"When I informed the project reviewer and the other fellows that, in fact, I had resigned due to sexual harassment, Dan sent a response which opened with a long, irrelevant, and inaccurate story about how my work was low-quality, my research contribution was minor, etc. "
Myself and a business partner had a web startup that we ran from 2002 to 2008. I was the CTO, he was the CEO -- at first the titles didn't mean anything because the whole company was just the two of us. Later we had some money and we hired some people. He was nominally in charge of sales and raising funds from investors, but as the years went by, he struggled with the stress. He started smoking way too much marijuana. I eventually lost all faith that I could build anything with him. For years he had tried to win me over with excessive praise (especially when we had no money) but when I told him I was leaving, suddenly he complained that my work had always sucked, I wrote terrible code, I aggravated everyone we'd worked with, I scared away all potential investors, etc. It is curious the way that particular mentality works. It's very much similar to what is described in the article. Once they realize they can not win you back, they feel an urgent need to delegitimate anything you might ever say.