Indeed, others who have been accused of sexual harassment have emerged largely unscathed.

Three months after Senator Jeffrey D. Klein, then the leader of an influential group of Democrats who collaborated with the Republicans, was accused of forcibly kissing a former staffer, Mr. Klein announced that he would rejoin the mainline Democrats. In return, he was made the deputy leader of their conference. On May 25, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the conference’s leader and an outspoken proponent of women’s rights, endorsed him for re-election.

For Erica Vladimer, the former staffer who had accused Mr. Klein, the endorsement was more evidence of the impossibility of change amid Albany’s political webs.

“If female elected officials won’t stand up for victims, who will?” Ms. Vladimer wrote on Twitter after the endorsement. “Politics should never get in the way of representing the 10 million women of New York. This is why victims don’t come forward.”

Asked about the accusations against Mr. Klein, Ms. Stewart-Cousins has said she would wait for the outcome of an investigation by the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics. But it remains unclear whether that investigation has been opened at all: The commission is required to notify respondents within 60 days of receiving a complaint whether it has decided to begin a formal investigation, but a spokeswoman and lawyer for Mr. Klein, as well as a spokesman for the commission, have all declined to comment on whether any such notification had been given.

Even some officials who were disciplined have been raised as examples of the incomplete nature of Albany’s purported self-purification. After several women accused Brian J. Gestring, a top official at the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, of creating an environment rife with harassment, the criminal justice agency declined to punish him, calling the allegations unsubstantiated. The agency did later fire him — but not, it said, because of the harassment accusations.

“There’s been a lot of noise and a lot of posturing, and there have been some people that have been terminated,” John W. Bailey, a lawyer for two of the women who testified against Mr. Gestring, said. “But the victims are still victims. There’s absolutely been nothing done to right the wrong as to them.”