Jenn Kamp Files Lawsuit Against John Dehlin

[toon]

A different take on the previous situation is that an inappropriate sexual relationship with a person in a position of authority over the employee culminated in the loss of the employee's job.

I do agree the victim behaved very badly, but that doesn't excuse or override the actions of the employers, which, in my opinion and relying on the facts of the case, constituted sexual harassment in the workplace.

I'm not interested in re-discussing this, i just wanted to point out a different conclusion.

A boss having a consensual affair with a subordinate is not, in itself, sexual harassment, at least as that has been legally defined. Workplace sexual harassment is unwanted or unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.

There's a point to be made about whether its even possible for it to be consensual given the disparities in power, but makes it possibly unprofessional and inappropriate. It doesn't turn the conduct into sexual harassment. This is not a situation like that of a minor, or a patient, or a student, where we may deem them legally incapable of consent. It's two adults. And while there was a disparity in power between the two, that doesn't mean that a adult employee is incapable of consenting to a romantic relationship with her boss.

If the affair had ended up with Dehlin divorcing his wife and marrying Rosebud, would the exact same conduct still have been harassment?

[Kishkumen]

A boss having a consensual affair with a subordinate is not, in itself, sexual harassment, at least as that has been legally defined. Workplace sexual harassment is unwanted or unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.

There's a point to be made about whether its even possible for it to be consensual given the disparities in power, but makes it possibly unprofessional and inappropriate. It doesn't turn the conduct into sexual harassment. This is not a situation like that of a minor, or a patient, or a student, where we may deem them legally incapable of consent. It's two adults. And while there was a disparity in power between the two, that doesn't mean that a adult employee is incapable of consenting to a romantic relationship with her boss.

If the affair had ended up with Dehlin divorcing his wife and marrying Rosebud, would the exact same conduct still have been harassment?

Thank you for that reminder, toon. I think for some committed to certain ideologies, a disparity in power can make something harassment or even rape. I am not one of those people, but I certainly know that this perspective has purchase in some circles.

[Dr Moore]

A different take on the previous situation is that an inappropriate sexual relationship with a person in a position of authority over the employee culminated in the loss of the employee's job.

I do agree the victim behaved very badly, but that doesn't excuse or override the actions of the employers, which, in my opinion and relying on the facts of the case, constituted sexual harassment in the workplace.

I'm not interested in re-discussing this, i just wanted to point out a different conclusion.

The problem I see with all of these accusations is that they're fundamentally ridiculous. They're non-specific in terms of the complaint and they're asking for vague amends. Like, grow up people. John isn't abusing anyone - he's trying to build a brand built on collective pain, trauma, love and morality. It's going to be messy on camera and behind the scenes. Grow up or don't play. It's showbusiness.

Yes, John and Rosebud had some kind of brief "scrape" with affair. Who knows the details? Who cares, honestly. Open Stories Foundation investigated, tried to settle for money, and Rosebud would never stop. It seems she will never stop until John draws a Samurai sword on air and commits Seppuku.

Now Jenn does this 5 minute Youtube testimony meeting cry-fest about how hard it's been. She titles it "non-transparency" report or something click-baity, but the whole monologue is nonsensical. The script complains generically, in an ironically non-transparent way, about how she felt the work environment was too hard and then was fired after complaining.

Give me a break! If you can't hear the feedback from listeners, or from John, or from the Open Stories Foundation board, then I'm sorry but you're the problem. You are simply not cut out for showbusiness. Complaining about your work discomfort only shows your lack of self awareness about the fact that you are dilutive to the show and dilutive to the brand. You might be excellent at a lot of things, but this path isn't for you. The Open Stories Foundation board and John have done you a favor. You should thank them for it -- firing people who are a bad fit for the job is never easy. Here's some free advice: don't sue them. Learn from the experience, lick your wounds, and move on. By the way, I predict Jenn's podcast will be a dud. Podcasting about Mormonism is pointless if you don't have something uniquely informative and useful. Unfortunately, Jenn did not bring that to MoSto. Maybe she'll figure it out on her own, but I doubt it. Seems like this new solo podcast is a revenge endeavor. At most, it'll help her self-therapize, but I don't think it will go any further than that.

By the way, as re Rosebud, I know the text messages show John was idiotic and probably crossed some kind of power line, such as it is. John should have been smart enough to draw a hard red line about emotional lines with any hired help.

But in John's defense, the timeline suggests that both were still navigating their individual faith crises at the time they worked together. I imagine just about every work session - day after day, week after week - would have been emotionally intense, filled with raw painful sharing. Back when there wasn't much community around such experiences - indeed Open Stories Foundation was working to build up such a community. But anyway, the work environment... question: what could John have done to make it "healthy?" In some ways, this reminds me of the time I toured through Yahoo!'s content moderation center, about 17 years ago when Yahoo! was still a big deal. The look on people's faces - wow. Ever since, I have wondered how any company can possibly create a "healthy work environment" online content moderators. Truly, I still wonder. It's got to be one of the most emotionally traumatizing jobs in the world.

Back to Rosebud, the documentary trail also shows that Rosebud was an absolute dud at the people and mobilization side of Open Stories Foundation. Her stuff wasn't working. Her events lost money and had waning interest. She believed she was doing better work than the the facts showed. That's really hard in a startup. I think John tried for a long time to give her rope, but she ultimately didn't deliver. It wasn't just John, women on the Open Stories Foundation board drew the same conclusion. (As they did with Jenn)

The difficult thing is that while Rosebud is a very intelligent person, who presents a strong first impression, she is also unstable. She does not connect with people. She is toxic. I speak from rather long experience here, having been in the same stake with her and her family, including her kids and now ex-husband, some 15-20 years ago. She is a social disaster and her approach drives everyone around her away. She is constantly navigating internal conspiracy thinking, imagining the worst about people and acting as if it's real. She literally sat with her kids in primary every week, and told other women she just wanted to make sure they wouldn't be raped or abused in sharing time. She trusted no one, not even her husband (who is one of the kindest, gentlest people I've ever met, and who coincidentally, is an HR professional). You can hear some of the background on her solo podcast, where Rosebud makes clear she carries memory of childhood trauma. I don't question it. But she imposed evil and traumatic intent on everyone around her and it made every mother, and father, in church around her feel uneasy. Like, in her efforts to protect from the evil in others, she became the wildcard that everyone else worried about. Eventually they moved and then divorced. I could share many first-hand stories, but that would be inappropriate and unsafe.

Bottom line: I think John was hoodwinked by her intelligence when he hired her, foolishly (if not understandably) fell into emotional and physical attraction while they worked together, and ultimately he (and the Open Stories Foundation board) realized how disastrous and toxic she was. They were right to dissolve in order to rid themselves of her. And, to the extent John wanted to continue podcasting, and that the Open Stories Foundation board members wanted to remain counselors in his endeavor, they were right to reform around John afterward. He would have succeeded on his own, I am convinced, but he didn't have to. He has no unmet obligation to Rosebud, in any case.

[dastardly stem]

I'll stand by what I've said to this point. John and Rosebud had an affair of sorts that apparently carried on for a year or two. They both wanted out and back in at various times during the course of it. It ended, apparently agreed to by both parties, then the lower level employee was fired, at the apparent desire of the higher level employee. All the rest of the information is a side show of sorts. That to me constitutes sexual harassment. He held the power, engaged in affair with her, and used his power to get her fired after he was finished with her.

As for Jenn's complaint and subsequent lawsuit? I don't know anything about it and it doesn't seem like anybody else does either. So we have, at least, as far as I'm know, Rosebud, Kristi Money, Kate Kelly, Amy Grubbs and Jenn Kamp giving complaints about John's behavior. Agreed each of the complaints are questionable. Unfortunately that happens with of complaints of this nature. I don't imagine anything will happen because of any of them. It makes me wonder why I've ever said anything about it all.

I think i get the reasoning behind everyone's defenses of John. I simply disagree with the reasoning as its been given. I think the above sums it up for me. I'll try to leave well enough alone now.

[Marcus]

I'll stand by what I've said to this point. John and Rosebud had an affair of sorts that apparently carried on for a year or two. They both wanted out and back in at various times during the course of it. It ended, apparently agreed to by both parties, then the lower level employee was fired, at the apparent desire of the higher level employee. All the rest of the information is a side show of sorts. That to me constitutes sexual harassment. He held the power, engaged in affair with her, and used his power to get her fired after he was finished with her....

To me the extraneous information doesn't change my understanding of the basic facts as you have stated them above, especially the last sentence.

As for all the rest, it's a distasteful situation all around, and I see why it's upsetting for this to go on and on and on.

[consiglieri]

It’s not just that the complaints are “questionable” in my opinion, it is that they are devoid of substance and relevant facts.

[Moksha]

It’s not just that the complaints are “questionable” in my opinion, it is that they are devoid of substance and relevant facts.

Isn't it time to stand up and say, "Your Honor(entheos), I object. Too much speculation not entered into evidence on the part of board participants".

[Kishkumen]

Bottom line: I think John was hoodwinked by her intelligence when he hired her, foolishly (if not understandably) fell into emotional and physical attraction while they worked together, and ultimately he (and the Open Stories Foundation board) realized how disastrous and toxic she was. They were right to dissolve in order to rid themselves of her. And, to the extent John wanted to continue podcasting, and that the Open Stories Foundation board members wanted to remain counselors in his endeavor, they were right to reform around John afterward. He would have succeeded on his own, I am convinced, but he didn't have to. He has no unmet obligation to Rosebud, in any case.

Thank you for the many different kinds of experience and perspective you bring in here, Dr Moore. I know you have refrained from sharing some of these observations for a while, and it had to be difficult to do so. It is unfortunate that R comes up again, but it is inevitable inasmuch as Kamp is using a very similar strategy with apparently much less cause for complaint. There are those who may mistakenly take R as evidence that Kamp must have something juicy on John, but the truth is most likely quite the opposite. Not only is R evidence of nothing pertinent to the current circumstances, unless we are talking about hiring mistakes that John has made, but Kamp, to my understanding and limited knowledge, had no sexual entanglement with John of any kind. Should I brace myself for the seemingly inevitable accusations? What evidence will they be founded on?

John needs to do a better job of vetting his employees, it seems. I am not a businessperson, and I was probably too chicken even to consider being one, so I really am not in a position to judge, but this string of disgruntled former Open Stories Foundation employees is definitely evidence of bad HR or managerial practices.

And that brings me to another potentially interesting wrinkle, not one that I address to Dr Moore, who has much greater restraint, wisdom, and judgment than I do, but I wonder if the R theme we see here is not actually a premeditated plan being realised. Once KK, Money, and the Twilight Turds got involved with the R business, not to mention our regular visitor and perpetual scold jpatterson, I started to wonder whether there isn’t a kind of concerted effort to destroy Mormon Stories. It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but everyone I have just mentioned really was working toward the same goal. Each disliked John for their own reasons, and they were not above working together to bring him down, even if their cooperation was a short-lived marriage of convenience.

Now, as I am on an online discussion board, I will just lay the conspiracy theory out to get this part out of the way. One might hypothesise Kamp joining Mormon Stories on false pretences in order to lay some kind of trap for John. She is there just long enough to get into a sufficient position of trust to make a damaging allegation against John or do something else in the course of her responsibilities, or even not do something she should have done, that would imperil his operation. This is because at some point, whether it was premeditated and in advance, or maybe somewhere in the less-than-a-year she was with him, she was persuaded that John was a bad actor by someone else who has an axe to grind.

Can we imagine Kamp not uncritically embracing a sob story about John Dehlin and the Post-Mormon Patriarchy? The Kamp who empathized and wept with various people during podcast episodes? My guess is that she is the very first person who might be persuaded by the teary complaints of another person, maybe even Amy Grubbs, that John is not the nice guy some people believe him to be, but instead an enemy, an abuser, someone who illegitimately steals the rightful limelight of women who could shine in the same space, were it not for the Post-Mo Patriarchy.

The story is out there already of John the cis-hetero-white knight who ought to sit down and let the authentic voices speak out now. How that might be activated to devastating effect, conspiracy or no, and likely no, should not be underestimated. Kamp can easily come to feel aggrieved because many people are thirsting for her to fill that role in the furtherance of their own causes.

I am completely in favor of all kinds of voices enjoying all the audience and success they can grab. I suspect that if they have compelling podcasts, they won’t even need to destroy Mormon Stories in order to be successful.

[toon]

I'll stand by what I've said to this point. John and Rosebud had an affair of sorts that apparently carried on for a year or two. They both wanted out and back in at various times during the course of it. It ended, apparently agreed to by both parties, then the lower level employee was fired, at the apparent desire of the higher level employee. All the rest of the information is a side show of sorts. That to me constitutes sexual harassment. He held the power, engaged in affair with her, and used his power to get her fired after he was finished with her.

But it's not up to you to define sexual harassment. There is a well-established legal definition, statutorily and refined by case law. Sure, it's a definition that is still evolving. But a consensual relationship between a boss and a subordinate is not sexual harassment, at least not yet.

And while a termination after an affair can be, there's nothing I've seen in this case that would make it so. She doesn't appear to have been fired because she refused to sexual advances. And she doesn't appear to have been fired because she broke off the relationship. As you said, the end of the relationship appears to have been mutual. But as we know, ending an intimate relationship brings its own complications. Not many people can work in close quarters with their ex? That doesn't mean it's sexual in nature. It could just be the animosity. If I got divorced, not only would I not want to work in the same office of my ex (I don't know, just a hypothetical), but I might not want to work in the same office with one of her siblings or close friends. That has nothing to do with conduct of a sexual nature.

His behavior was reprehensible, unprofessional, irresponsible, etc. But I still haven't seen any sexual harassment.

[Moksha]

I thought Jenn brought something significant to the Mormon Stories podcast. Both John and Gerardo approached the topics on an intellectual and analytical level. Jenn would draw us back into considering the human impact of whatever was being discussed, for instance, taking time to reflect on polygamy's immediate and long-term implications on human emotions.

Of course, John and Gerardo's analysis was the meat and potatoes of the podcast, but Jenn's gravy was nice.