response. I emailed again, four months later.

The other London rep responded by emailing the co-chairs of Green Party Council to say:

“Chairs

I assume this was missed as a hand over when [the head of governance] left.
Can the Question be passed onto [the new head of governance] to look at”

One of the chairs responded:
“Sure, will copy her in now.”

Years later, I have still had no update.

The only flimsy barriers standing between members and abuse like this are the sterling efforts of our Complaints Manager, and volunteers like me, plugging away to fix the system.

Through this experience I have discovered that few people are willing to stick their neck out for survivors. For most cis men in power, it's pure theatre. Words are seldom matched by even the smallest of actions.

All of this prompted me to stand for election to Disciplinary Committee four years ago. Ever since, I have been working on improving how the party treats people who are subject to abuse and violence by members.

I have served as co-deputy chair and then as co-chair of this committee for two years. A few weeks ago the committee re-elected my co-chair, Dr Robin Brabham, and myself.

I wish I could say it is fun work. I do it despite the flashbacks. I do it to stop any of the 160,000+ people who have since joined us, from going through the same thing I did.

I am pleased to say that after two years of hard work and cat-herding, we now have a new disputes and complaints referral system. And we're about to embark - with the help of staff - on building a proper database that will underpin this.

Of course these will be an imperfect framework. But a decent wooden scaffold will serve members better than the mess of wet spaghetti that enabled this man’s behaviour (and, sadly, many others like him) for so long.