The DOJ estimates that two outof every three sexual assaults aren't reported to the police. Thatmakes it hard to understand the full toll of these events. (Photo:Shutterstock)

Almost exactly a year after revelations about movie mogulHarvey Weinstein kick-started the #MeToo movement, another hashtag is taking off:#WhyIDidntReport. This one refers to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford'sallegation that District of Columbia Circuit Court Judge BrettKavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers, some 35years ago.

The vast majority of people who experience rape, sexual assault,or sexual harassment—which are all illegal, for the record—don'tmake an official complaint. Blasey Ford didn't either, untilKavanaugh was nominated for a seat on the United States SupremeCourt.

The hashtag started trending after President Donald Trump tookto Twitter to defend his nominee, saying that “if the attack on Dr.Ford was as bad as she says” he was certain charges would have beenfiled.

Related: 4 steps to take when responding to sexualharassment claims

As with #MeToo, women responded with their personal stories ofstaying silent. Some of their reasons included: “Because I thoughtit wasn't rape if you were dating,” “because I thought everyonewould say it was my fault,” “because I didn't want my mom to know Iwas drinking,” “because he was in my friend group.”

Women with higher profiles chose more public venues to comeforward. Cookbook author and Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi wrote inthe New York Times that she'd been raped by a boyfriend when shewas 16 and feared being cast out by her family if they knew.

Rosario Marin, Treasurer of the U.S. under President George W.Bush, wrote on BuzzFeed about waiting 44 years to go public withthe sexual abuse she'd experienced at the age of 5. “Kavanaughcould have done what Ford has accused him of back when he was 17and gone on to be a remarkable student, father, husband, and judge;those two behaviors are not mutually exclusive. So the questionis,” Marin wrote, “who is telling the truth regarding what happenedon that day more than three decades ago? I believe her.”

It's an undisputed fact that women often don't report sexualviolence; the Department of Justice estimates that two out of everythree sexual assaults aren't reported to the police. That makes ithard to understand the full toll of these events on individuals andon society as a whole.

Using data on crime victims, several studies put the cost ofrape and sexual violence somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000per victim. Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control andPrevention estimated in 2016 that the national economic burden is$263 billion a year.

More than half is attributed to a general loss of workplaceproductivity, with medical costs, criminal justice fees, andproperty loss and damage each accounting for a portion. Aboutone-third of the cost is borne by taxpayers.

“These types of events definitely cause both psychological andphysiological harm. People may not sleep well. They may have moredepression and anxiety. They may get headaches,” says Lisa Kath, anassociate professor of psychology at San Diego State University whostudies workplace harassment. “And it's all intertwined: If you'renot sleeping well, you're not thinking well.”

The effects can show up right away, in medical bills and sickdays. Or they can manifest years later.

In a study of more than 3,000 women, researchers found thatthose who said they'd experienced childhood or adolescent sexualviolence had health-care costs 16 percent higher than women whodidn't have that experience—decades after the event occurred.(Sexual violence includes coerced sex and attempted sexual abuse,not just forcible rape and ongoing predation.)

The point is not that sexual violence, abuse, and harassment areexpensive, although they are. It's that they do damage inlife-altering ways we rarely consider.

For example, three-quarters of employees who experienceharassment never tell their managers or HR, according to a Januarysurvey from the Society for Human Resource Management.

But they do quit. In one of the only studies that looked at theeffects of sexual harassment on women's careers over time,published in June 2017 in the journal Gender & Society,researchers found that women who've been sexually harassed at workare six-and-a-half times more likely to leave their jobs than womenwho haven't.

The same researchers also asked about 1,000 men and women ifthey had experienced unwanted touching, offensive jokes, or otherbehaviors that could be considered workplace harassment.

Among the female respondents who said they'd experiencedunwanted touching or at least two other, nonphysical behaviors, 80percent said they left their jobs within two years.

When women do leave, they tend to land in positions that payless, not more. The occupations with the highest rates ofharassment also happen to be the most male-dominated,highest-paying fields. Looking for safety, women seek out spaceswhere they're less likely to get harassed, which means they land inless lucrative fields or positions—a negative economic impact thatpersists through the rest of their working years.

In 2003, while working on Howard Dean's presidential campaign,Sarah Schacht says a fellow campaign worker attempted to assaulther sexually. She reported the incident to the campaign, but herassailant kept his job.

By 2005, she'd left her chosen field, political technology, topursue a path that felt safer. From the sidelines, she watched asher attacker grew increasingly successful. “These careerinvestments you make as a young woman get destroyed,” she says.“It's like putting a down payment on a home that the moment you buyit is blown away in a hurricane.” (Dean says he wasn't aware of theincident. “If I'd known about it, I would've fired [the allegedassailant] immediately.”)

This logic may seem not to apply to what allegedly happenedbetween Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford. They were teenagers, afterall—effectively classmates, not co-workers. Some of theconsequences of assaults within that age group, though, areremarkably similar. Elite colleges and prep schools are designed tofoster the kinds of connections that propel their alumni's careers.Kavanaugh attested to this at a Sept. 6 confirmation hearing,calling his high school years “very formative.” Some of his highschool classmates were in attendance, he noted.

Victims are also put into the position of having to protecttheir future reputations. Speaking up can be “career-trajectoryaltering,” says Joni Hersch, an economist at Vanderbilt Universitywho studies employment discrimination. “If you are known as thatgirl who complains, even informally, about 'boys will be boys'behavior, will you have the same opportunities to form connectionsthat will eventually be valuable in the workplace?”

Or, when your résumé crosses the desk of a former classmate inthe future, do they remember hearing about “something thathappened” in high school?

None of us want to be judged as adults for the worst decisionsof our youth. During the teen years, the part of the brain thatresponds to rewards is incredibly sensitive, says LaurenceSteinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University whostudies adolescence, risk-taking, and decision-making. At the sametime, the part that's responsible for self-control is stillcatching up. “It's like having a car with an accelerator pressed tothe floor and not a very good braking system,” says Steinberg. Withage, the reward response blunts, and our self-control getsbetter.

This is one reason people can be convinced to forgive pastmisdeeds, especially if it looks like their perpetrator has changedfor the better. At 30, George W. Bush was arrested for drivingwhile intoxicated, an offense that contributes to 10,000 deathsevery year. “I used to drink too much in the past,” he toldreporters on the campaign trail in 2000. Five days later, Americansvoted in the election that gave him the presidency.

Time, though, is often kinder to the perpetrators than it is tothe victims. That 2003 campaign incident followed Schacht through adecade of her career, she says. Schacht, who now does consultingwork, still worries that people who learned about the incidentthought she was unprofessional. She wonders how many panels shedidn't get invited to speak on or which fellowships turned herdown. “You can't put a specific dollar amount on missedopportunities,” she says.

To some, Kavanaugh's insistence that he has “never done anythinglike what the accuser describes—to her or anyone,” as he said inresponse to Blasey Ford's allegation, seems, at best, politicallyimprudent.

Why not, like Bush, acknowledge that he drank a lot—maybe toomuch—in his younger days, and that there are parts he can'tremember. “I don't think I did these things,” he could say. “If Idid, I'm horrified and ashamed, because that's not who I amtoday.”

Since Blasey Ford came forward, more allegations have surfaced:that Kavanaugh exposed himself to Yale classmate Deborah Ramirezwhile they were both undergraduates; and that he and Mark Judge, aclose friend during his high school days at Georgetown Prep, werepresent while fellow Maryland-area high school student JulieSwetnick was gang-raped at a house party in the early 1980s.

Kavanaugh's continued denials are as troubling to some as whatmay or may not have happened more than 35 years ago. “A singleevent from your teenage years doesn't tell us much about you as anadult,” says Steinberg, the adolescent researcher. “But if ithappened and he's denying it, that tells us something about who heis today: He's a liar, and we don't want liars on the SupremeCourt.”

The cruel twist is that it's women who have historically beenaccused of lying.

Many women say they don't report sexual assault or harassmentbecause they're afraid no one will believe them. There's along-standing myth that women make false reports in order to hurtmen. It's a weird lie: Like voter fraud, false crime reports of allkinds are by all measures basically nonexistent. We certainly don'tsubject victims of other crimes to the same kind of doubt.

As a result, we've been loath to hold men of any ageaccountable—until recently. As Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford preparedto testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, comedian BillCosby was sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison for drugging andassaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. She waited a year to tellanyone about it, and it took an additional 10 before he was chargedwith a crime.

This year, sexual harassment and assault abruptly shifted fromsomething men could reliably get away with to something they maybecan't. For teenagers today who aspire to the judiciary or thecorner office, that's a very different message than “What happensat Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep.”

Read more:

• Workplace romance in the #MeTooera
• Job performance insecurity may driveworkplace sexual harassment
• 5 questions to help guide the overhaul ofyour sexual harassment policies

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