
A scandal about the sexual harassment of dozens of students in journalism has brought this phenomenon, still widespread in Romania, including in education institutions, back into focus. However, the issue seems to be of little concern to Romanian society or the authorities that should prevent and sanction it. Psychologists say harassment is linked to power relations in a conservative, male-dominated society.
At the Faculty of Journalism, the sexual harassment of students is discussed off the record
On January 26, RISE Project published an extensive investigation into the sexual harassment of some female students by one of the professors of the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences (FJSC) within the University of Bucharest, Horea Bădău. According to RISE, Bădău would contact female students in private, call them at night and invite them out, to his home or to a seaside resort.
Just a few days after the publication of the article, on February 1, students were invited to participate in an "open dialogue", held at the Rectorate of the University of Bucharest (UB), on the subject of sexual harassment in the academic environment. Journalism professors, UB employees, as well as students and graduates attended.
However, the open dialogue began with an announcement made by Bogdan Oprea, the director of the journalism department of FJSC and spokesperson for UB: the discussions with the future journalists would be "on deep background": nobody in the room had permission to quote a speaker or disclose information learnt in the course of the "open dialogue". Oprea explained that the decision had been made for the sake of the victims: nothing gets recorded, so that everyone feels comfortable talking.
Future measures and steps were discussed. Useful information was also provided, such as the existence of an office of inclusion, equity and equal opportunities or of a gender equality plan.
Then it turned out that someone in the room was recording. And the person who ignored the rule set in the beginning of the discussion was warned: either stop the recording, or the discussion would stop. Until then, however, only University employees had spoken. No one else in the room, students or victims, who needed to feel comfortable speaking, had said a word. In this case, the question arises - why did University employees feel the need to be protected? And after all, with the scandal already public, why were journalism students—whose professional goal should be to struggle to find and publish information and fight for institutional transparency—were asked not to even mention the information that was going to come out in the course of the discussions? What does this secrecy say, exactly in the place where it shouldn’t exist at all, about how sexual harassment is viewed/treated in Romania?
The Bădău case was known at the Faculty of Journalism, but reactions came only after the press revealed it
The power ratio between teachers and students is high. And it's also one of the main reasons why students don't turn to teachers when they have a problem. Even more so when the student's problem is that another teacher is sexually harassing them. No code of ethics and deontology can establish relationships of trust between people.
After the publication of the Rise Project investigation targeting Professor Horea Bădău, the reactions came, for the most part, in the online environment. Several people claim that "everyone knew" of his practices. For years.
Several FJSC professors went public with messages for students. They explained how they had heard about the case but didn't have enough information or didn't think the situation was that serious. They showed empathy and encouraged students to talk to them in the future.
“What I read in that article far exceeded anything I had heard or imagined. I sat for several hours to read a 49-minute article. Absolutely mind-blowing," wrote one of the professors on Facebook. "(...) I want to be able to focus on doing projects, on organizing picnics with students, on supporting them to go on mobilities, not to painfully read articles like the one by RISE. But for now, it's a reality and we can do better, with empathy and trust that there are good people who are trying to do as much as they can, regardless of whether they believe in their success or not, simply because they have to."
During this time, the Association of Communication Students (ASC) took a stand and presented steps in a plan to reach zero tolerance for this type of behavior. Moreover, they urged the Ethics Commission to act, through a petition signed by more than 200 students.
ASC also opened a form for student complaints. Ten were submitted in the first two days alone.
On January 29, 2024, the Faculty of Journalism also came with a “council - approved point of view” Basically, it states that the University of Bucharest has zero tolerance for abuse, that the Ethics Commission has been notified, but also that all UB members (from students and professors to administrative staff) are obliged to follow certain rules of conduct.
It then lists some of the things the University does to ensure a safe environment for everyone. Among them are steps that, if promoted, could be fundamental, such as the existence of an Office of Inclusion, Equity and Equal Opportunities, which ensures intervention and support in case of harassment or abuse, but also the existence of counseling services through the Career Counseling and Guidance Department.
On February 2, 2024, Horea Bădău was suspended from his position as a member of the Center for Action, Resources and Training for Academic Integrity (CARFIA). The board of CARFIA gathered after the journalist Cristian Lupșa, co-author of the RISE Project investigation, asked what would happen to the professor’s role there.
Three weeks later, on February 20, Horea Bădău was also suspended by the Université de Lorraine in France, another institution where he was teaching. The decision came after the RISE investigation raised concerns among students there. They were the ones who sent an email to the management.
Badău got suspended until May 20, 2024. The president of the university personally handed him the decision. She states in an email sent to students that she still has no evidence that the professor took advantage of his position of power in France as well.
There is no public information so far regarding possible conclusions or recommendations from the Ethics Commission of the University of Bucharest*. Neither the University of Bucharest nor the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences have announced any measures regarding the professor, who is currently on unpaid leave. Horia Bădău is still listed as university lecturer on the website of the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences.
"They want to destroy me, it's an execution": Horea Bădău claims that he has evidence in his favor. Meanwhile, the number of female students accusing him of harassment has been rising
In the first days after the publication of the RISE investigation, Professor Horea Bădău also reacted, using several means: posts on the faculty’s Facebook group, comments and even private messages to several students.
"My right to post on the FJSC Group page has been revoked. I no longer have the right to post anything for the group, no posts, no comments," is what he wrote to several students before redirecting them to a new Facebook page where he posted his point of view.
"The article is a telenovela from cover to cover, a concoction of stories, of fantasies performed by the Rise Project in a biased and malicious style, in order to construct an incriminating false reality, with the clear intention of hurting me," he wrote in the post.
Asked by several students how he explained the audio recordings revealed by the investigation, in which his voice was heard, Badău came back with a post. "When I read the article, I didn't take anything seriously, just some stories, lies, ill will. Then I listened to the recordings and I was shocked by how much manipulation was there”, he wrote.
He continued by directly referring to the victims in the article: "So with Andreea, you don't know whether to laugh or cry." In the end, he claimed that the audio materials were not real: "It is clear that, despite the efforts of the people at Rise to make a compromising montage, what I’m offering her (editor’s note: one of the victims) is only my friendship and you can clearly see that she insisted on it," he said of one of the recordings.
Horea Bădău stated, on the same Facebook page, that he would publish "all the names and all the evidence" on a website he was building: "And you will find out the truth. Which will then be sealed in court." Recently, he came up with an explanation propagated, over the years, in the faculty. He claimed that the reason why he was suspected of harassing female students was a former student of his from Hyperion University: Valentin Petcu, a blogger also known by the name of Zoso.
"I kicked him out of seminars a few times because he was always making a fuss and disturbing his colleagues. Then, he asked me to hire him at apropo.ro and I refused. He has been attacking me ever since, he even wrote on his blog that I kicked a baby to death in the belly of a female student. All the rumors started from his blog."
Veridica has contacted Horea Bădău asking him to present his point of view on the audio recordings resulting from the investigation, to enlarge on the evidence he claims to have in his favor and the ways in which the UB should have solved the issue, had he not been involved and accused.
After initially stating that the press would not present his full point of view or that it was distorting it, Bădău sent a long, nine-page message, in which he repeated the accusations made earlier, claiming that he was the victim of frame-up by the blogger Zoso.
He claims that the blogger was the one who started the first rumors, in 2008, when Badău was a teaching assistant. The professor says it happened as a result of a campaign he launched on the topic of money made by bloggers by “stealing content from online newspapers".
In the nine-page document, he elaborates, with print screens and links, the reasons why the accusations are false. He claims that the Rise investigation appeared in order to compromise his image: "I am innocent", he wrote in the end of the text sent to Veridica.
Meanwhile, Scena 9 has published a new series of testimonies by students who claim that they have been harassed by Horea Bădău. 12 students, adding to the 14 who spoke for RISE.
Sexual harassment is recurrent in education institutions
The case at the Faculty of Journalism is not an exception. Romanian education has been marked by other sexual harassment scandals as well. Many began to emerge in the public space and in the press after 2017, when the #MeToo movement started gaining momentum abroad. The news from there encouraged Romanian women to speak.
"When we arrived at his house, the teacher would hug us all very tightly, clinging to us. While he was tutoring us, he would rub his leg against my legs, up to my thighs, he would give me and my colleagues shoulder massages. When we made a mistake, he told the boy in the group that he was allowed to take off our bra and if we made a mistake again, he would be allowed to put his hand on our breasts"; this is what a former student of the "Mihai Viteazul" College in Bucharest said in 2017 about a teacher. She was joined by other women who had him as a teacher in class or for private lessons. Adevărul tried back then, unsuccessfully, to get a reaction from the man and from the institution.
The NGO Girl Up Romania organized a protest in 2022 with the slogan "Together we remove abuse from schools", after receiving several accounts of sexual abuse from female students. Some of them involved girls attending high schools or vocational colleges.
"A professor from UNARTE came behind me, pressed his body against mine, raised his hands touching my shoulders, during which he was having an erection and rubbing against me", says one of the testimonies .
In 2022, the University of Theater Arts and Cinematography (UNATC) in Bucharest found itself in the middle of a similar situation, when the abuses perpetrated by professors Șerban Puiu and Felix Alexa began to emerge in the public space. UNATC did exactly what the UB did: talks, promises and actions without substance.
The two are still professors. Moreover, they keep staging shows in theaters in Bucharest. The Odeon Theater announced in January 2024 the premiere of a play directed by Felix Alexa.
The conservative agenda seems to be at the top of Romania's priority list
While sexual harassment is a recurring presence in the education system, schools cling to religious classes but vehemently refuse sex education. At the same time, the Romanian justice system accuses 11-year-old girls of being raped because they are wearing skirts that are too short.
In early 2020, the case of a little girl who had been raped by a 52-year-old man when she was in the fourth grade came out in the media. The man claimed that it was the child's fault, that she provoked him because she was always "barely dressed". Five other teenagers then sexually assaulted her, at the man's insistence.
Prosecutors and judges then ruled that the 11-year-old girl had consented to having sex with a 52-year-old man. The case was documented by Libertatea and shows how, after more than ten years, only three out of seven judges ruled in favor of the victim.
And it's not a singular case. In 2019, dela0 wrote about how Romanian courts classify 3 out of 4 cases of sexual acts with minors as consensual cases, and not as rape.
It was only in 2023 that a law was promulgated by which any sexual act with a minor who has not reached the age of 16 is considered rape and is punishable by imprisonment from 7 to 12 years.
Meanwhile, in Romania, there’s been talk again about organizing a pro-family referendum , and this time one of the initiators is the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), the party seeded third in the cycle of elections that will take place this year. As with the previous referendum, the target is the LGBTQ+ community, which, in the eyes of the initiators, should not have the right to marry (they don’t have that right anyway, but since there is currently no prohibition in this regard in the Constitution, they can hope that, one day, same-sex marriages will be legalized). What AUR or those who have mobilized within the Coalition for the Family seem to ignore is that Romania has the largest number of underage mothers in the EU not because of the LGBTQ+ community, but because of the lack of sex education and access to contraception, and also because of the conservatism with which important subjects are treated. There are many things that could be done, but they end up being dragged out until they are forgotten.
Experts: sexual harassment, linked to the conservatism of Romanian society
Psychologist Aurora Liiceanu says that sexual harassment is clearly related to the position of power that men have in different circumstances. But also, to the past: "The tradition of power relations between women and men clearly shows that men exploited and took advantage of their dominance," explains the specialist. "They initiated and regulated the relations, including from a legislative point of view. Women, in general, were mainly put into submission, and that attitude was considered normal."
But these things have changed significantly in the last century. Women are no longer deprived of education. They are no longer housewives and financially dependent on men. They are no longer reduced to the status of an ornament meant to enhance one’s masculinity. They have been fighting for independence and rights. And gender equality gets increasingly stronger in various fields.
But some things are harder to change than others.
Sociologist Barbu Mateescu says that in Romania there are huge gaps between social segments. In one place, people have completely merged their principles with those of the West. "Twenty minutes or two hundred kilometers away, the norms are the same as they were 200 years ago and they are changing slowly," he points out. "From this point of view, we are not a country, but a society running at different speeds."
He also says that harassment also entails a psychological component, and abuses of this type are not necessarily caused only by the tendency towards conservatism. A man can be progressive and abusive just as he can be conservative and behave appropriately. Rather, it is a broader spectrum that includes a man's upbringing, how he processes his failures and traumas, his flaws and inferiority complexes.
But things cannot change overnight. It takes a joint effort of awareness raising and fighting for something to change. "Harassment is a big umbrella, with many versions that are just slices of a big cake," explains psychologist Aurora Liiceanu. "Awareness of harassment, regardless of its form, will change interpersonal relationships."
Update 03-20-2024: the Ethics Commission ruled that Horia Badau breached the University ethics and deontology code