Marissa S., a former member of the PSL, posted a Substack article about this incident on September 7. The letter’s contents are understandably distressing. However, the letter seriously mischaracterizes the party’s actions and procedures.  The article itself not only mischaracterizes the accountability process and events following the incident in 2020, but also attacks the central Party leadership and the NDC and undermines the PSL's history in dealing with incidents of sexual misconduct, which are taken very seriously. It is important for members of the PSL to understand the context. The Party leadership is aware that Marissa has been communicating and working with the leaders of the recent faction, and former members are sharing the article online and sending it to current members across the country. The following document is not a comprehensive response to all the mischaracterizations in her article but rather an account of the investigative and disciplinary process related to the incident raised.

We also would like to make clear, for the sake of people having a full understanding of what happened, Marissa was an active participant in the entire process. She repeatedly expressed to multiple people, both in the immediate aftermath of the incident and in the years following it, that she felt supported by the Party and that she supported the process.

2020 Incident & Accountability

On March 29, 2026, the Standing Committee became aware that Marissa, a former Central Committee member considered a disciplinary incident involving Eugene in 2020 to have been mishandled, the accountability not severe enough, and the support for her to be inadequate.

The incident took place at a house party in** **November 2020. Marissa brought the incident to the attention of members of the Executive Committee at the time, which prompted an immediate investigation and disciplinary action. We do not share details of incidents widely, primarily out of respect for the comrades most affected by it. In the Party, the norms of our practices regarding disciplinary matters goes as follows: An investigation is conducted by the appropriate body, timeline is collected from all parties involved, disciplinary action is proposed. The proposed disciplinary action is typically brought to the victim before it is carried out. If any disagreements arise, we work through those disagreements with a path forward. Once a decision is made and the disciplinary action is carried out, it is not customarily re-litigated.

During the initial investigation, Eugene claimed he had been too intoxicated to recall the incident, but he did not contest it, and said he would comply with any accountability measure. He offered to resign from the Party. Marissa was involved in each decision made about Eugene's punishment, and helped craft the decision that Eugene would be suspended from Party activity and leadership for six months. Eugene apologized to Marissa in a meeting she agreed to and facilitated by a leading Party member. Marissa made it clear she did not want Eugene to resign.

In the over five years, from the disciplinary action in 2020-21 to right before she resigned in 2026, Marissa never made the Party leadership aware that she had become dissatisfied about the disciplinary action taken. While she had been part of the accountability process at each step in 2020 and 2021, we only learned in March of 2026, six years after the incident, that Marissa now considered it insufficient and handled wrongly. Every victim, including Marissa, has the right to assert this and to look back on things differently with time. After Party leadership was made aware, the leadership reached out to discuss the matter. Marissa chose not to discuss this further and resigned from the Party. Following her resignation, the National Disciplinary Committee reached out again during the review period. She declined to participate.

As soon as Eugene heard that Marissa felt dissatisfied with the 2020 outcome, Eugene offered to resign from the Party. The Standing Committee accepted the resignation that same day.

Strengthening and Affirming the National Disciplinary Committee

At the time of the 2020 incident, the Party process in place to adjudicate misconduct was for a higher body to handle the charge. There had not previously been charges within the top leadership, and it was handled inside the top leadership as an uncontested charge.

In 2021, the Party initiated an independent National Disciplinary Committe, which was ratified by the Party Congress in 2022 with independent authority. Marissa was one of the founding members of this Committee and helped draft its protocols and processes based on the Party's history in dealing with these matters. These norms have been used by other Party bodies to deal with new cases.

Following Marissa's resignation, the NDC initiated a thorough review of the 2020 incident. The incident occurred before the NDC's existence. The NDC reviewed notes and interviewed comrades involved to the extent possible. In its review, the committee found no evidence that the processes following the 2020 incident had been mishandled. It was particularly important that the accountability process had been swift. Marissa had been engaged at each step. Multiple people who were close to her at the time have independently confirmed that she expressed support for the disciplinary outcome, did not seek a different outcome and expressed she was being supported by the Party.

The NDC has, since its initial formation, been strengthened as a necessary step as the Party continues to grow. It is now institutionalized as a permanent standing and empowered body, composed of long-time women cadres. It has independent authority vested by the Party Congress. Any issues related to sexual assault go to it, bypassing all other leadership bodies, and all comrades must submit to its rulings. The NDC has the right to review all cases of sexual misconduct.

To emphasize, while we do share summaries and decisions of the NDC with the appropriate leadership bodies and occasionally members of the body most impacted, the NDC does not share details of its work or investigations with the wider membership. The primary reasons are to protect the privacy of the victims and to protect the Party from the machinations of the repressive state apparatus. Serious violations and egregious misconduct, which are not common in our party, are expediently investigated and lead to swift disciplinary action up to termination of membership. More often, the charges require time to conduct an investigation and understand the impact of any incident on those involved and on the work of the Party. Fundamental to our approach to these incidents is our understanding as Marxists that people can and do change. Comrades who violate Party norms, but remain in the organization, are punished appropriately and held accountable to ensure that they are meeting set expectations or terms of conduct. The victim(s) of those actions is(are) offered the ability to be involved in the determination of that punishment and the path forward.

The NDC has been working to standardize protocols and practices for all leadership bodies and develop leadership trainings on our protocol. This statement is accompanied by a short version of the protocols and practices of the NDC: https://drive.proton.me/urls/JZ1BYEFE28#RK4fFJa63hIa.

Signed by: Karla, Nathalie, Satya, and Sheila, on behalf of the National Disciplinary Committee.

This document was approved unanimously by the Central Committee on Sept. 10. It represents the most comprehensive report we can provide to members.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation has never taken the issues of sexual assault and misconduct lightly. The entirety of our politics is grounded in a well-developed understanding of the nature of oppression and exploitation in capitalist society. Sexual violence affects all people, but it does not affect all people equally. Women are, because of the system’s reliance on patriarchy, subjected to the most horrific forms of sexual violence to keep them dehumanized, isolated from society and the struggles of our class, and highly exploited within the political and economic system. Addressing the manifestations of oppression and the sexual violence that occurs is a requirement of the highest order. We have a proud 22-year history of confronting, rooting out and appropriately addressing these issues.

On Sept. 7, a lengthy article was published on Substack by-lined by former PSL member Marissa which relates a 2020 incident involving Eugene Puryear, a long-time Party leader who resigned in March of this year. That a woman worker who experienced violence as a young person, and then experienced a violation from a trusted leading comrade, is disturbing, and hard to read for all of us — including those of us who were aware of the incident and did not speak of it widely out of respect for confidentiality of the victim. The Party leadership has maintained, from the moment it took place to now, that this was an absolute violation, which required a swift response, and that Marissa should be supported.

At the same time, the narrative that she now develops, six years later, about what took place after the incident, is false. The history is rewritten to erase the actual care that was provided, to erase the accountability that took place, and to erase what Marissa communicated then and her feelings expressed for years afterwards of feeling supported by the Party leadership. The agreed upon norms of confidentiality in this and other accountability processes — which she helped devise — she now falsely portrays as a cover up.

As written, it appears as an unrelated exposé independently confirming the allegations of the faction that the Party’s elected leaders are nefarious, undemocratic individuals who cannot be trusted. In fact, it was released in a coordinated plan with the same factional operation that goes back as far back as March — which we document at the end.

We respect the right of all people to change their feelings and opinions over time about such traumatic incidents in their lives. But there are significant factual inaccuracies in what she has related about the accountability process that followed, the level of support she received and about the internal institutions of the Party. These must be corrected, and more information must be provided for accuracy. Due to the high-profile nature of this case, and the fact that we are currently under the highest form of state scrutiny and attack, letting a false narrative like this stand would only serve to sow greater confusion and provide a basis for the opportunistic larger attacks working to disrupt the Party and members’ work at this critical time.

Under our norms, the details of disciplinary matters and outcomes are kept confidential — especially out of respect to the privacy of someone subjected to sexual misconduct. But given that she has published an article, it is clear that at this time, six years later, we have no choice but to respond.

The incident and immediate aftermath

There has never been any effort to deny or question what happened to Marissa in November 2020. Eugene sexually groped Marissa at a holiday party. She was believed and not disputed. The Party leaders were shocked and angered that this could take place. Eugene, having been heavily intoxicated, said he did not remember the assault, but did not contest what Marissa said. He accepted responsibility and offered to resign immediately. Marissa said she did not want his resignation, and so another accountability process would be devised in discussions with her. Marissa was at no point challenged or questioned about the incident, as so often otherwise happens in society when women bring serious allegations against men in leadership. There was no foot-dragging or bureaucratic process. We moved swiftly and decisively in support of her and for accountability. The quickness of moving towards a resolution was not a form of pressure, but rather ensured real and immediate accountability from Eugene, and support to her. It was not an option to delay. He was immediately suspended and removed from the situation.

Before leaving the building, they had a brief meeting where he accepted responsibility, and said he would do whatever he could to remedy the harm; she told him why his actions were hurtful and disappointing, especially as a leader that she had looked up to previously, and with whom she worked so closely almost every day. She wanted to be able to work with him in the future, but it would take time and he would need to get professional help and work on himself. At the end, they tearfully embraced.

Screenshots of her messages to a confidant that day read, “The meeting went good. I said what I needed to say and feel that I got a very genuine apology. He is suspended. No clear time when he will be back.”

When such acts of sexual misconduct take place, there is no perfect process to repair the harm. Engaging the victim in the accountability process is important to restorative justice. In this case, the resolution, worked out with Marissa in the days that followed, was not that Eugene would “not chair CC meetings for a while,” as she says now. Eugene was suspended from all Party activities for six months — public meetings, internal branch meetings, all bodies of the leadership he sat on, all protests, etc. He was mandated to go into therapy, to try to get to the root of how this happened, and told to give up alcohol for the duration of the suspension, and not go to social activities where Party members would be present. This was developed in discussions with Marissa as an appropriate punishment and response for an offense of this type. She was adamant that Eugene not be expelled, as she told both Ben and the people she confided in at the time. The idea that Ben proposed to just “move on” and never speak of it again is totally untrue.

After taking some time off after the incident, Marissa insisted on returning to her work. Eugene returned to his office for his professional work, five weeks later, but remained under suspension from all Party work.

Eugene complied with the terms of the suspension. During this period, he forwarded on all speaking invitations he received, refusing all but one, which Marissa authorized in advance. He signed up for therapy and showed documentation of his visits. He swore off alcohol for the duration. In a series of private conversations, including in the debrief at the end of his suspension, he demonstrated genuine remorse and understanding of the harm he had committed, volunteered to do whatever else was needed, and affirmed that such heavy drinking was unacceptable. The Party leadership had confidence such a violation would not recur and was not a threat to the safety of others — and there have been no charges against Eugene in the years since.

After six months out of Party leadership and all Party activity, Eugene was reintegrated into Party life and resumed the many responsibilities he had been elected to perform. Under the practices and principles of our Party, leadership is not an “elevated status” but an embrace of more responsibilities — chief among them the development of more leaders. In the years after he returned, Eugene played a key role in recruiting, mentoring and training many new cadres, and Black cadres in particular, bringing them into the spaces of the Black freedom movement where he was already the Party’s most well-known figure. From that position of leadership, as a popular communicator and first rate historian of Black history, American history and global politics in the Marxist tradition, he resumed to make a significant contribution to the movement for socialism. Long-term demotions take place in the Party only when the assessment is that the person has a pattern of bad judgment or untrustworthy behavior, or has not adequately learned from their mistakes. In general, after an accountability process is completed, the Party puts members back to work to serve wherever they can best advance the struggle. For people who remain in the organization, there are no forever punishments.

At this time, there was no National Disciplinary Committee. The National Disciplinary Commission (NDC) was formed in 2021 and ratified by the 5th Party Congress in 2022 to institutionalize the accountability and disciplinary practices the PSL has engaged in since its founding to address any issues of sexual misconduct. If such an incident were to take place today, it would go directly to the all-women National Disciplinary Committee, which has independent authority vested by the Congress, and which all members, including Central Committee members, are subject to. Its decisions are final, and can only be overturned by the Party Congress itself.