Yes. This is what I find horrifying and humiliating. The person experiencing this kind of thing is the best judge of appropriate escalation, but if you think she over-escalated, then stop escalating even further!

And much of the resulting furor has been way, way worse than that. It would have been nice to see the original apology/explanation without any firings involved anywhere.

It'll take someone cleverer than me to think how to bring where we are now to a better place. I'm discouraged about how awfully my colleagues are behaving.