VILNIUS — Sexual harassment was the last thing Emma expected to experience while working for an EU institution dedicated to gender equality.

And yet, it started on her very first day.

She had just begun a traineeship, and found it strange that her supervisor insisted on accompanying her to run errands. Over the following weeks, he asked her to lunch and dinner, invited her on a road trip, and kept inquiring about her sleeping arrangements, always with a smile she registered as flirty, bordering on malicious: “How was the bed?”

She always answered professionally, according to a formal complaint she filed later, and tried to change the subject.

One night about two months in, he started to get drunk at a work dinner, she said in her complaint, and “lost any kind of filter” when colleagues moved to a bar. He flirted with her explicitly, in front of two other managers, and asked if she was a lesbian. When she was with another female trainee, he asked if they both were.

Multiple female employees allege that male colleagues routinely engaged in sexist behavior.

As soon as the other trainee left, he “begged” her to walk him home. She refused, and as she walked away at 3:30 a.m. down a dark street in Vilnius, Lithuania, she heard him calling after her: “Are you refusing me? Are you refusing me?”

Such persistent sexual harassment would be uncomfortable anywhere, but Emma (who asked to be identified by a pseudonym) didn’t work just anywhere: Her employer was the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), an EU body charged with promoting equality between the sexes across the Continent.

Emma’s case, filed in 2014, is not the only one of its kind at the agency. A POLITICO investigation found that formal sexual harassment complaints were made against three male staff at the Vilnius-based organization that year. Two were upheld and resulted in departures from the agency. The man accused in the third case was found to have misused work time to try to pursue a colleague.

EIGE has had a policy of “zero tolerance” of sexual harassment since 2012, and is leading an effort to put such a policy in place across EU agencies.

But an examination of how the agency handled the crisis in its own ranks — based on interviews with 14 former and current employees — shows how difficult it is to follow such a policy in practice, even in an organization dedicated to promoting gender equality.

The three formal cases, which have not previously been made public, are not the only instances of concern about sexual harassment at the agency.

A female employee told a human resources officer in 2012 that she had witnessed and experienced sexual harassment there.

In a 2014 survey, 54 percent of staff said they did not agree that reports of inappropriate behavior would be taken seriously by the agency. And an audit of the agency’s gender equality record the following year — which the institute declined to release but POLITICO obtained from another source — found that the issue of sexual harassment was “a source of animosity and discomfort among staff.”

In short, Europe’s gender equality agency had a sexual harassment problem. But the nature of the problem was and remains bitterly disputed.

Multiple female employees allege that male colleagues routinely engaged in sexist behavior. The accused men angrily rejected the allegations and claimed they came from colleagues who were overly sensitive to gender issues.

According to the institute’s director, Virginija Langbakk, the institute went beyond its legal obligation to handle each complaint. And yet no one — not the victims, the accused or even other employees in the agency — was satisfied with the process.

* * *

When EIGE was founded in 2006, gender equality experts flocked there with high expectations. “When the institute called me I dropped everything,” said Kristaps Petermanis, one such expert. “It was the EU citadel.”

But not all the 50 or so positions there were for gender experts; administration and communication postings proved more difficult to fill. The director said qualified candidates often weren’t willing to move to Lithuania. Many hires were local, and some were not exactly versed in feminist theory.

The institute is chronically understaffed so it relies a lot on trainees, and this group of men were preying on them" — Anne, a former employee

“I was surprised when I came to EIGE,” said a current employee, who asked not to be identified out of fear for her job. “I saw a bunch of feminist female colleagues, and then a lot of flirty and cheesy guys.”

According to six former employees — most of them specialized in gender research — who worked at the institute in 2013 and 2014, sexist comments and actions were common in the office, mostly from a small group of men who “had a lot of contempt for feminism,” according to Anne, a former employee who asked to be identified only by her first name.

“It was very bad, particularly for trainees,” she said. “The institute is chronically understaffed so it relies a lot on trainees, and this group of men were preying on them.”

Anne cited as an example a game she said the group used to play.

“We had a colleague, she was very good at her job, and she would very often wear skirts,” Anne said. “They had a game ... if she sits in a certain position, see what you can spot.”

Another former employee, Judith (not her real name), said she was once eating lunch alone at a restaurant when several men from the office came in. One made a sexist comment, she said, and she told him his behavior was disrespectful. According to her, the man responded, “You behave all the time as if we were trying to rape you.” (The man, who still works at the agency, denies making this comment).

Four other former employees told POLITICO they complained about sexism in the office both with managers and in staff meetings, but that the reaction was tepid.

Petermanis, who left in 2017 after three years at the institute, said working there “felt like Alice in Wonderland.”

“Like, is this really true? Is this really going on at the European Institute for Gender Equality?”

In an interview, Director Langbakk acknowledged that the office atmosphere was tense in 2014 but attributed it mostly to women who were making men in the office feel “attacked.”

“We are working not just for women’s empowerment but for gender equality,” she said. “We cannot have militant feminism groups.”

* * *

In 2014, two trainees filed formal harassment complaints against male colleagues. Emma accused her supervisor of sexual and psychological harassment. And Katherine, whose name has also been changed, made allegations against two men, accusing one of sexual harassment and the other of sexual harassment and stalking.

In documents seen by POLITICO, the women gave detailed accounts of the men making suggestive comments and asking them out repeatedly. In one case Katherine accused a man of touching her inappropriately in and outside the office. Both trainees said they refused the advances repeatedly, and felt the men subsequently punished them for this at work.

“I wanted to manage the situation by myself, I thought I could handle it,” Emma’s formal complaint reads. “[But] the situation was unbearable.”

This was not the first time an employee had raised concerns about sexual harassment. When Judith was applying internally for a different position in 2012, she says her head of section, who was in charge of hiring, asked her one evening to a stakeholder dinner.

“I’m sure that you appreciate how delicate this topic can be especially since there is sometimes a fine line as to what constitutes harassment and what doesn’t” — Marc Jaccarini, the human resources officer

When she arrived, she says, she found the meeting was in a club and the only people there from EIGE were the manager and another woman who was applying for the same job. She remembers feeling “paralyzed” as he asked them to sit next to each other and took photos of them. Then she says he told her she could get the job, “you just have to invite me to dinner … and then to breakfast.”

She says she left and texted him that his behavior was unacceptable. She did not get the job.

A few months after the incident, she emailed the agency’s human resources officer. “I feel obligated to write to you regarding some inappropriate behaviors which I’ve noticed in EIGE,” the email, dated August 29, 2012, reads. It goes on to say that she had seen and experienced “behaviors which can be classified as sexual harassment” from colleagues.

Marc Jaccarini, the human resources officer, sent a brief reply. “The implications of your email can be serious,” he wrote. “I’m sure that you appreciate how delicate this topic can be especially since there is sometimes a fine line as to what constitutes harassment and what doesn’t.”

Judith says she met with Jaccarini but didn’t discuss specific incidents or colleagues. The incident was reported later to an investigator who was looking into a harassment complaint in the agency, by a colleague Judith confided in at the time. When asked about the email and the meeting recently, Jaccarini said he did not remember either. He did not pass on Judith’s concerns to management, both he and Director Langbakk said.

Two years later, Judith’s old head of section was the subject of one of Katherine’s formal sexual harassment complaints.

* * *

Every second woman in the EU has experienced sexual harassment, according to a survey of 42,000 women by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency. But the nature of the cases — personal relationships, innuendo and ambiguity, often in private settings — means legally admissible evidence is often scarce or nonexistent. If they are reported at all, complaints of such behavior are most often handled not in the courts but in the workplace.

In dealing with the 2014 complaints, managers at EIGE faced the same difficulties that confront many employers trying to adjudicate in such cases. They had to try to balance the rights of the complainant and the accused, and sort through evidence that often comes down to two people’s conflicting accounts of their relationship.

EU institutions have a process to deal with complaints that’s more developed than at most workplaces. There are trained “confidential counselors” who field complaints and can try to mediate. If the situation can’t be resolved informally, or if a complainant doesn’t want it to be, a formal complaint is filed to the institution.

If an investigation is carried out and finds that the accused’s actions qualify as sexual harassment under EU staff regulations, new questions arise — about proportionate punishment, and what merits a fireable offense. And on those questions, the guidelines are not clear cut. It’s up to each institution.

* * *

At EIGE, director Langbakk said she took each report of harassment seriously. To avoid the rigidity of the formal procedure, she first encouraged complainants to try to resolve their cases informally, via mediation and confidential counselors. When that didn’t work, the trainees filed official complaints.

After Emma took that step, she says, the atmosphere around her changed.

“When a woman says something like ‘I was sexually harassed,’ one of two things usually happens. They say she kind of asked for it, or they say she was psychologically unstable,’” she said in an interview. “The second thing happened to me.”

The day after she presented her formal complaint, she stayed home. She then received a message from the agency’s head of operations, saying that she needed to present a medical certificate saying she was fit to work before she could return, according to a second formal complaint she filed.

Then Emma was told that her harasser filed an informal counter-complaint against her, for “gender-based violence” and “mocking his heterosexuality.” She complained to human resources that this was victim-blaming but was told it was his right to defend himself.

“The worst time for me came since the moment I started to talk,” she wrote in her follow-up complaint.

“I don’t know how to make it more clear, I am not interested in a relationship with you. It is making me feel uncomfortable. You need to respect that but you don’t appear to ... I have said it over and over.”

Emma’s complaint and one of Katherine’s were investigated independently — and thoroughly. Seventeen employees were interviewed in one case. The investigator upheld them both.

The accused men, who no longer work at the institute, could not be contacted for this story, but documents make clear they denied the allegations against them.

One of the perpetrators (the one who also allegedly offered Judith the job in exchange for sex) had his contract terminated eight months before it was set to end. The other, the man accused by Emma, also left the agency around six months before the end of his contract, although it was technically not terminated. The case took a toll on him as well. He filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman, and colleagues said his demeanor changed dramatically.

“He was a wreck psychologically,” Langbakk said. “He felt nobody wanted to speak to him. This kind of social punishment was much stronger than anybody would imagine.”

For Katherine’s other complaint, she said she turned over emails showing that she’d told her colleague she was uncomfortable with his advances and asking him to leave her alone. An excerpt from one reads, “I don’t know how to make it more clear, I am not interested in a relationship with you. It is making me feel uncomfortable. You need to respect that but you don’t appear to ... I have said it over and over.”

Langbakk said the institute “gathered all the proof and there wasn’t evidence” to merit a formal investigation. It was instead examined by a disciplinary board, which decided there was reason to believe it was a friendship gone bad rather than a case of sexual harassment. The case was ruled a “breach of good conduct” and “significant misuse of work time” instead of harassment by the board, and the man’s eligibility for promotion was suspended.

The man, in an interview with POLITICO, said he submitted to the disciplinary procedure, but did not feel he deserved the punishment.

“A few people wanted blood. And I have the duty of care for both sides” — Virginija Langbakk

“I went through the whole process with an open heart,” he said, insisting that the allegations were unfounded. “This is the end of the story.”

When Katherine was told this complaint wasn’t ruled sexual harassment, her traineeship was over and she had already left Lithuania. She considered filing a complaint with the Ombudsman, but decided to move on.

“That guy made my life hell,” she said. “I drafted all these things I wanted to say back to them, and I just did not have the energy, or faith in the process.”

* * *

As a result of the two exhaustive investigations, many employees knew about the harassment allegations. But privacy laws protecting the accused meant others — even the victims — were not told about their colleagues’ punishment. Since the men weren’t fired immediately, to some it seemed that management let them off scot-free, which deepened divisions between the gender equality experts and other staff. Langbakk acknowledged the atmosphere was “boiling” at the time.

“A few people wanted blood,” she said. “And I have the duty of care for both sides.”

The tension culminated in a staff meeting in September 2014, after Emma sent an email to colleagues informing them her case had been upheld. “I was discredited and I think that it’s your right to be informed but also mine,” she wrote.

In the meeting, the director said Emma’s email broke confidentiality rules and amounted to “attacking colleagues.”

None of the women who filed complaints still work at EIGE. But their time there left scars.

The man who had sexually harassed Emma was still working at the agency and was at the meeting. According to unofficial minutes of the meeting sent to POLITICO by two different sources and corroborated by four people who were there, he stormed out.

The minutes say another man, the one Katherine said made her life hell, defended him, saying: “What [Emma] did to us and to this institution is an act of terror.” He denies making this comment.

* * *

None of the women who filed complaints still work at EIGE. But their time there left scars.

“I don’t want to send the message that EIGE is a unique case; harassment of women happens everywhere,” Emma said. “But the thing about EIGE is the way they handled it ... Not that they should have taken sides, but they should have protected me.”

Emma also filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman, who mediated between her and EIGE to agree how much she should be compensated for the harassment she experienced. “I didn’t want people to think I did it for the money,” she said. “But I’m still taking psychiatric drugs. I spent one year with my parents, not working, just trying to recover.

“The whole experience really broke me.”

Many of the gender equality experts who were working there at the time have since left the agency. Some were sick of the atmosphere or the workload, and some got better jobs. Several believe they were pushed out by management because the director thought they were too outspoken.

Langbakk denies leveraging turnover to get rid of the most outspoken employees, and says the institute learned valuable lessons from the tension and the harassment cases in 2014. A staff survey in 2016 showed that 15 percent of staff did not agree that reports of inappropriate behavior would be taken seriously, down from 54 percent in 2014. She said of the current environment: “We’ve cleaned the atmosphere completely, and people are not afraid to talk to each other.”

But not everyone agrees. Three current employees said rumors still circulate around the office about how the most outspoken feminist employees were “kicked out,” creating a chilling effect for some employees who wish speak up about problems. “At EIGE the attitude is that you don’t go against the management,” one said.

And four current employees told POLITICO the sexual harassment cases impact how they behave now around coworkers of the opposite sex.

“I came to EIGE and I found out about these cases, and I was so angry and disappointed,” one of them said. “That’s why, since the beginning, I do not even have close small talk with male colleagues.

“I just ... I know what happened.”