Blog #19 - Accountability Process is Complete (Kamela Love letter)
To Those Impacted by Empowered Pleasure’s Accountability Process,
This letter is to confirm that Cliff Rees and Charity Joy from Empowered Pleasure, LLC have fully participated in and completed a formal accountability process and participated in a community restorative justice process concurrently. The accountability process was initiated in February 2023 under the coaching and supervision of Miles Hurwitz. I, Kamela Love, joined as an Accountability Supervisor and Mediator in April 2024.
After two and a half years of earnest inner growth work and outer relationship repair work related to the complaints received and the incidents reported, Cliff and Charity have arrived at the stage of re-integrating with their local Portland, Oregon community at sex-positive and sacred sexuality events, first as participants only. Additionally, Cliff and Charity plan to begin re-integrating as facilitators of non-touch sex-positive and/or sacred sexuality events in the upcoming months.
Cliff and Charity’s accountability upleveling trajectory has included private therapy sessions, extensive transparent communication through public blog statements, consultation with Jessica Morgenthaler (survivor support), coaching and consultation with Miles Hurwitz (Accountability Coach), coaching and consultation with myself, Kamela (Accountability Supervisor), consultation with Sherika Tenaya (Accountability Supervisor), review and discussion of participant feedback from facilitating pilot events, conversations with survivors who chose to engage in restorative repair processes, feedback sessions from professional peers, and conversations with former community members.
To determine readiness for completion of the formal parts of their Accountability Process, we tracked 6 areas of their growth and improvement:
Understanding Impact/Harm: This includes understanding the impact of their actions through listening deeply with curiosity, empathy, and open non-defensiveness from a place of genuine understanding, humility and gratitude remaining connected to empathy and compassion. This includes the avoidance of gaslighting, denying a person’s individual subjective experience of harm and accepting the higher level of responsibility coming from their up-power roles as facilitator/practitioner and organizer. Both Cliff and Charity have demonstrated a deep understanding of the harmful impacts that each has caused in their community.
Taking Responsibility & Being Accountable: This includes fully understanding and owning, without excuses, what they did and didn’t do, how actions or inactions violated their own standards, and why they were harmful to others in survivor’s subjective experience and in that process, not dismissing or minimizing the impact of said actions or failures to act regardless of intention, accessing genuine gratitude for those who originally named the harm and called them in to this Accountability Process, and making actionable and measurable changes to minimize causing harm in the future. Both Cliff and Charity have taken profound responsibility for the issues that emerged in Empowered Pleasure events and have demonstrated their gratitude for the people who “called them in” to being accountable for those actions.
Making Transformational Changes: This includes shifting attitude and changing their behavior and energy field in ways that are directly observable. Cliff and Charity have both made significant transformational changes including the following: engaging in concrete skill building through coaching, classes and workshops in areas relevant to accountability, modifying teaching practices and personal conduct, taking meaningful and consistent action to address the root causes of their behaviors that co-created harm, receiving challenging feedback from a place of genuine listening and care, and demonstrating gratitude for the opportunity to grow and to uplevel as a power-aware and trauma-informed teacher, and demonstrating gratitude towards those who put time, attention, and emotional labor to support their change and growth.
Repair / Making Amends: This includes addressing all complaints that have been made known and demonstrating genuine effort to repair relational harm. Cliff and Charity each assert with integrity that they have repaired, where possible, in good faith through 1:1 conversations, mediations, and reparative actions. Cliff and Charity covered the cost for the professional facilitation of heart-centered reparation processes with anyone who was negatively impacted. Cliff and Charity participated in several facilitated clearing conversations with survivors who desired to engage in repair. Beyond the completion of this formal part of their accountability process, Cliff and Charity remain available indefinitely for future repair conversations with anyone genuinely seeking repair by providing continued tantra-positive and trauma-informed mediation. Anyone experiencing harm can access these conflict resolution services without needing to communicate with Cliff or Charity by submitting an online form that goes directly to their Accountability Supervisors.
Public Communication: This involves being transparent about how they have been involved in situations that caused harm, when and where appropriate. Cliff and Charity have been transparent about their involvement in situations that have caused harm by posting the Restorative Justice report prominently on their website which includes the original wording of the actual complaints received, writing and publicly posting a total of 18 blogs which detail significant steps in their accountability journey, creating a page on their business website dedicated to sharing transparently the details of their Accountability Process including links to their blog content, organizing and participating in two Question & Answer zoom sessions about their Accountability Process open to the public, and sharing openly about their accountability process in conversations with peers, students, friends and mentors.
For reference:
Accountability Process webpage on EP’s website https://www.empoweredpleasure.org/accountability
Public Blog detailing steps of their Accountability Process https://cliffnotes108.blogspot.com/
Prevention & Ongoing Accountability: This involves taking concrete steps to minimize the possibility of causing hurt and/or harm in the future and trusting themselves to lead with integrity. Cliff and Charity have taken concrete steps to minimize the possibility of future mistakes by creating an external supervisory team, drafting and implementing a Code of Conduct, putting a system in place for receiving complaints of harmful incidents through an independent third party, developing more extensive informed consent forms for event participants, reviewing event structures and curriculum with experienced professional peers. Both Cliff and Charity demonstrate integrity in their ongoing commitment to revise their attitudes and behaviors and business practices through ongoing peer support, mentorship, supervision. Cliff and Charity demonstrate appropriate caution and awareness regarding the possibility of causing harm as they re-enter the field facilitating non-touch events.
See Empowered Pleasure’s External Accountability Form to report an incident or complaint.
To present additional details, Cliff and Charity have fully engaged in all recommended steps including:
Restorative Justice survey: They agreed to engage in a process including inviting any people who experienced or witnessed harm to complete Survey/Story Forms facilitated by Jessica Morgenthaler (survivor support) and compiled by Marita DeLeon (restorative justice facilitator), completed in June 2023 and disseminated to the Empowered Pleasure Community in September 2023.
Intensive coaching on power dynamics, sexual boundaries, privilege, and appropriate responses to feedback with Miles Hurwitz: March 2023-November 2024.
Personal work including shadow exploration and spiritual expansion with individual therapists and as participants in workshops, during which they transparently disclosed the existence of their accountability process.
Reading and study of recommended materials
Participation and certification in LiveTantra’s Trauma-Informed Training for Tantra Professionals (Cliff: February-April 2023 / Charity: May-July 2025).
Participation in the Right Use of Power Institute Basic Training and Core trainings, June 2024 (Basic), February-March 2025 (Semester Long Core Training).
Regular meetings with myself, Accountability Supervisor, Kamela Love from Transform into Love (April 2024-Current)
Drafting and publishing of their updated Code of Conduct: August 2025
Ongoing public offering to participate in professional, tantra-positive, trauma-informed mediation/repair services for anyone who has experienced hurt or harm. To ensure its accessibility, this offering has been shared widely through live Zoom Q&A sessions, public EP Accountability Blog, EP Website, EP Facebook Page, direct messages to all EP Meetup Members, a post on Jessica Morgenthaler [Survivor Support] blog. In the future, Cliff and Charity will include contact information for their conflict resolution services provider, Transform into Love, on all promotional materials for conscious touch or sacred sexuality events they facilitate and will prominently display this information at the registration table.
Supervised pilot events: Cliff and Charity facilitated two in-person, touch-inclusive sacred sexuality pilot events in Portland July-August 2024 with more experienced participants who have formerly attended EP events. Cliff and Charity employed new learnings and practices from their accountability work in these pilot events and collected enhanced confidential feedback forms from participants. The forms were sent directly to Kamela Love, Accountability Supervisor, and results were reviewed with Cliff and Charity for further upleveling of their facilitation and accountability practices.
Completion of enhanced Informed Consent forms for event participants to review prior to registering (samples available on request)
Completion of the Awaken as Love Facilitator Training to continue to learn and grow as tantra-positive facilitators.
All known survivors (many were anonymous) were invited into repair processes by the accountability supervisory team. The Survivor Support Lead shared methods for survivors to access repair opportunities in the future if they wish to do so.
Participated with good faith in trauma-informed, tantra-positive Mediation sessions (and facilitated clearing conversations) with all survivors who chose to engage.
Paused all facilitation of all EP events from January 22, 2023.
An added 6 month pause on facilitation beginning September, 2024 in response to survivors who expressed concerns about their reintegration on social media, to provide these survivors opportunities for repair, if desired.
Re-Integration Process:
After all known complaints had been addressed interpersonally with those who wished to engage in repair processes and all steps recommended by their accountability supervisory team had been taken, Cliff and Charity shifted into a phase of reintegration with their local community. For the past couple of months, Cliff and Charity have been reintegrating as participants only in their local sex-positive community. They plan to facilitate non-touch events beginning anytime in the summer of 2025. Cliff and Charity’s supervisory team strongly encouraged them to wait to facilitate sex-positive touch events for at least an additional 6 months, meaning not until after March 1, 2026.
This gradual re-integration process focuses on assessing community feedback from Cliff and Charity’s presence in local events as participants, monitoring community response to their facilitation of non-touch events, addressing any negative impact on their local community, and tracking Cliff and Charity’s own nervous system fitness and ability to consciously engage with criticism when it arises.
The reintegration plan outlined below is a dynamic plan, in the sense that changes could be made in the future as real life unfolds. For example, if a major concern arises from Cliff or Charity’s behavior reported on an External Accountability Form, or if a significant harm occurs at one of the non-touch events they’re facilitating, the accountability team will re-engage and assess with Cliff and Charity how to best approach repairing the harm and how to adjust their reintegration process based on assessing community safety and integrating valuable learning experiences from the challenge that happened most recently. To continue illustrating this example, if the new harm was touch related or boundary-crossing related, it is likely that Cliff and Charity’s Accountability Supervisors would recommend a longer period of facilitating non-touch events (and receiving consistent positive feedback without major concerns) before re-integrating into facilitating touch-positive and sacred sexuality events. The point is that adjustments would be made to Cliff and Charity’s reintegration plan in alignment with what happened.
6-Month Re-Integration Plan:
During the live community Q&A event on April 27, 2025, the following plan was announced, with a start date of May 1, 2025:
Disclosure of their accountability process to event hosts when attending sacred sexuality and sex-positive events as participants.
Disclosure of their accountability process to other participants at the beginning of the event (if deemed appropriate by the event host) when participating in sacred sexuality and sex-positive events.
Disclosure of their accountability process to participants when facilitating non-touch events through QR code links to the accountability process webpage on their EP website on all promotional materials, having the same information available on their registration table, and verbal disclosure during the event introductory remarks.
Refraining from facilitating events with touch or eros exchange for minimum 6 months and/or until deemed ready by accountability supervisors.
Their External Accountability Form (to submit a complaint or share an incident that happened) and information pertaining to their accountability process will be available to anyone attending sex positive or sacred sexuality events facilitated by Cliff and Charity in the future and will be publicly available on their Accountability Process webpage indefinitely.
Continuation of public blog postings with reflections during their re-integration process.
Review and possible adjustment of this plan if significant concerns arise, including from new harms caused
In conclusion, Cliff and Charity have fully participated in all recommended courses of action with sincere commitment, have clearly demonstrated personal and professional integrity throughout the process, and their accountability supervisory team has approved of the reintegration plan outlined above.
To be clear, as their Accountability Supervisor, I do not think Cliff and Charity will never cause hurt or harm again. I actually believe hurt and harm are inevitable elements of human relating and the two most important things we can do are (a) to decrease the likelihood of causing harm and (b) to consciously repair harm whenever we cause it. On that note, I have confidence that Cliff and Charity have taken substantial actions that effectively decrease the likelihood of them causing future harm. I am also confident that Cliff and Charity now possess a sound, power-aware, trauma-informed, toolbox to support them in consciously repairing any harm they cause - and I believe they will use their tools with integrity and an ongoing commitment to accountability and healing. It has been an honor working with them and I remain on-call if needed in the future.
For any questions or concerns, please complete the External Accountability Form which goes to Cliff and Charity’s Accountability Supervisors, Kamela Love (myself) and Sherika Tenaya, and will only be shared with Cliff and Charity at the expressed consent of the person who submitted the form.
To all who have followed this journey in part or in full, thank you for supporting the existence and growth of accountability in our communities.
Sincerely,
Kamela Love
Accountability Supervisor
Trauma-Informed Mediator
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