But that didn’t mean students and professors vanished once exiled. Instead, I watched institution after institution simply “pass the trash” — a term for what happens when schools let reportedly abusive faculty flee elsewhere, without alerting their new employers to the allegations against them. Teachers quietly moved from high school to high school; professors covertly transferred colleges. I watched the same dynamics play out among students when I reported on a college admissions consultant who helped expelled young men put what she called their “best spin” on misconduct allegations so that they could go back to school, their new classmates none the wiser.

Readers were horrified: one campus activist wrote a letter in response, describing the relief she felt when her own college assailant was expelled, how glad she was that he would not be able to harm her again. The activist concluded “my rapist is not my responsibility.” A more than fair point. But then whose responsibility is he?

In 2014, I profiled some of the young men who had been kicked off campus for sexual misconduct, and found many had grown increasingly resentful and closed off to change. “At first I thought they didn’t want me to participate in campus activities,” one told me. “Then I thought they didn’t want me to graduate. Now they don’t want me to have a job or be part of society. Do they want me to commit suicide? Is that what they want me to do? What is the endgame?”

I’ve thought a lot about these questions as #MeToo has unfolded, and especially these past few weeks as celebrities have floated the prospect of comebacks. Let me be clear: They’re doing it very wrong. Mr. Rose should be donating millions of dollars to domestic violence shelters, not planning a star-studded return to TV that leverages his transgressions to boost his career.

But #MeToo is supposed to reckon with the misdeeds of all men, not just the rich and powerful. Bad men are not just on our TV screens, but in our classrooms, our workplaces, our friend circles, even our families. Where should they go if they’re fired from their jobs, expelled from their schools, kicked out of their homes or shunned by their communities?

#MeToo is also supposed to reflect a spectrum of coercive behavior, not just crimes that should lead to prison sentences. Bill Cosby is one thing; but many women don’t want the V.P. of sales who got too handsy at the Christmas party to be banished forever, let alone go to prison. If they’re faced with what looks like no other option, will women be more likely to report him, or less?

There’s a reason schools and companies opt to pass the trash: It’s by far the easiest option. Businesses get to say they’ve protected their workers or students (and evade liability in the process). And perhaps more important, it allows them to dodge very real and difficult questions: What do we want from abusers? Under what terms should they be allowed to return to normal life? Is there a way to explore possibilities of redemption that don’t put more of a burden on the people harmed in the first place?