The initial dust is beginning to settle after the outpouring of stories of sexual harassment, discrimination, and abuse that Brienne Allan, production manager at Notch Brewing, began sharing on social media in mid-May. Prominent industry professionals—including Modern Times Beer’s CEO Jacob McKean, Tired Hands Brewing Company’s founder Jean Broillet IV, and Dry & Bitter Brewing Company’s founder Søren Wagner—have announced their resignations or been terminated within the last week. Companies have issued statements. Beer industry groups are developing or reviewing codes of conduct. But events of the past two weeks leave an unsightly grime that can’t easily be brushed away.
What has settled in the industry’s exposed cracks are unresolved questions of justice, forgiveness, redemption, or vindication, and who should dispense them. This month, it’s been difficult to see past the grim revelations, even as the industry turns its attention to what’s next, and how to improve safety for women and other marginalized groups.
[Content warning: This story includes discussions of sexual harassment, assault, and rape.]
The principle of justice is critical to healing, especially for survivors of sexual assault. But justice is not the same for all survivors. It is not always legal or punitive. A 2019 U.K.-based study, one of the first of its kind, sought to investigate sexual assault survivors’ complex understandings of justice. Researchers Clare McGlynn and Nicole Westmarland of Durham University found that survivors present a “kaleidoscopic” conception of justice, “namely, justice as consequences, recognition, dignity, voice, prevention, and connectedness.” Some advocates for restorative justice even posit that dialogue between a survivor and the person who has harmed them can yield forgiveness and a more robust form of justice. Consequences may be just one piece of the kaleidoscope.
“What stands out is the emphasis on complexity and nuance,” McGlynn and Westmarland wrote in their findings based on interviews with sexual assault surivors, “on the variability of the justice interests; and on the challenge to commonly held assumptions that victim-survivors seek personal justice and punitive outcomes.”
Is the beer industry equipped to understand this complex definition of justice for those who have been wronged, and then appoint individuals as arbiters of that justice? Who would those individuals be? Who would be qualified to condemn or to forgive the accused? The industry’s existing structures—trade groups, state guilds, events organizers, loosely organized consumer or hobbyist clubs—all have shortcomings in terms of being its investigative or punitive arms. Many don’t have the intention, or the capacity, to act in those roles. More critically, a sole focus on disciplinary action leaves out the other, complex components of justice, namely: dignity, voice, and prevention.
Allan believes breweries themselves are “100% responsible” for investigating claims of sexual harassment, discrimination, or abuse within their ranks. She also puts stock in the legal system when it comes to levying consequences, seeing it as a more serious outcome than bad actors losing their job or reputation.
“An Instagram apology isn’t enough. These brewery owners ‘stepping down’ is not enough,” Allan says. “They hurt people. They raped people. And they are directly responsible for creating a toxic culture that applauded this behavior. This is serious and goes beyond marketing.”
Indeed, the communal picture breweries like to paint of the industry can mask a less rosy reality. In a 2019 video pitch on crowdfunding site Wefunder, Modern Times CEO Jacob McKean states that the brewery “has really placed an enormous value on transparency, and honesty, and accountability.” This month, numerous people described Modern Times as a “toxic” work environment for women and Black employees; McKean subsequently resigned as CEO.
Few industry observers could argue that breweries have a successful track record of conducting internal investigations of such allegations on their own. Boulevard Brewing Company’s human resources department was criticized earlier this year for failing to act on incidents of sexism and harassment. After minimizing the damage done, Boulevard eventually apologized and hired a third-party HR firm to conduct an independent investigation.
In fact, in so many of the stories of abuse or discrimination shared recently, companies’ indifference or ineptitude seems only to compound the trauma of the initial incident. A brewery that won’t listen to the concerns of its staff is unlikely to provide a thorough version of justice to the employees who have been hurt. As writer Dave Infante pointed out to employees in a critique of HR reporting structures for his Fingers newsletter, “HR exists to serve your company’s best interests, not yours.”
Escalating a complaint to a body like the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) doesn’t guarantee a restorative outcome, either. One story, submitted by an anonymous person to Brienne Allan’s Instagram account, @ratmagnet, and posted May 26, alleges assault by a brewery coworker who was not disciplined by the brewery in any way: “I spoke with the lawyer and the EEOC, who offered me the right to sue. But it was just easier (and better for my mental health) to find a better job opportunity and move on.”
For this person, justice or healing was not obtained through the company’s reporting process, or through legal action. In this case, there was more safety or agency in the choice to leave the brewery. And that was restorative for them, whether or not it fits into society’s conventional understanding of justice. If a company can’t deliver on black-and-white forms of consequences, this person concluded it would be no help in providing the other elements that signify justice.
Who a community names as its investigators and arbiters also has huge implications for whether survivors seek justice. There must be community trust in those people or groups, or else their decisions will be rendered meaningless to both survivors and the larger community. It is damaging to a community to see claims of abuse minimized or ignored.
Allan seems undecided about the role trade groups play in investigating and disciplining industry professionals who harass, discriminate against, or abuse employees. She says brewers guilds can “set an example to everyone else about consequences in the local community.” Though she linked to the Brewers Association’s (BA) formal code of conduct complaint process in her Instagram stories last week, Allan is ambivalent about whether that process will have a proper effect: “The BA can prevent people from getting awards ... not sure how that helps.”
Others share her uncertainty. As Beth Demmon wrote for GBH, “If [the BA’s] precedent is anything to go by, expecting the BA to make significant changes in response to any negative actions of its members feels short-sighted.” If consequences or justice are to come as a result of recent allegations, many in the brewing industry do not trust that the BA will be the group to administer them. Rather, the BA has presented itself as a leader on issues of brewery independence and governmental lobbying efforts.
In response to the outpouring of stories Allan has shared on her Instagram, the BA did announce it would form a coalition with the Master Brewers Association of the Americas, the American Society of Brewing Chemists, the Craft Beer HR Professionals Group, and the Pink Boots Society to “explore how our organizations can collaborate to provide the resources and support that businesses and individuals in the brewing industry need to create and maintain a culture of safety, inclusion, and equity.” Notably, the BA’s announcement last week made no mention of its code of conduct complaint process.
That code of conduct complaint process, which didn't exist until August 2020, requires a BA member brewery to initiate it. It grew out of and mimics the BA's Marketing and Advertising Code Complaint Process, launched in 2008. The BA has declined multiple times to answer whether any of its members have used it. A BA spokesperson told GBH on May 24 that the group had so far received three code of conduct complaints following stories posted to Allan’s Instagram; it had received no code of conduct complaints before then.
If the BA’s panel to review such complaints takes the full 60-day review period it is granted, the panel would issue its findings on these three reports in mid-July. It’s perhaps a long wait for condemnation or exoneration, especially as some resignations and terminations have already occurred. But it’s also a measure of the gravity of conducting such a sensitive investigation.
The BA’s complaint review panel is currently made up of three third-party experts in racial and social justice, and alcohol regulatory compliance; all three are women. Other trade groups, such as state- or city-level brewers guilds, say they have not yet decided who should be in charge of investigations. Adam Harris, executive director of Brewers of Pennsylvania (BOP), the state’s brewers association, says the group is in the process of developing a code of conduct for members and determining who will enforce it. Pennsylvania is home to Tired Hands and Evil Genius Beer Company, two breweries that were the subject of numerous allegations made this month. (Tired Hands has said its founder Jean Broillet IV has “stepped down” from the brewery; Evil Genius co-owned Trevor Hayward resigned from his position on the board of Philly Loves Beer, which runs the annual Philly Beer Week festival, though he retains his position at Evil Genius.)
“We have yet to decide who will adjudicate violations of the code of conduct, whether it will be an ad hoc committee of BOP members, legal counsel, or an outside HR firm, or some combination of the three,” Harris told GBH via email. (When GBH requested a phone call with Harris to follow up on these plans, he did not respond.)
That silence is indicative of the disconnect between what many in the industry are asking for—leadership, accountability, concrete plans—and the reality that most beer organizations seem unprepared to meet those needs. Such groups’ discomfort at assuming the role of disciplinarian or exonerator is palpable.
Yet for justice to be achieved, it is not enough that investigative bodies exist. The individuals and processes have a real impact on whether survivors find justice. Research has shown that survivors need to feel their voices are a valid and central part of any such investigations. When discussing the importance of “voice” in survivors’ senses of justice, McGlynn and Westmarland note that voice is “constitutive of demonstrations of ‘respect’ and a meaningful ‘dialogue’ between victims and justice officials, as well as about influencing decision-making.”
A sense of powerlessness over one’s own story generally does not benefit a survivor’s healing. Handing over one’s story to an investigative body, without ongoing insight and input into how that investigation is handled, could create anxiety and hesitation for survivors of harassment or assault in the industry to come forward.
The fact that the beer industry professionals sharing their stories this month chose to do so through Instagram and the media, rather than through official industry channels, is telling. If they don’t see investigative bodies as trustworthy stewards of their stories, they’re likely to seek justice through other avenues—or not at all. Sharing their stories in solidarity with others may seem like the most attainable measure of justice.
Conventional understandings of justice are often backwards-facing. They seek to restore something that has been taken or damaged. But a major theme that emerges in research around kaleidescopic justice for sexual assault survivors is a more forward-looking form of justice: Prevention as justice.
“I think the only way you could get justice is for [sexual violence] not to happen really. That’s the only justice that I can see in a broad sense,” one survivor told McGlynn and Westmarland.
This component of justice demands the brewing industry not only seek consequences for past abuses, but alchemize the pain and lessons of those abuses into a better, safer future. This benefits not only future employees, but survivors themselves. Stories shared with McGlynn and Westmarland indicate that changing a culture to reduce the risk of gender-based harassment or abuse actually contributes to survivors’ healing.
One survivor told researchers she would “feel better if I knew that we were sort of tackling some of the root causes” and not just reacting to individual incidents of misconduct, which she refers to as “firefighting.”
While prevention is a different, and in some cases more challenging, task than retroactive punishment, it is also a hopeful orientation. It offers the potential for survivor justice and the goal of preventing future abuse or harassment. It’s open to collaboration and communal effort. This could further galvanize the brewing industry’s efforts toward fostering an inclusive, safe, and equitable community—not just for individuals who have yet to enter the industry, but to provide justice for those who have already been harmed by it.
Words by Kate Bernot
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