Procedure Where a Person Has Been Harmed

CIRCULAR TO ALL HOUSES PRO/1990/11

PROCEDURE WHERE A PERSON HAS BEEN HARMED

1. This procedure is written in ordinary English. The words used elsewhere in the Institute for holding, carrying and standing beside are not used in it and are not to be used in any paper made under it.

2. It applies where one person has assaulted, threatened, sexually harassed or assaulted, financially exploited, or persistently and unwantedly pursued another.

3. The person harmed is asked what they want to happen. They are told plainly what the Institute can do and what it cannot. It cannot compel evidence, it cannot remove a member, and it is not a court.

4. Nothing is set going without that person's agreement, except where another person is at risk. Where that is the case they are told so, and told why, before anything is done.

5. Nobody at any house is to discourage a person from going to the police, to suggest that the Institute be told first, or to describe going to the police as a matter for the house to consider.

6. Neither party is required to give an account. Each is offered the opportunity to write one, of any length, which is filed unedited. Declining is entered as declining and no inference may be drawn from it in any decision.

7. The matter is not decided by the house in which it arose. The stewardship asks three members of other houses, none holding office at the house concerned, to read the papers and to write a recommendation.

8. The three may speak to anybody willing to speak to them and to nobody else. They may not require attendance.

9. Their recommendation is printed in full. Where the stewardship departs from it, the departure and its reasons are printed beside it.

10. Where a restriction follows, it is made under FRM/1990/12 and is written in the words set out there.

11. No paper made under this procedure is to describe attendance, the practice, or any form as a remedy for what has happened. The Institute offers no treatment and holds no view about anybody's care.

12. The person harmed is not asked to meet the other person, to forgive, to reconcile, or to consider the effect on the house. A steward who raises any of these has departed from this procedure.

13. No finding is published and no name is read at any gathering.

14. Return, after a restriction, is dealt with by clauses 15 to 18. It remains possible.

15. The person writes to the stewardship. Three members of other houses read the papers and what has happened since.

16. The person harmed is asked, privately and once, whether they wish to say anything. They are told expressly that the decision is not theirs and does not rest on their answer.

17. The three say whether the restriction ends, ends in part, or continues. The person is written to first, in ordinary English, with the reasons, and with the date on which it may be asked again.

18. A restriction that has ended is not mentioned again by any house and may not be cited in any later decision.