The women who say Trevor FitzGibbon, founder of the progressive PR powerhouse FitzGibbon Media, assaulted or harassed them thought they were alone until an early-December staff retreat in Austin, Texas.

Austin-based writer and journalist Sierra Pedraja was trying to get a job at FitzGibbon Media. Instead she got unwanted advances and lewd requests for pictures from FitzGibbon. He told her she was beautiful and asked if she wanted to have any "fun" during an in-person meetup, and followed up with texts asking if she wanted to "hook up" and Facebook messages about how "insane" her photos were.

"I was very eager to get a job, and he used that to his advantage," Pedraja told the Huffington Post. "He tried to make me feel very uncomfortable. He made it seem like I owed him these things to get the job." When Pedraja told other women at the firm what had happened, other stories came pouring out.

Staff members alleged more than half a dozen incidents of sexual harassment and at least two of sexual assault. In a statement, FitzGibbon called the allegations a "distraction" and shut down the whole firm, citing what he called an "irreconcilable difference" with his staff. (A spokesperson for FitzGibbon sent Vox the same statement when reached for comment.) Fitzgibbon's staff had other things to say about that difference:

FitzGibbon Media staffers were let go with no severance a week before Christmas, and they'll lose their health insurance in the new year. Progressives have rallied around them, though, and there's talk that the firm might relaunch without its former head.

Still, FitzGibbon Media was huge in the professional progressive sphere; it represented clients like NARAL Pro-Choice America, AFL-CIO, the Center for American Progress, MoveOn, and Wikileaks. Its collapse has sparked a conversation on the left over how often putatively progressive workplaces end up hostile to their female employees, and why it's so hard for the women who work at those places to come forward.

"There was no real HR. Everything flowed through or from Trevor."

In retrospect, there were some red flags. One former FitzGibbon Media staffer told Vox that FitzGibbon gave off a "weird" vibe and was overly "touchy-feely," but most people chalked it up to social awkwardness.

Rachel Tardiff, who left the firm in July, said that while she never experienced sexual harassment from FitzGibbon, she isn't surprised that it happened. He would sometimes say things that seemed inappropriate or over the line. He treated male staffers with an "overgrown frat boy demeanor" while he scolded or more sharply criticized the women.

Another former staffer said FitzGibbon didn't react well when he was told about sexual harassment allegations against someone else at the firm. He was angry and dismissive, yelling about how he didn't believe that such a "good guy" could do something like that. FitzGibbon also had issues with some anti-rape campaigns the firm ran, according to the staffer. At one point he confronted an employee about the campaign in front of about 10 other people. He questioned the tactics of holding "alleged" rapists accountable, talked about how false rape accusations had ruined his friend's life, and said that being accused of rape was actually worse than being raped.

"A lot of people heard that. How do you report when you know that's the feeling? Who wants to put themselves through that?" the staffer said.

Tardiff said FitzGibbon's personality and the firm's structure also made it difficult for anyone to come forward. "There was no real HR. Everything flowed through or from Trevor," she said. "His tendency to respond extremely personally to any criticism also fostered an environment where speaking up — in basically any situation — came with the risk of him lashing out in a way that would make things even more difficult."

The company did have someone with an HR director title, another staffer said, but that employee came on board in a different position, and a lot of people didn't know she had the HR role. The company also never held a training on sexual harassment, despite repeated requests from staff.

The misconduct went beyond FitzGibbon Media staff

FitzGibbon also allegedly harassed clients and others in his professional circles. Two clients told the Huffington Post that FitzGibbon had sexually assaulted them. And Vox talked to two other women who work in the progressive movement whose stories sound very similar to Pedraja's.

"Trevor hit on me via Facebook — we had a whole conversation about how he thought my new profile pic looked hot and that we should get together when he is in DC next," said "Mary" (not her real name).

"Karen" said she's been getting inappropriate messages from FitzGibbon for a few years, ever since she did some work with him while she was at MoveOn. "He would message me out of the blue a lot of the time. Sometimes it would be legitimate." But every third or fourth time he would comment on how hot she was, ask if she was married or how many boyfriends she had, or beg her to visit New York and be his "date." Just a few weeks ago, he asked Karen to send him pictures.

Like Pedraja, who said she brushed off FitzGibbon's advances with a nervous laugh instead of a harsh rebuke to avoid embarrassing him, Karen said she found herself trying to deflect or redirect the conversation without offending FitzGibbon. "Here I am being put in this position, and I'm thinking about not offending him."

For both Karen and Pedraja, it was partly a problem of power dynamics; Pedraja was actively seeking a job, and Karen couldn't rule out the possibility that FitzGibbon would be important to her career later. "The progressive political world and media world is so small and interconnected, and he has been an influential part of that," Karen said. "I don't want to shoot myself in the foot if I need a good word later on down the line."

But hearing about Pedraja and the FitzGibbon Media women who came forward against their boss made Karen see these conversations in a new light. Instead of assuming Trevor was a bumbling flirt who would probably never cross the line in real life, she saw him as a calculating predator who knew exactly how to exploit his power.

This is a much more widespread problem in the progressive movement, and elsewhere

Facebook / John Brougher

The problem is much bigger than FitzGibbon, progressives told Vox. "Trevor certainly isn't the only one in the progressive space who has done this to me or women I've known, and he won't be the last," Mary said.

"In more than a decade in the movement, I've never worked at a progressive organization or campaign where sexual harassment wasn't an issue of some kind," said one female progressive strategist who asked not to be named. "I think it's a lot harder for progressive organizations to create a space that's free from that than people think it is."

It's also harder than people think for women at progressive organizations to come forward when there is a problem. Some organizations have structural problems or a hostile culture like it seems FitzGibbon Media did. But even at a supportive workplace where things run smoothly, cultural norms can hold women back.

One progressive activist told Vox about a case of sexual harassment that she reported to her employer. It was about as clear-cut a case as you could ask for, complete with witnesses. Still, she spent half the night before reporting it crying. "I was so scared of what the consequences might be," she said. "I'd only been at this new job for a couple months and was terrified of being seen as someone who 'rocks the boat.' We've all heard a million stories about how women are treated or retaliated against for complaining. It was honestly terrifying."

Another progressive strategist recalled moving to DC and having three different women give her lists of which members of Congress she should avoid being alone in a room with. The lists included members from both parties, and there were enough of them that all three lists had different names.

Enduring inappropriate advances from men in power is "bipartisan and almost like a rite of passage in DC from what female friends have told me," Mary said. And of course, politics isn't the only place where men get away with routinely abusing their power over women who fear not being believed, or fear retaliation because of a man's influence. Just look at Bill Cosby.

But when these problems occur even at organizations where feminism and inclusivity are taken for granted as basic values, it shows how stubborn and persistent sexism can be. It's not necessarily that the movement is hypocritical; it's just made up of human beings who were raised in a deeply patriarchal culture. "We all grew up with these prejudices, and fixing them isn't easy," said one progressive strategist. "Supporting the right causes isn't enough. This is hard work, and people who want a pass on that need to get out of the way."

Social media strategist Beth Becker said that after the FitzGibbon revelations, she started seeing other progressive friends and associates speak out on social media about similar things that had happened to them. "I think this movement is about to have a very important conversation," Becker said. "It sucks that it had to happen this way, but it's also long overdue."

Much of that conversation is about how to fix the structural problems that make it more costly to speak out about a problem than to be the person causing that problem in the first place. Maybe that involves putting more women in significant positions of power, or investing in a much more robust and powerful HR department. Either way, it will involve constant, conscious work to change cultural norms.

Some progressives were outraged at reports that FitzGibbon had done this before. He was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women at his old employer, Fenton Communications. The firm investigated the claims and brought in a workplace expert for sexual harassment training, and FitzGibbon was disciplined but not fired.

"An employee who repeatedly harasses others shouldn't just be monitored, they should be fired, and it should be made clear what kind of person they are so that they're not able to just go on to another workplace, or start their own, and continue with the predation and abuse," said one progressive digital strategist.

Many of the women I spoke to feel that sexual harassment can be such a constant background noise in their daily work and life that it's hard to know when it's a "big enough deal" to actually report it — especially when that means rocking the boat enough to risk your job or even your career. In the case of FitzGibbon Media, the tipping point came when it was clear that the mountain of allegations was too big to ignore. Many women long for a day when the problem doesn't have to get that massive before it gets addressed, and a day when the social consequences of committing sexual harassment will actually exceed the social consequences of coming forward about it.

"One of the things I keep thinking about is, what is the magic number of women it would take before an allegation will be believed?" said Karen. "What would have happened if only one employee would have come forward? Are we ever going to stop somebody like this after one or two victims, or is it always going to have to go on for years, and follow them across different companies, and there has to be a critical mass of complainants before people take it seriously?"