Not long after she joined Richard Meier’s architecture firm in 1989, Karin Bruckner was working at the office one Sunday, she said, when Mr. Meier came up beside her at a copy machine and started rubbing his body up and down against hers.

“I just stood there and froze,” Ms. Bruckner said. “‘This is not happening’ — that’s the first thing you think about — ‘He’s not doing this right now, I’m sure he’s not doing this.’”

She later confided to John Eisler, a senior associate, about what had occurred, and Mr. Eisler was sympathetic.

“It’s not something that was a secret,” he said in a recent interview about Mr. Meier’s conduct. But Mr. Eisler, who spent 20 years at the firm, said he did not confront Mr. Meier after hearing from Ms. Bruckner.

“I am sorry,” he said, “that I did not.”

After a report last month by The New York Times detailing a pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Meier, more women have come forward to share their own upsetting encounters with him. But in recounting such experiences, these women said they had also been disturbed by a sense of helplessness that pervaded the firm. Mr. Meier’s behavior was common knowledge, they said, but no one seemed to have the power to stop it.

Over the last six months, a number of fields have been forced to reckon with revelations regarding powerful men who harassed or assaulted underlings, some for many years, without being stopped by their companies or organizations.

At Richard Meier & Partners Architects, there was no one more powerful than Mr. Meier, a world-famous architect whose firm depended on him for its prestige and success. It was years before #MeToo; protesting harassment was far more perilous.

Ms. Bruckner said she did not fault Mr. Eisler for his silence.

“I don’t think he felt he had any power to do anything about it,” said Ms. Bruckner, who worked at the firm until 1992, when she left to work for the architect Philip Johnson. She said people in the office were too afraid of what would happen to the firm, and their jobs, should Mr. Meier’s name be sullied.

“It’s behavior that goes on for decades and never changes,” she said. “‘We don’t go up against the bad guy because it will have a domino effect; if he falls down, everybody else falls down.’”

Following the initial Times report, which involved five women, Mr. Meier, 83, said that “while our recollections may differ, I sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by my behavior.” He said he would take a six-month leave from his firm.

Four more women have since come forward to share their experiences concerning Mr. Meier: Ms. Bruckner; Eileen Delgado, a former office manager; Lucy Nathanson, Mr. Meier’s former personal assistant; and Liz Lee, who worked as the communications coordinator.

Through a spokesman, Mr. Meier and his partners declined to be interviewed about the new accusations but issued this statement: “The allegations involving Richard Meier, the most recent of which were nearly a decade old, do not reflect the ethos and culture of the firm, and it would be irresponsible to allow these personal allegations to tarnish the company.”

It is unclear to what extent executives at the firm, including Mr. Meier’s partners, were aware of the sexual advances women are now publicly describing. Most of the women said they were too afraid for their jobs to lodge formal complaints with the management.

But some women did, and the firm appears to have reached at least two settlements. Ms. Delgado said she received about $25,000 in 1992 after Mr. Meier threw himself on top of her.

As reported earlier, Alexis Zamlich received $150,000 in 2009 after Mr. Meier had exposed himself to her, and another employee — Laura Trimble Elbogen — reported that Mr. Meier had asked her to undress, accounts that have been confirmed by the firm’s former chief operating officer.

All three episodes were said to have occurred in Mr. Meier’s Upper East Side apartment.

The firm has declined to discuss any settlements, but it said that after the two 2009 incidents, it instituted its first sexual harassment training program and updated its sexual harassment policy, which was put in the company handbook in 1993. No women have come forward to report negative experiences at the firm from after 2009.

Ms. Delgado, who worked as the office manager for several months in 1991 and 1992, said that Mr. Meier had asked her to work at his apartment, where he gave her a glass of wine and sat beside her on the sofa. “All of a sudden, I was thrust back and hit my head on a table,” Ms. Delgado said. “This man was on top of me, his tongue was down my throat, and he put my hand on his penis.”

The next day at the office, Ms. Delgado told the bookkeeper, Francina Foskey, who she said responded, “Oh, God, you, too?,” and then proceeded to spin through a Rolodex, pointing to the names of women who had complained to her about Meier’s sexual overtures. “She said, ‘Her, her, her, her,’ and as she’s turning them, we’re counting,” Ms. Delgado said. (Ms. Foskey died in 1997.)

Ms. Delgado said she got up the courage to hire a lawyer and settled with the firm under a nondisclosure agreement. Mr. Meier’s two other partners at the time were Robert Gatje and Thomas Phifer.