I received an email from a gentleman from the SFWA today:
Complaints against you have been filed by
multiple members of SFWA. In following our procedures for responding to
such complaints a report was prepared by a Board-appointed investigator
and found, by a Board vote, to merit continuing our complaint process.Our current protocols mandate presenting you with the report and
adequate opportunity to respond so that the Board may make a
determination. Responses may include, but need not be limited to,
denial, claiming extenuating circumstances, and claiming provocation.
You have 14 days to respond. If you require statements by others to be
submitted for the record, such statements shall be collected and added
to the record. If you request an extension of time to collect these
statements, one additional 7-day-period shall be granted.Please find attached the Board investigator’s report. This report
and all contents not publicly available fall under SFWA confidentiality
rules and may not be publicly disclosed.
Now, here is what remains something of a mystery. I examined the organization bylaws and there are no “confidentiality rules”. There are confidentiality rules in the Forum, which are clearly posted, but an unsolicited email is not a Forum post and is no more protected by expectations of confidentiality than spam.
However, I certainly wouldn’t want to violate any more organization rules than I already have, so I requested more information from the gentleman:
I have received the information you sent me. I shall be pleased to
review it. However, I do not recognize that the information falls under
any “confidentiality rules”, as this is not the SFWA Forum, but an
unsolicited email sent to me. Nor are there any “confidentiality rules”
in the SFWA bylaws.
Please inform me by what “confidentiality rules” you believe this report
falls under within 24 hours or I will assume that there are none
pertinent to this report and I am therefore free to reproduce its
contents in its entirety wherever I see fit.
Now, perhaps there are some double-secret confidentiality rules of which I am unaware, in which case I shall, of course, abide by them. But if there are no such rules, then I shall certainly not hesitate to make the report available to the public.