As captain of the Anti-Harassment Team, I would like to offer a formal apology to Dr Asteria.
Deficiencies in processes by the Anti-Harassment Team led to her suffering severe reputational damage. While we learned a great deal and would amend our processes to prevent similar issues in the future, it did not happen soon enough to prevent many people from making improper assumptions about her case.
Several years ago, she was warned by the Anti-Harassment Team. This was due to poor judgement that resulted in sexual material being posted to a social media account that interacted with minors. We took the matter seriously, and she was warned not to do it again. There was no public log at the time. However, her offense was one of poor judgement and carelessness. Nothing in our investigation suggested that she had done this deliberately, or that she had ever taken any actions to abuse minors or engage in grooming.
Attention was brought up again when she was banned later for intimidation. This was unrelated to her previous behavior, but others noted the incident and began spreading rumors that the events were related. We began receiving reports about it. In an attempt to stem these rumors, we made a statement that we had already investigated the incident and it was unrelated to her ban.
While this helped some, it did not stop the rumors, and the user FLOORBOARDS began accusing Dr Asteria of pedophilia. We issued a warning, on the assumption that this was a misunderstanding of the events. FLOORBOARDS continued the same harassment against Dr Asteria and other users, leading to a year-long ban. The wording on the ban was vague, and did not mention the pedojacketing, only referencing threats of violence or encouragement of self-harm.
When FLOORBOARDS returned, they continued their harassment, leading to a situation where multiple other users felt unsafe. Before AHT finished conferring, Disciplinary banned her for other egregious behavior. This mentioned calling the official SCP discord "1488cord," but did not mention the fear of retaliation several members reported, nor the continued harassment against Dr Asteria.
To be clear, FLOORBOARDS's actions should have earned much more severe punishment, and she should not have been allowed to return without even needing to appeal. AHT has recently banned other users for false accusations and intimations of pedophilia. That they were given more severe punishment than FLOORBOARDS does not reflect that their actions were worse, but that our standards and practices have evolved.
We have always taken care to protect the identities of reporters and victims in harassment cases, and we will continue to do so. However, it has become clear that there are cases when that level of silence is not appropriate, and can cause harm. In the future, we will strive to be more transparent, where we do not believe it will expose reporters or victims to greater harm.
Again, I am truly sorry to Dr Asteria for the damage done, and I hope this message can help prevent similar rumors in the future.