AUGUSTA — In a recent Maine Sunday Telegram column (May 27), Cynthia Dill suggested that former Maine Media Collective employee Jessie Lacey’s public disclosure of being sexually harassed won’t change anything because it lacked substance and courage.

This raises the question: What is the point of someone like Jessie Lacey, or any victim of harassment, sharing their experience?

The immediate impact of her story is clear. Jessie Lacey’s story has moved the conversation about workplace sexual harassment forward. When people like Jessie Lacey share their experiences, things do change – in ways we can measure, and in ways that we can’t until we look back years later, because social change is slow.

Each time a survivor comes forward, it signifies to other people experiencing and those who have experienced harassment that they aren’t alone, and that coming out the other side is possible. There are many recent examples in which a single survivor speaking out gives the gift of courage to many others who follow: Victims of Bill Cosby, Larry Nassar and Harvey Weinstein immediately come to mind.

Public dialogue also gives voice to something that is hard to talk about. Sexual harassment makes people uncomfortable. It’s about power that people exert over others, and to think about that, we must acknowledge that it happens. Sexual harassment relates to body parts and subjects that most people don’t tend to openly discuss, much less hear on the news or read in a newspaper.

When survivors talk about their experiences, they are creating a place for that conversation to happen – at great personal cost. There is a reason why the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimates that nearly 75 percent of sexual harassment incidents go unreported. When you make a report – be it to your employer, the Maine Human Rights Commission or the EEOC – you’re inviting people to scrutinize details of your personal and professional life. And although it’s illegal to fire an employee for reporting harassment, you still may lose your job.

Or you may be the subject of a newspaper column that calls you out for not doing enough.

I have yet to meet a person who has shared such an experience and basked in the limelight of having their friends, family, neighbors and strangers know intimate details of what has happened to them.

I haven’t come across a survivor who enjoys the online trolling – and sometimes rape and death threats – that often accompany going public.

I have yet to meet anyone who woke up and thought, “Hmmm. Maybe I’ll do something today that means that whenever a future employer Googles my name, the first thing they see is how I was sexually harassed.”

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t fear losing their job for reporting sexual harassment. The potential economic consequences are often too significant for reporting to even be a decision. Sexual harassment is a fact of life for many because they need their job to eat, to have a place to live and to buy their kid a new pair of shoes to replace the ones they just grew out of.

The problem here isn’t that Lacey didn’t “go deep enough,” as Cynthia Dill wrote. The problem here is that Lacey was sexually harassed, and that the column implies that she should do better. The implication is that she is part of the problem.

Many people question whether to trust survivors of sexual harassment who come forward years later. The recent Telegram column serves as a good reminder of why people don’t come forward to share their experiences: Sometimes when you come forward, you’re just asked for more of what you already shouldn’t have had to give in the first place.

Sexual harassment and assault will not change until the public response to victims of sexual harassment and assault changes. We need to not only hold people who harass others accountable, but also kick to the curb our unreasonable expectations of victims.

It’s not on any victim of sexual harassment to personally figure out how to solve the problem of harassment. Their voice alone is powerful. It’s up to people in positions of power – whether that power is political, within the workplace, in the media or in our communities – to ask hard questions and challenge the status quo. It’s up to people who are sick of hearing about #MeToo because they are the very people with enough privilege to help change it.

Thank you, Jessie Lacey, for sharing your experience and for being someone who has helped advance the conversation. People across Maine are proud to stand with you. I know I am.

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