My name is Kian Williams, and in mid-September 2022, I was the target of quid-pro-quo sexual harassment by Student Senate Clerk Nora Malone. Under her implied power, she demanded my participation in romantic activities, encompassing intimate conversations, dinners, letters, and non-sexual contact. The consequences of refusing her advances were severe, as she threatened to manipulate her influence to have my superior terminate my employment. Her exact words were, “if you don’t have dinner with me and love me I just might tell [your boss] to fire you.” Faced with the fear of jeopardizing my job and tarnishing my reputation, I acquiesced.
At the time of this comment, I did not presume malicious intent. I took it as a quirky joke, an attempt to inject humor into our relationship. For the next several months we would continue to have a “normal” friendship and the joke slowly faded in my mind. But the jokes restarted and they kept coming. They became increasingly serious and unsmilling. Nora would make indirect comments vaguely stating how she wished people would compliment her outfits and makeup more in order to boost her self-confidence and then follow that up by demanding I engage in those actions or my job would be on the line. She would also ask me to write her letters and beg for hugs because gifts and physical touch were her “love language.”
During this time, she would also make comments about my body and appearance, commenting on what clothes made me “prettier”, that I should “smile more” for her, and what hairstyle made me “more attractive.” These comments spanned the entire fall semester and even into the spring, with some being as late as March, well after I cut all non-essential contact in early November.
Before she started making these demands, I considered Nora to be a close friend. We went to lunch/dinner several times, I attended the concerts she asked me to come to, and I constantly joined her to hang out. At this point in time, she had my full trust and respect. I never expected those demands to leave her mouth. I always considered her to be a compassionate and empathetic person. Looking back, this was not a one-time incident, but a string of repeated comments that indicated a behavior of predation and harassment. I never paid attention to the comments and jokes, implying that if I didn’t write letters, respond to “I love you’s” positively, and physically touch this person, I would “lose [my] position.” The demand for letters came about two months after the harassment began. By this moment in time I was petrified. I was severely anxious and stressed about what would happen if I didn’t fully cave-in to her demands. In an act of self-preservation I decided it was best to submit, embrace physical contact, and write letters. Nora would later go on to publicly accuse me of sexually harassing them after I was elected Speaker of the Student Senate, a position I had intended on using to investigate acts of sexual harassment and reporting procedures so no individual would have to suffer the anxiety and pain that I did.
In these allegations, Nora stated that (in early November) I had left her two cards in which I exclaimed thanks for our friendship and expressed an eagerness to become closer in the future. She also claimed her uncomfortability at what she described as “excessive compliments” directed at her outfits, makeup, etc. Unfortunately, she left out the very important detail that she asked me to do these things for her. “Asked” is not even the most accurate term; “demanded” better suits the situation. On several occasions Nora insisted that I compliment her outfits and pressured me into commenting on her makeup, actions I was not particularly comfortable doing. Both as someone I had no intention of flirting with and to someone that held a significant amount of implicit power over me; something she held over me constantly. Her close relationship with my boss and the advisors led me to believe that there was no path to protect myself from this pattern of predatory behavior.
In another incident, Student Body Vice-President Mary Elizabeth Thornton, a student leader in an actual position of power attempted to intimidate me, again, at the cost of my job. Mary Elizabeth informed me that if I did not make specific decisions in running the Senate, she would remove me from my position as punishment. She told me that she didn’t like the way I did something when leading a Senate session and told me to change it. When I protested, she cut me off and exclaimed that “I am the Vice President. If you don’t run the Senate how I want it then don’t expect to be in your position much longer. An advisor was present for that conversation and said nothing, did not defend me, and made no effort to end the intimidation. Mary Elizabeth had previously made antisemitic comments targeted at me, telling me that “we don’t need to condemn antisemitism, it really isn’t that big of a deal” and that “we don’t need more Jews in office.” She truly held power over me, and with these comments having been made, I fully believed that she would exercise this authority. This time, however, I would not remain idle, and I would not give in to this targeting.
I would go on to write a bill that would remove the power of this office to remove my position. I would later withdraw this bill after assurances by the advisors that we had the right to override Mary Elizabeth, should she attempt this again (the same advisors did not seem so concerned that she had attempted to intimidate me in the first place). After the bill was written, the intimidation did not cease, with the President of the Student Body, John Kirk, demanding his entire cabinet cease all communication with me, including personal. He would even go so far as to raise his voice at several personal friends of mine, two of his cabinet members who refused to submit to his demands. After the antisemitic comments and attempts at intimidation, I became distant to Mary Elizabeth, refusing to be in the same room as her unless required, and would decline to engage in any conversations with her. During and after the Speakership election, she would publicly accuse me of sexual harassment and intimidation, despite the exact opposite happening.
Mary Elizabeth and Nora would then try to find any women with any perceived slight against me in order to submit a harassment complaint to the Title IX office. They would ask every woman in the Senate if I ever cut them off when speaking, spoke to them condescendingly, or did anything that they could label as “flirting” and sent them to Title IX claiming I harassed half-a-dozen women. Several of these students came to me expressing their dismay with what was happening, with some even stating that they explicitly told Nora and Mary Elizabeth that they didn’t believe I did anything wrong to them and didn’t want to be a part of this. However, their names were still submitted to Title IX. The Title IX Director would take statements from all of us and proceed to dismiss all claims against me, finding that I did not harass anyone. Before the Title IX complaints were settled, Mary Elizabeth and Nora would join my opponents in the Speaker election in spreading false rumors that I sexually assaulted someone on the night of my prom—a night where, in reality, I was drugged and raped.
Up until now, I have remained silent for multiple reasons. Who would have believed me? I had just been accused of sexually harassing two women. If I were to defend myself by revealing the truth—that I had actually been the target of sexual harassment—it would have likely been dismissed as a desperate attempt to salvage my reputation, resulting in me being branded as a “victim blamer” and a liar.
Further, who would have believed that a man could be sexually harassed? As a male-presenting individual, I found myself grappling with my own disbelief and indifference surrounding my experiences of harassment and assault, let alone society’s.. In addition to the disbelief, I felt an overwhelming sense of fear. I had already received death threats, lost my jobs, and even some of my closest mentors turned a deaf ear to my pleas for understanding. Why should I continue to relive the most traumatic moments of my life if they will be continually dismissed and disregarded? I do not blame the Senate for their decision to remove me after these allegations. In fact, I am rather proud of them for making this tough decision and I believe they made the right decision given the information at hand.
Why did it take me so long to write and publish this? This was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and writing this was extremely painful. Every stroke of the pen and press of a key was like a needle in the small of my back. Constantly pricking me to remind me of the pain I felt during my experiences. There was no cure, no ailment, no medication that could heal me and push me to defend myself and come forward with my experiences as an harassment survivor.
I am writing this not out of a desire for revenge or to harm the individuals involved professionally. I write this in search of peace. I want my story to be heard and understood. I want to move forward with my life, free from the nightmares that haunt me. I want to be able to confide in my friends and family, desperately hoping that they will believe me and not see me as the monster I was falsely portrayed to be. My name is Kian Williams of Wichita, Kansas, and I am a victim of sexual harassment. I am strong, and I am a survivor.
Kian Williams 