SAN FRANCISCO—When Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor who now campaigns against sexual harassment, took the stage at a TED event this month, she described 2017 as a tipping point in the fight against workplace misconduct.

But behind the scenes, TED owner Chris Anderson and other senior officials had been grappling with accusations for much of the year that their own conferences, famed for turning short speeches by leading figures into viral videos, had not been a safe place for women — and that the atmosphere of predatory male behaviour was getting worse.

At least five people, including a past main stage speaker, told TED officials that they were harassed or groped during the organization’s flagship conference in Vancouver in April, according to interviews and email correspondence seen by the Washington Post.

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The nonprofit’s general counsel, Nishat Ruiter, said in an April email to TED’s senior leadership that she, too, had been “touched inappropriately, but let it go.” She added she was finding it difficult to believe the issue was being “addressed by TED effectively. We are clearly not doing enough.”

In a statement, TED acknowledged several incidents had occurred at the Vancouver conference and said it had taken action.

“We did hear from a small number of women attendees at TED2017 about harassment. As a result, two men were immediately disinvited and won’t be returning,” TED said.

TED also said: “Creating a safe and welcoming environment is critical to the success of our conferences, and we have no tolerance for harassment of any kind. As soon as we heard there were issues at our conference in 2017, we took immediate action to address the specific allegations, then worked with leading experts to upgrade our code of conduct. Today, we make the code of conduct extremely clear to all TED conference attendees and encourage our community to report violations.”

In the decades since TED’s original owners got the idea of turning 18-minute talks by world leaders, chief executives, academics, artists and others into a business under the slogan “ideas worth spreading,” the conferences and spinoff events have become known as a meeting place for the global elite, particularly leaders in the technology industry. Anderson’s private foundation acquired TED in 2001.

The gatherings are regarded as a place where the likes of former Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates, scientist Richard Dawkins and former vice-president Al Gore could be encountered in the hallways, and the organization’s talks have been watched online more than one billion times worldwide.

Most people pay $10,000 (U.S.) to attend and must apply for tickets.

The Post reviewed email exchanges among senior TED officials at the time of the April conference, sparked by a complaint by a long-time attendee, who complained of sexual harassment and being offered “every drug known to man.” The problem was so bad that the woman decided to pack her bags and leave, telling Anderson that it would be her last TED conference.

Tom Rielly, the organization’s director of partnerships, whose satirical monologues are the traditional closing event of the conferences, wrote in response that harassment had occurred in past years.

“I’m afraid as difficult as it is to talk about, experiences like this have been going on for years, to varying degrees,” Rielly wrote. “I agree this is absolutely heartbreaking and stomach turning.” He also suggested that alcohol could be fuelling the misconduct.

Ruiter, the general counsel, said that she had heard of more such incidents at this year’s conference.

“I heard from so many women unprompted about the type of advances that were everywhere, and that felt ‘different’ from years past,” Ruiter wrote. “This included a TED Prize winner and two TEDsters who spoke to me about this and more than one staff member.”

Ruiter then quoted complaints she had heard from other women at the conference.

“I was literally jumped on, grabbed and held,” Ruiter wrote. “Guys are taking major liberties.”

And it went on. “Don’t say anything . . . but please change this,” one woman pleaded with Ruiter, according to the email she sent to her colleagues.

Nilofer Merchant, an author and former Apple executive whose 2013 TED talk received nearly three million views, said in an interview that sexual harassment is not a new problem for the TED conferences.

“The same thing was happening five years ago. It’s still happening,” she said. “What’s different now is we’re sharing our stories.”

At the April conference, Merchant said a longtime attendee pressed his erection against her at a bar. She recalls mouthing to her friend who was nearby: Help me.

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“In this awkward moment, you’re trying not to make it an issue,” she said. “I’m trying to spend my time at TED, which I paid $10,000 to attend, talking to people about ideas and not worry about the guy with his boner pressed against me.”

In their email exchanges, Anderson, Rielly and others discussed ways to address such problems, including whether to make an announcement from the stage about an anonymous hotline, created in November 2016, that would forward complaints to TED leadership.

They discussed communicating a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment of attendees, creating clear guidelines and penalties for behaviours that constitute harassment, and coming up with a formal process to handle complaints.

The TED officials also expressed worries about the complaints becoming public.

International conferences approach the problem in different ways. The World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, said it screens attendees who are not heads of state or chief executives, and revokes invitations if it learns of misconduct.

Some conferences have been updating their policies in light of recent high-profile sexual harassment scandals.

Summit, which attracts an elite technology industry crowd, updated its sexual harassment policy this year to include language that explicitly bans “unwelcome sexual attention,” “inappropriate physical contact” and “sexual images in public spaces.”

South by Southwest, the annual gathering in Austin, Texas, said it has a broad code of conduct that does not specifically mention a ban on sexual harassment by attendees (it bans harassment of all kinds). On its website, DEF CON publishes a similar code of conduct. The Aspen Ideas Festival said it has no published harassment policy for attendees, but it encourages staff to report incidents.

Internally, TED has also faced sexual harassment complaints against its own managers.

In 2014, TED offered to settle a sexual harassment case with a young woman who worked on one of the organization’s digital marketing teams for about $31,000, according to documents.

The woman’s lawyer told Anderson that the woman’s boss had repeatedly asked her about her sex life, according to a May 2014 complaint she filed to TED.

After she reported the misconduct, her boss took her off some accounts she had developed — a move she saw as retaliatory, according to the complaint. That document also alleges that TED had initially asked her to keep working under her boss.

TED did not comment on the settlement.

The accusations against TED come at a time when allegations of sexual harassment and abuse by powerful men are roiling Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the U.S. Congress.

The heightened awareness of sexual misconduct in the workplace and other professional settings was sparked in part by Carlson, who reached a $20-million settlement with Fox in 2016 after suing her old boss Roger Ailes for sexual harassment.

“Right now is the tipping point,” Carlson said at the TEDWomen conference in New Orleans this month, choking up at points throughout her 14-minute speech. “We are watching history happen. More and more women are coming forward and saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”