The Eric Swalwell scandal is an altogether familiar and tired exercise: When allegations surface against a powerful man, the people around him scramble to distance themselves, downplay what they knew, or deny any knowledge at all. And yet, time and again, these cases are described as “open secrets.”
The real question is not just what he did, but what the people around him saw, heard and chose not to act on.
This is where the conversation needs to shift. For decades, sexual assault prevention educators have argued that we need to move beyond the perpetrator-victim binary and focus on the role of bystanders: What could colleagues have done? What kept them from speaking up?
The pressure to be “one of the guys,” to not rock the boat, to protect friendships or careers, remains enormously powerful. If we are serious about preventing abuse, institutions like Congress need to do more than react after the fact. They need to equip people, especially men, with the tools, the permission and the expectation to intervene before harm escalates.
