I was just discussing the previous post with a friend and I reminded myself of something. Back in the eighties, I was working for a company when one of the top men was fired…and rather unceremoniously, I felt. They put out one of those stories nobody ever believes about how he'd resigned to spend more time with his family — which is certain code for "we canned his sorry ass" — but the announcement seemed even phonier than usual. I wondered why since his job performance, while not grand, didn't seem that inept.
A year or two later, someone in a position to know told me that the guy had been fired because of a couple of "inappropriate" situations with females in the workplace. In this case, as a euphemism, the word "inappropriate" was doing a lot of heavy lifting. It was standing in for something close to rape.
The company had fired the guy. It had also paid significant money to the women to settle a lawsuit or the threat of one. Everyone involved — victims, included — wanted it kept hush-hush so it was kept hush-hush. End of story.
One of the questions I keep hearing about the recent epidemic of sexual impropriety scandals is "Why is this happening so much now?" An obvious reason and probably the main one is that when some women come forward and are believed, that gives confidence to others to come forward. We may have Mr. Cosby to thank for that.
But I'm wondering if maybe the uptick in such cases isn't quite as large as it seems. Maybe there have been a few more of these in the past than we thought and they're just not being kept hush-hush any longer.