Last month’s allegations of assault and harassment were first reported by _The Sunday Times_, a South African newspaper, which quoted what it described as an email sent to the government that expressed fear and described an assault, concerning behaviour and threatening language.
Antarctica’s harsh conditions have routinely made it difficult for countries to scrutinise researchers’ behaviour there.
_The New York Times_ could not independently verify the contents of the email. George did not respond to a specific request to confirm them.
The alleged assault was reported less than a month after the team left South Africa on February 1 for its mission, which is set to last 13 months.
George said the scientist accused of the assault, whom he did not identify, had “written a formal apology to the victim”, “shown remorse” and has willingly undergone a psychological evaluation.
But the episode highlighted a worrisome pattern of misconduct at Antarctic research stations, several scientists said. Harassment during field work in Antarctica “is a known problem that is now being taken very seriously,” Mathieu Morlighem, an earth sciences professor at Dartmouth College, said in an email.
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“When teams of people are deployed for weeks (or sometime months) in complete isolation and in extremely harsh environments, it is difficult for victims to report misbehaviour because you can’t get away from the team,” Morlighem said.
Researchers who travel to Antarctica often participate in rigorous predeployment vetting processes, much like astronauts preparing to go to space.
South Africa, for instance, looks at the “technical skills, psychological aspects, medical history and interpersonal relationship history” of potential base members, George said. If a researcher had any “negative outcomes” during those evaluations, they would not be appointed to the team, he said.
“At the time the vessel departed for Antarctica,” he said, “all was in order.”
There would be scientific considerations at play in any conversation about the removal of a scientist from the base.
Teams often rely on every member to keep a base functioning over the Antarctic winter, Dawn Sumner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis, wrote in an email. It would likely not be possible for just one person to be removed from the base, Sumner said.
If a base were left unattended, “it would not be functional when people could return in the spring or summer,” Sumner said. “That would be a huge infrastructure loss for the South African Antarctic program.”
But the brutal Antarctic winter – most severe in July and August – is still to come.
“They are having these extreme problems and it isn’t even dark yet,” Sumner said. “It is a horrible situation.”
**This article originally appeared in [_The New York Times_](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/world/africa/south-africa-antarctica-assault-harassment.html).**