Mute | They Knew

Janet:

I was a trouble maker. I fought and refused the constant grabbing, pulling, and sexual, verbal harassment by my boss and got fired. 

I couldn’t report the predator boss to HR. I was HR. I was rehired by a manager who rescued those of us fired from that position, and assigned us to other departments in our company. I survived. Everybody knew that women in that position were targets of the owner and eventually fired.

The whole company, from admin to the warehouse, was a bystander to this cycle of horror.

Marie:

Why don’t we tell? Who can we tell? We know things, and we don’t talk about them.

For me, I only thought I might know.

”Denial allows someone to keep going unchanged despite reality. Denial is the path of psychological and moral least resistance.” Stephen Juan, Ph.D. University of Sydney. 

There are many reasons that we lie, or stay silent, or go into denial. Speaking out about the experience, or about having been witness to an abusive situation brings with it its own aspects of trauma. The anxiety spreads out to ‘Will I be believed, will I be listened to or dismissed, and how will I accept that reaction?’  There is the aspect of responsibility and guilt, warranted or not, all to be worked out. Further, for some, there is a question of reputation, publicity and legal issues. For the very young, it’s a question of being able to articulate and identify wrongdoing.

As stated by the Freeh Report, on the findings around child abuse by Gerry Sandusky at Pennsylvania State.  

“… the ‘avoidance of the consequences of bad publicity’ was the main driver in failing to protect child abuse victims and report to authorities.”

Janet:

Mute, dumfounded, outraged, speechless is how some fellow workers expressed their reaction. The manager who rehired me only talked about his fury, after work, in a restaurant, at the back table, with two martinis. I was told, “don’t say anything, just act normal, dodge when you can and keep your nose to the grindstone.” In my work history, his words on how to avoid or survive predation were pretty good.

In the NY Times article: It’s Not Just Fox: Why Women Don’t Report Sexual Harassment, Clair Miller writes, “…employers, judges, and juries often use a woman’s failure to report harassment as evidence that it was not a problem, or that they had other motives for not reporting.”

“They become troublemakers – nobody wants to hire them or work with them anymore,” Jennifer Berdahl said in the New York Times interview.

Reminding me, we live and work in a world where groups and genders hold other groups and genders as less, as vulnerable, and as targets. We need to develop strategies to survive.

While I was “keeping my nose to the grindstone,” I learned something. Write it down, date it, sign it, file it. Until our society rethinks dominance, equality, equivalence, parity, and fairness, I say, one good survival strategy is to write it. It didn’t solve anything or take away the anger, but it finally bridged my tears and screams, fears, and feelings into a story I could hold, outside my body. All those jerks are gone, time and too much partying did them in.  I’m still standing.

 I gave those stories existence in the world, separate from me.

Marie:

For me, as I said, I felt unsure and only thought I might know. I had glimpses, but nothing concrete. Margaret came into my classroom all big blue eyes and wispy blonde hair, and a small cast on her forearm. Fell off the swings, she said. At 8 years old, she was a sweet girl. Some weeks later, I met her mom on the periphery of the playground, on crutches. Just a twisted ankle, she said, and shied away. Both Margaret and her mom seemed painfully shy. Still some months later, Margaret came to class with a bruise high on her small cheekbone. I began to wonder, quietly. The unthinkable steeping like a tea bag in my brain. I lost sleep over it, and the following week made up my mind to speak to the director of classes. “Yes,” she told me “Margaret won’t be in class this week. Her family has just moved away. It was sudden, and there is no forwarding address.” We both stared hard at each other for a moment, our hearts dropping. It was too late for the truth that was dawning in us both.

I still think of Margaret to this day; what she might look like now, how old she would be… if she survived.

In the Freeh Report, which came out in July of 2012, after interviews with over 400 people, one of the saddest remarks is this one: “…there was a striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the University"

My experience with Margaret is not one with lack of empathy, but it is still a story of silence.

Break the silence now, even if you only think you may have a story. It might help someone else see the facts and act on them sooner.