Accountability Statement
Update May 18, 2022: After I left my former partner, but before she launched the website containing the accusations I address on these pages, she hired an attorney who threatened to file a lawsuit if I did not give her my shares of the company we co-founded together.
Since that time, she has continued to threaten legal action. In March of this year, she attempted to claim ownership of the trademark on the phrase "More Than Two" (which I began using six years before we met) and attempted to take the More Than Two website (which I have owned for many years before we met). She has also filed a lawsuit, though as of the time of writing this the lawsuit has not properly been served, and my attorney has characterized it as "harassment". Find out more here.
This site was created by Franklin Veaux to address allegations of wrongdoing against me from several sources, to provide an avenue of redress for those I have wronged, and to open a larger conversation about accountability in the poly community. If you’re here, you’re probably aware that several women, including Eve Rickert among others, have made serious allegations of misconduct about my past behavior.
I have always strived to advocate for the highest standards of ethics in personal romantic relationships. I regret I have not always lived up to my own ideals. I have heard from people who say I have harmed them. This site is a place where I can share transparency as I seek to be accountable for the harm I have caused.
I will be updating this site as time goes on. In addition, I will also be posting on my personal blog at tacit.livejournal.com and my Web site at www.franklinveaux.com.
Many people have raised questions about the fact I’ve made few public statements about the allegations or my efforts to address the harm I have caused. I have not spoken publicly about the allegations for the past two years because my lawyer has advised me not to.
Why do I have a lawyer? There is more happening here than the general public knows about.
I am engaged in an ongoing legal dispute with my former partner and coauthor, Eve Rickert, over the ownership of the two companies we co-founded together, Tacit Pleasures and Thorntree Press, and the contracts regarding some of the books we co-authored together. Eve’s public accusations began after I refused to give her my shares in our publishing company without payment. I will be talking more about this in the months ahead.
The fact that I have not spoken publicly does not mean I am ignoring the accusations, nor trying to evade responsibility for the harm I have caused. Since these accusations became public, I have taken many steps to attempt to understand the harm I have caused and seek ways to address that harm and to learn from the experiences and stories of my former partners who have made statements about the harm they have experienced from me.
Some of the things I’ve done in the wake of these stories include:
1. I have been seeing a therapist with skill and experience in nontraditional relationships. This therapy has two goals: to help me better understand the experiences of the people close to me, so that I can become a better, more understanding and more compassionate partner.
2. I have assembled an accountability pod made up of people with experience in the polyamory and BDSM scenes to help hold me accountable for the harm I have caused.
3. I have established a way for people who I have harmed to contact my pod, anonymously if they like, to address that harm.
As I work with my partners and my therapist, I have come to realize specific behaviors and actions on my part that are harmful to the people close to me. I will talk more about the specifics in the months ahead.
I am committed to a transparent process of accountability and redress of the harm I have caused, which is why I built this site.
I invite anyone who has experienced harm from me to reach out, if they so desire, to my pod. You can contact my pod at the email address podreports2020@gmail.com, which you will find in the Contact tab on the upper left-hand side of this site.
I am willing to work with whatever process those who I’ve harmed feel comfortable with to address the causes of my harm, the behaviors that led to that harm, and whatever I can do moving forward to redressing that harm.
That said:
I categorically will not participate in any process that involves Eve Rickert.
I have been physically, verbally, emotionally, and financially abused by Eve Rickert. In the months ahead, I will be talking about my experiences as a survivor of intimate partner domestic violence from Eve Rickert. I do not feel safe in any process that involves Eve Rickert and I will not engage with her in any way except through my attorney.
If Eve Rickert is genuinely invested in the experiences of the other women who have reported being mistreated by me, I invite her to step back to make space for them to engage in a constructive process of addressing those harms, if that is what they wish to do. It is my hope that I can separate the process of restorative justice from the pending legal and other issues that remain between Eve and me.