American Airlines sex-assault verdict shows the limits of what #MeToo can do for women
Ajury found last week that American Airlines was not responsible for a contractor’s unwanted sexual misconduct toward flight attendant Kimberly Goesling. But someone was.
The details of her trial raise questions about the lingering effects of the #MeToo movement five years later: What have we learned and what progress have we made, if any?
As is typical of sexual misconduct involving friends, lovers or co-workers, this one is complicated. Each party tells a different story. Desire mixed with rejection and the sense of shame and fear make for a complex narrative: Who is responsible? That’s what Goesling wanted to know.
Goesling, who lives in
Fort Worth, worked for American Airlines for three decades. During a work trip in Germany in 2018, she contends, Mark Sargeant, a celebrity chef who was an independent contractor with American, made unwanted sexual advances in her hotel room after a night of drinking with other airlines employees.
In his testimony, Sargeant admitted going to Goesling’s room and trying to seduce her. He says that after he kissed her and realized she wasn’t interested, he left. Goesling claims Sargeant went further. Texts reveal that the next morning he apologized for “acting like a drunken idiot” and praised her for resisting him.
The jury did not dispute that there was an incident. What the jury did dispute is who was responsible for Sargeant’s misconduct: The airline? Sargeant? Goesling herself? The complexities of human behavior, lust, fear, betrayal and atonement are rolled into one messy and terrifying night.
The trauma is still palpable, obvious in Goesling’s testimony.
Goesling didn’t file criminal charges against her jilted acquaintance even though he was most certainly responsible for his own choices and had come on to her before. In fact, according to her lawyers, she settled with him. Yet she also sued American Airlines claiming that a manager had encouraged Sargeant to pursue her back to her hotel room.
She claimed American, through its employees, was responsible for the incident. She also claimed that when she reported what happened — as women have been encouraged to do, especially after #MeToo — the airline demoted her and refused to pay for her post-trauma therapy as they’d agreed. Goesling’s attorney asked for $25.6 million to cover medical care and damages.
Court documents showed
American knew the person they’d hired to create meals was a heavy drinker and was inappropriate toward women who often rejected his advances. But when the manager was asked in court if he encouraged Sargeant to pursue Goesling for a onenight stand, he of course denied it.
Even if he would have admitted to encouraging Sargeant, it’s hard to know if a jury would have found his employer responsible for his poor choice. The jury’s decision, however devastating for Goesling, rings true. Not because Sargeant’s behavior wasn’t reprehensible; it certainly was.
But each person should be held accountable for choices that lead to poor actions. Making employers or others responsible opens the door wide to lawsuits and misplaced blame.
It also removes agency from individuals. No one forces a person to misbehave — it is a choice. And individuals themselves must be responsible and accountable. This is why the #MeToo movement began and was, at first, effective and powerful. Men in power who intimidated, harassed, assaulted and even raped women were held responsible for the first time.
Matt Lauer. Harvey Weinstein. Roger Ailes. Fox News, Hollywood and NBC News all live on, but these men were penalized for their awful behavior. This is as it should be.
Goesling might have had more traction and a more solid case, although far less of a financial settlement, had she targeted the only person who was responsible for hurting her — Sargeant himself. But the need for atonement when one has been wronged is so powerful, it can drive a person to demand forgiveness even of those not liable.
It is not lost on women, though, that Goesling had to take an exhausting journey just to hear this result. Not only did she endure the awful incident and the blowback from American Airlines, she then had to recount the trauma over and over in the trial and now must live with a verdict that clears her employer. Is it any wonder why so many women don’t report incidents like this?
Over the years, #MeToo went too far in encouraging women who had simply been jilted or on an uncomfortable date to jump aboard the bandwagon.
Things that seem fun and flirty in the moment look worse through the lens of #MeToo. A healthy society should eschew the notions that all men are predatory and all women are victims while still seeing when a person has been wronged and who is the perpetrator responsible.
In this case, the waters weren’t so muddied: There was a clear record of unwanted sexual advances. There was simply the question of who to blame.
It’s unfortunate Goesling won’t get justice, at least from this trial. But no one is to blame for such behavior — good or bad — but those who perpetrate it.