To me, it seems an order of magnitude more important to fire the person than to publicly acknowledge his wrongdoing. I would be extremely upset if they had done it the other way around, so I don't think this counts as sweeping it under the rug.
Do you think the public acknowledgement is more important than the firing? Is the problem that they were only 80% behind her instead of 100%? Is it something else? I really want to understand your position.
"But it is not possible for the firm to say "We sacked Bob because he sexually assaulted one of our staff"."
Why not? The event in question happened in a public setting, while her boss was acting in something of an official capacity (it was a work related event). To me, that demands a public acknowledgement and treatment of what happened.
They leave themselves open to law suits. He hasn't been questioned by police, nor arrested, nor tried, nor convicted.
Innocent until proven guilty is a firm principle.
Accusing someone of a sex crime will have very serious consequences for that person.
She has said that she doesn't want to involve legal processes. When the company publicly says that he assaulted her they force the legal processes to start - either he sues for defamation or police get involved.
Just re-read your comment and you're right, you didn't make a false dichotomy. But it is easy for a moron (like me) to take your comment and turn it into false dichotomy. Sorry about that.
I will say, though, that I really don't like assigning percentages because I think they fit the situation poorly.
In my opinion, the company should have done two discreet things: fire the guy and address why he was fired (see my comment to other responder for why they should address the firing). Assigning percentages to these to represent their respective importance is not very useful; they are both past the threshold of Very Important. Therefore, they should both get done.
Do you think the public acknowledgement is more important than the firing? Is the problem that they were only 80% behind her instead of 100%? Is it something else? I really want to understand your position.