Jennifer Fraser's Blog: How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, page 2

Abuse Hurts Brains – Whistleblower Series #20

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

In the last blog, I spoke about losing my temper one afternoon with two students. I drew a clear contrast between this awful mistake and the abusive conduct of four teachers that students reported on in 2012.

My goal in this blog is to encourage others to be whistleblowers and especially when it’s high-stakes such as harm to children.

It’s hard to speak up when you feel that you are imperfect and have not always been the best teacher or parent, but we all should be able to make a critical distinction between poor conduct and child abuse. The former for me happened on one afternoon; the abusive conduct stretched from victims in grade 10 to one in second year university. It didn’t occur on a day where a provoked individual (me) lost her temper and behaved badly. The conduct students reported on in detail had gone on for at least five years and if you research abuse, you know that it would have gone on as long as the oldest teacher involved. For five years, day in day out at practices and games, the teachers hurt students’ brains.

You must speak up when you witness abuse because all forms of abuse harm brains.

People don’t start abusing out of the blue. It’s something they cannot stop unless they do a great deal of psychological work. It’s not a mistake. It’s very calculated and compulsive. It occurs behind closed doors. Sometimes it even bursts out in public sight they find it so hard to control. The grade 10 students reported the same kind of abusive conditions under which they were expected to learn as the university students. They did not know each other, but described the same abuses. The students reported suffering from a culture of fear, favoritism, and humiliation. These are the red flags of abuse.

When students reported that my son was singled out for scenes of public humiliation, where he was assaulted by the teacher yelling in his face rhetorical questions that undermined his worth and when he tried to get away, detaining him for more by grabbing him, I asked my son how many times this had happened. He replied “hundreds of times.” In other words, hundreds of times the teachers hurt my son’s brain. Not just the one yelling in his face, but the also the one who stood by and watched without intervening.

When I was researching what kind of impact such behaviour would have on the brain, I found in research study after research study that all forms of abuse harm brains.

We tend to think that younger children are more sensitive, but from a brain perspective, it’s actually the adolescent brain (13 to 25) that is most at risk from this kind of physical and verbal aggression. If one afternoon a teacher or parent becomes furious and yells and swears, it does not hurt the brain, but when demeaning, humiliating, threatening, verbal aggression occurs hundreds of times, it does significant harm.

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett poses the question “can words be harmful to your health?” Then answers in the negative when harsh words are said “in small doses.” She continues: “But if you are stressed over and over and over again, without much opportunity to recover, the effects can be far more grave. If you are constantly struggling in a simmering sea of stress, and your body budget accrues an ever-deepening deficit, that’s called chronic stress, and it does more than just make you miserable in the moment. Over time, anything that contributes to chronic stress can gradually eat away at your brain and cause illness in your body.” After further discussion of the extensive research on this, she concludes: “Simply put, a long period of chronic stress can harm a human brain.” All forms of abuse harm brains.

The more time an abusive individual has to create the simmering sea of stress, the less able victims are to articulate what’s happening to them.

Their brain is being harmed which in turn is harming their body. Victims develop what’s documented as “learned helplessness” where they no longer know how to escape their abuse. Abusive individuals are masters at weaponizing a victim’s passion so that he or she ultimately withdraws from what used to be their favourite thing. Reading the research made me more and more clear that I had to speak up and then do the hard work of advocating. It would have been easy to cast my eyes down, keep teaching, give up on trying to change a sickeningly entrenched system, but I’m deeply thankful I took the hard road.

If you want our broken system to change, then I encourage you to take the whistleblower path when confronted with any form of child abuse.

The more we all speak up and question the normalized abuse system that infects so many activities for our children, the more we can create a whole new paradigm – a framework informed by neuroscience – a “neuroparadigm”. The blueprint for how to do it fills the pages of my forthcoming book The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health.

The post Abuse Hurts Brains – Whistleblower Series #20 appeared first on The Bullied Brain.

#20: Abuse Hurts Brains

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

In the last blog, I spoke about losing my temper one afternoon with two students. I drew a clear contrast between this awful mistake and the abusive conduct of four teachers that students reported on in 2012.

My goal in this blog is to encourage others to be whistleblowers and especially when it’s high-stakes such as harm to children.

It’s hard to speak up when you feel that you are imperfect and have not always been the best teacher or parent, but we all should be able to make a critical distinction between poor conduct and child abuse. The former for me happened on one afternoon; the abusive conduct stretched from victims in grade 10 to  one in second year university. It didn’t occur on a day where a provoked individual (me) lost her temper and behaved badly. The conduct students reported on in detail had gone on for at least five years and if you research abuse, you know that it would have gone on as long as the oldest teacher involved.

People don’t begin abusing out of the blue.

It’s something they cannot stop unless they do a great deal of psychological work. It’s not a mistake. It’s very calculated and compulsive. It occurs behind closed doors. Sometimes it even bursts out in public sight they find it so hard to control. The grade 10 students reported the same kind of abusive conditions under which they were expected to learn as the university students. They did not know each other, but described the same abuses. The students reported suffering from a culture of fear, favoritism, and humiliation. These are the red flags of abuse. When students reported that my son was singled out for scenes of public humiliation, where he was assaulted by the teacher yelling in his face rhetorical questions that undermined his worth and when he tried to get away, detaining him for more by grabbing him, I asked my son how many times this had happened. He replied “hundreds of times.”

When I was researching what kind of impact such behaviour would have on the brain, I found in research study after research study that this kind of treatment damages the brain.

We tend to think that younger children are more sensitive, but from a brain perspective, it’s actually the adolescent brain (13 to 25) that is most at risk from this kind of physical and verbal aggression. If one afternoon a teacher or parent becomes furious and yells and swears, it does not hurt the brain, but when verbal aggression occurs hundreds of times, it does significant harm.

Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett poses the question “can words be harmful to your health?” Then answers in the negative when harsh words are said “in small doses.” She continues: “But if you are stressed over and over and over again, without much opportunity to recover, the effects can be far more grave. If you are constantly struggling in a simmering sea of stress, and your body budget accrues an ever-deepening deficit, that’s called chronic stress, and it does more than just make you miserable in the moment. Over time, anything that contributes to chronic stress can gradually eat away at your brain and cause illness in your body.” After further discussion of the extensive research on this, she concludes: “Simply put, a long period of chronic stress can harm a human brain.”

The more time an abusive individual has to create the simmering sea of stress, the less able victims are to articulate what’s happening to them.

Their brain is being harmed which in turn is harming their body. Victims develop what’s documented as “learned helplessness” where they no longer know how to escape their abuse. Abusive individuals are masters at weaponizing a victim’s passion so that he or she ultimately withdraws from what used to be their favourite thing. Reading the research made me more and more clear that I had to speak up and then do the hard work of advocating. It would have been easy to cast my eyes down, keep teaching, give up on trying to change a sickeningly entrenched system, but I’m deeply thankful I took the hard road.

If you want our broken system to change, then I encourage you to take the whistleblower path when confronted with any form of child abuse.

The more we all speak up and question the normalized abuse system that infects so many activities for our children, the more we can create a whole new paradigm – a framework informed by neuroscience – a “neuroparadigm”. The blueprint for how to do it fills the pages of my forthcoming book The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health.

References

Lisa Feldman Barrett. 7 and ½ Lessons about the Brain. New York: HarperCollins, 2020.

View other posts from the How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower series.

The post #20: Abuse Hurts Brains appeared first on Exit Bullying.

Demanding and Demeaning Conduct – Whistleblower Series #19

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

I am often asked about the difference between demanding and demeaning conduct. The first aims to raise expectations and enhance performance for all. The second is humiliating and degrading. There’s zero comparison between them, but those who demean like to say it’s actually to “motivate.” Don’t fall for that lie.

Part of why I am an unlikely whistleblower is because I can be demanding, but never demeaning.

We have a belief that the whistleblower is this kind of heroic being who has never failed and so can hoist the banner of perfection and purity and ride into the sunset. In my case, and I suspect in most others, this simply is not the case. Let me explain.

We may, especially when it comes to emotional and physical child abuse, that ‘but for the grace of God, this might be me, so who am I to report.’ I’ve lost my temper. I’ve yelled. I have done and said things I regret. I’ve had to apologize.

There is a clear line between demanding and demeaning conduct. Both may manifest as anger, but there’s still an ocean that lies between losing one’s temper and the emotional / psychological / verbal and physical abuse of children.

This firm line is why we must speak up when we are informed directly (or even indirectly) that child abuse is occurring. Those who maltreat or exploit children for their own psychological issues are masters at normalizing their abuse, gaslighting victims and their parents, making it seem that they are the actual victims, ensuring that higher-ups protect them, committing to a system that allows their abusive conduct to go on and on. This is radically different than the rest of us who are struggling and learning through life how to be our best selves, but still make mistakes.

I’ll unpack this with a personal example.

By the time I reported to the school administrators where I worked that I had been informed child abuse was occurring, I had never had a formal complaint against me as a teacher.

I still never have despite twenty years in the classroom. I taught for years at Humber College, University of Toronto, Branksome School in Toronto, and for eight years at the school where the Headmaster asked me to directly record child abuse complaints about my colleagues from eight students (there were at least four others taken by lawyer). Over all these years, I had never had a complaint against me as a professor or teacher which I believe is common. It’s rare to have parents or students reporting to administrators that abuse is occurring. When it happens, especially with such a large number of reports, it needs to be acted on. Does this mean I was perfect educator? No.

There were a number of times—painfully etched on my conscience—where I failed students and their parents.

I made awful mistakes in my demanding approach, but I was never demeaning. Parents told me in no uncertain terms that when I wrote on an essay “this is a trouble piece of work” it was ineffectual and misguided. I once tried to make an insecure student feel better by joking that she didn’t want to give her recitation after “the queen of recitations” (namely an extremely talented girl). Well, the talented girl’s mother said it hurt her daughter’s feelings and she was furious with me. I had not meant to upset her. There was a time that I wrote on a report card the student needed to try harder and his mother let me have it. As a student with a learning disability, her son was working double-time and who was I to not recognize that. I apologized to the mother and responded directly to the student with a handwritten note.

The worst moment for me as a teacher occurred – not surprisingly – when I had reported the abuse allegations to the Headmaster and Board, but they appeared to be minimizing the crisis.

Instead of suspending the teachers, I had to attend school every day with them as if it was normal to have upwards of 15 or 16 students reporting they were abusive. The Headmaster then told at least one of the teachers which boys had reported on him and my son was one of them. My son started being bullied by peers who benefited from the abuse regime.

I was under extreme stress and putting on a play with students while teaching. Two students I worked closely with in the theatre group had not been practicing or setting up for over five weeks. I had asked them repeatedly to get their act together, but they were simply distracted, disengaged, and interfered with not only the preparation, but also the all-important dress rehearsal. I was so frustrated. Then they walked away laughing leaving their peers—who had been rehearsing for weeks in earnest—very frustrated and one was in tears.

I saw red. I could not contain my fury and accosted them swearing. How embarrassing.

I talked to one of the students’ mothers who I knew and she said it was not a big deal. It happens. Nonetheless, I felt sick about it and apologized profusely the next day. I could see how shocked and hurt they were. These two students were in my literature class and done theatre with me for years and I had never yelled, let alone sworn. They pulled themselves together and actually started working to make the performance happen and no longer jeopardized the hard work of their peers. Coach Phil Jackson would call my conduct “righteous anger,” but I still felt awful.  

It was out of character and I was distraught so I contacted international bullying expert Barbara Coloroso to see if as I teacher I had been bullying my students. She ultimately endorsed my book Teaching Bullies .

What she said as I described the situation was “that’s not bullying; that’s a mistake.”

It made me think of times with my own children where I had made a mistake. I had yelled and been angry. When those moments happened, and they were rare, I went and apologized.

As a demanding mother, I tried to learn my triggers so that I could avoid losing my temper in the future. And never once did I put either of my sons down or humiliate them in any way. Being angry was a far cry from needing to demean them.

My trigger with the two students was watching them cause other students be completely stressed out and for one to break down and cry. Still, being furious and lashing out at them was utterly wrong and I was miserable about it. It’s something I cannot forgive myself about and I was thankful that they forgave me. How does this compare to teachers who abuse?

Multiple students who gave testimonies about the teachers’ abuse where I was working noted that the teachers’ lashing out had no correlation with their conduct.

In fact, the better they did, the more they were singled out for punishment or humiliation. Many students reported that if they did exceptionally well the teachers would penalize them. Note the disconnect between conduct and response.

These are key tenets of the bullying and abuse paradigm.

You are targeted simply by existing. If you are talented, you may threaten the ego of those lashing out. If you are vulnerable in some way, they target you because you are less likely to push back. It’s an utter breakdown of interpersonal relationships. It’s totally distinct from actual reactions such as students or teachers behaving poorly and the result being distress which requires discussion, apology, reparations. These teachers were not demanding; they were demeaning. Repeatedly, they had teenagers in tears they were so humiliating.

Bullying and abuse do not fall into interactive categories.

Even while in a fit of anger, I did not put my students down or humiliate them. I told them why I was angry and that their conduct was unacceptable. This is a far cry from teachers using put-downs, targeted verbal attacks, using swear words to reinforce homophobic slurs, yelling repeatedly in a student’s face then grabbing him and holding him in for more, over and over again in scenes of public humiliation where other students were forced to watch. As Barbara Coloroso, who knew what these teachers had done, did not see even a remote comparison between my shameful conduct and their emotional and physical abuse. My one off act of awful behaviour was not comparable to their regime of abuse which went on for years not on one unfortunate afternoon.

Furthermore, it’s important to recognize that bullying and abuse hinge on a system of privilege and punishment.

There are those who benefit and those who suffer. If you are targeted for whatever conjured-up reason, you pay the price. In order to make this more intense and to protect the abusive scenario, others are privileged without earning it through meritocracy. They then may defend the abusive individual. This dynamic can be found in extensive research over the course of decades. There’s nothing new about it.

What I have learned personally and in research is that those who abuse do not take public accountability and they are not sorry.

They may cry and carry on in private with higher-ups or their personal circle or even in front of their victims, but this is in fact a way to perpetuate their abuse. They cannot go public with their abuse or admit in a transparent, open way, or even to themselves that what they do causes harm. Their energy goes into denial and coverup and then morphs into a world where they are always the victim, no matter how many complaints, no matter how many years of complaints. Their circle rallies around them because they share that they’re being unfairly harmed. They are the subject of a “witch hunt.” This is part and parcel of ensuring that the abuse continues. It’s enabled.

Whistleblowers on child abuse need to know: you don’t have to be perfect or untouchable.

You need to not fall for the gaslighting of those who abuse. Even if you make mistakes, even if you are flawed, even if you go to the place of righteous anger, you still need to differentiate and speak up when abuse is occurring. Even when you live in a glass house like me. You may be vulnerable because you are not perfect, but that does not mean you too are the subject of multiple complaints of abuse. Keep clear and find your courage to speak up knowing that every stone –  the abusive individuals and those who enable them have – will indeed be thrown your way.

The post Demanding and Demeaning Conduct – Whistleblower Series #19 appeared first on The Bullied Brain.

#19: People in Glass Houses

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

I think most of us live in glass houses. I certainly do. Part of why I’m an unlikely whistleblower is because I’m flawed, have made mistakes, have not been perfect.

We have a belief that the whistleblower is this kind of heroic being who has never failed and so can hoist the banner of perfection and purity and ride into the sunset. In my case, and I suspect in most others, this simply is not the case. Let me explain.

We may, especially when it comes to emotional and physical child abuse, that ‘but for the grace of God, this might be me, so who am I to report.’ I’ve lost my temper. I’ve yelled. I have done and said things I regret. I’ve had to apologize.

But, what I want to examine in this blog, is that we must remain very clear about the line that distinguishes poor conduct and emotional / psychological / verbal and physical abuse of children.

This firm line is why we must speak up when we are informed directly (or even indirectly) that child abuse is occurring. Those who maltreat or exploit children for their own psychological issues are masters at normalizing their abuse, gaslighting victims and their parents, making it seem that they are the actual victims, ensuring that higher-ups protect them, committing to a system that allows their abusive conduct to go on and on. This is radically different than the rest of us who are struggling and learning through life how to be our best selves, but still make mistakes.

I’ll unpack this with a personal example.

By the time I reported to the school administrators where I worked that I had been informed child abuse was occurring, I had never had a formal complaint against me as a teacher.

I still never have despite twenty years in the classroom. I taught for years at Humber College, University of Toronto, Branksome School in Toronto, and for eight years at the school where the Headmaster asked me to directly record child abuse complaints about my colleagues from eight students (there were at least four others taken by lawyer). Over all these years, I had never had a complaint against me as a professor or teacher which I believe is common. It’s rare to have parents or students reporting to administrators that abuse is occurring. When it happens, especially with such a large number of reports, it needs to be acted on. Does this mean I was perfect educator? No.

There were a number of times—painfully etched on my conscience—where I failed students and their parents.

I made awful mistakes. Parents told me in no uncertain terms that when I wrote on an essay “this is a trouble piece of work” it was ineffectual and misguided. I once tried to make an insecure student feel better by joking that she didn’t want to give her recitation after “the queen of recitations” (namely an extremely talented girl). Well, the talented girl’s mother said it hurt her daughter’s feelings and she was furious with me. I had not meant to upset her. There was a time that I wrote on a report card the student needed to try harder and his mother let me have it. As a student with a learning disability, her son was working double-time and who was I to not recognize that. I apologized to the mother and responded directly to the student with a handwritten note.

The worst moment for me as a teacher occurred – not surprisingly – when I had reported the abuse allegations to the Headmaster and Board, but they appeared to be minimizing the crisis.

Instead of suspending the teachers, I had to attend school every day with them as if it was normal to have upwards of 15 or 16 students reporting they were abusive. The Headmaster then told at least one of the teachers which boys had reported on him and my son was one of them.

My son started being bullied by peers who benefited from the abuse regime. I was under extreme stress and putting on a play with students while teaching. Two students I worked closely with in the theatre group had not been practicing or setting up for over five weeks. I had asked them repeatedly to get their act together, but they were simply distracted, disengaged, and interfered with not only the preparation, but also the all-important dress rehearsal. I was so frustrated. Then they walked away laughing leaving their peers—who had been rehearsing for weeks in earnest—very frustrated and one was in tears.

I saw red. I could not contain my fury and accosted them swearing. How embarrassing.

I talked to one of the students’ mothers who I knew and she said it was not a big deal. It happens. Nonetheless, I felt sick about it and apologized profusely the next day. I could see how shocked and hurt they were. These two students were in my literature class and done theatre with me for years and I had never yelled, let alone sworn. They pulled themselves together and actually started working to make the performance happen and no longer jeopardized the hard work of their peers. Coach Phil Jackson would call my conduct “righteous anger,” but I still felt awful.  

It was out of character and I was distraught so I contacted international bullying expert Barbara Coloroso to see if as I teacher I had been bullying my students. She knew me from having endorsed my book Teaching Bullies .

What she said as I described the situation was “that’s not bullying; that’s a mistake.”

It made me think of times with my own children where I had made a mistake. I had yelled and been angry. When those moments happened, and they were rare, I went and apologized.

As a mother, I tried to learn my triggers so that I could avoid losing my temper in the future. My trigger with the two students was watching them cause other students to be completely stressed out and for one to break down and cry. Still, being furious and lashing out at them was utterly wrong and I was miserable about it. It’s something I cannot forgive myself about and I was thankful that they forgave me.

How does this compare to teachers who abuse?

Multiple students who gave testimonies about the teachers’ abuse where I was working noted that the teachers’ lashing out had no correlation with their conduct.

In fact, the better they did, the more they were singled out for punishment or humiliation. Many students reported that if they did exceptionally well the teachers would penalize them. Note the disconnect between conduct and response.

These are key tenets of the bullying and abuse paradigm.

You are targeted simply by existing. If you are talented, you may threaten the ego of those lashing out. If you are vulnerable in some way, they target you because you are less likely to push back. It’s an utter breakdown of interpersonal relationships. It’s totally distinct from actual reactions such as students or teachers behaving poorly and the result being distress which requires discussion, apology, reparations.

Bullying and abuse do not fall into these kinds of interactive categories.

Even while in a fit of anger, I did not put my students down or humiliate them. I told them why I was angry and that their conduct was unacceptable. This is a far cry from teachers using put-downs, targeted verbal attacks, using swear words to reinforce homophobic slurs, yelling repeatedly in a student’s face then grabbing him and holding him in for more, over and over again in scenes of public humiliation where other students were forced to watch. As Barbara Coloroso, who knew what these teachers had done, did not see even a remote comparison between my shameful conduct and their emotional and physical abuse. My one off act of awful behaviour was not comparable to their regime of abuse which went on for years not on one unfortunate afternoon.

Furthermore, it’s important to recognize that bullying and abuse hinge on a system of privilege and punishment.

There are those who benefit and those who suffer. If you are targeted for whatever conjured-up reason, you pay the price. In order to make this more intense and to protect the abusive scenario, others are privileged without earning it through meritocracy. They then may defend the abusive individual. This dynamic can be found in extensive research over the course of decades. There’s nothing new about it.

What I have learned personally and in research is that those who abuse do not take public accountability and they are not sorry.

They may cry and carry on in private with higher-ups or their personal circle or even in front of their victims, but this is in fact a way to perpetuate their abuse. They cannot go public with their abuse or admit in a transparent, open way, or even to themselves that what they do causes harm. Their energy goes into denial and coverup and then morphs into a world where they are always the victim, no matter how many complaints, no matter how many years of complaints. Their circle rallies around them because they share that they’re being unfairly harmed. They are the subject of a “witch hunt.” This is part and parcel of ensuring that the abuse continues. It’s enabled.

Whistleblowers on child abuse need to know: you don’t have to be perfect or untouchable.

You need to not fall for the gaslighting of those who abuse. Even if you make mistakes, even if you are flawed, even if you go to the place of righteous anger, you still need to differentiate and speak up when abuse is occurring. Even when you live in a glass house like me. You may be vulnerable because you are not perfect, but that does not mean you too are the subject of multiple complaints of abuse. Keep clear and find your courage to speak up knowing that every stone –  the abusive individuals and those who enable them have – will indeed be thrown your way.

View other posts from the How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower series.

The post #19: People in Glass Houses appeared first on Exit Bullying.

Bad Followers and Evil-Doers: Whistleblower Series #18

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

In writing about whistleblowers, John Solas talks about those he categorizes as “bad followers.” When abuse happens, the spotlight is shone on poor leadership, but it’s also important to examine the ways in which others contribute to a culture where abuse flourishes.

Solas organizes bad followers into four categories. The first set of followers obey and I devote a whole chapter to this phenomenon in The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health. The research into compliance, or our tendency to obey orders, is fascinating and relevant to any exploration of whistleblowing.

It’s the second group I want to focus on today. This group forms a more worrisome category that Barbara Kellerman in her study of bad leadership and bad “followership” refers to as “evildoers.”

These individuals have no problem participating in unethical conduct.

In fact, they appear to find conflict and manipulation to be energizing. The private school where I took the whistleblower stance hired in individual like this right in the middle of the crisis.

In the spring after the students reported the abuse, the Headmaster broke his promise to keep student names confidential. He also broke his promise, that encouraged students to speak up, assuring that the teachers would be replaced as coaches the following season.

This was critical to students who feared retaliation for reporting abuse. In late summer, the Headmaster published widely a report written by a lawyer that was so one-sided and unprofessional it was an embarrassment. It was published in full ultimately in The Toronto Star when an award-winning investigative journalist was detailing the school and government coverup of child abuse.

Imagine being a teenager who reported abusive teachers being treated like that after he (along with at least twelve others) had found the courage to speak up and report and those empowered with your protection like the Headmaster sold you down the river.

The faculty—including me—were informed that this lawyer’s report exonerated the teachers and all the allegations of abuse against them and they were celebrated for their “professionalism.” These were teachers who had outright admitted their abuse to the Headmaster who sent me an email afterwards saying that they agreed the worst of it had been done to my son, but they didn’t know it was harmful. Now they were acting publicly in front of our colleagues as if they had been the ones wronged! Months before, one of these teachers had agreed with the Director of the school that due to parental complaints, he should go on probation.

I had not even known this was happening because the school was much more focused on keeping things quiet than on protecting students. This same coach was daily abusing my son and others while also in private meetings with the Director to have him removed. It honestly just boggles my mind.

This Director retired and into the crisis was brought a new Director who fit neatly into John Solas’ description of an evil-doer. That’s a strong word, but it’s unfortunately accurate.

From the day he arrived until the day I resigned in protest, he treated me like I had committed the crime of truth and that was unforgivable at that kind of school.

You were awarded for ensuring parents were kept in the dark, other faculty were lied to, lawyers could be hired to write one-sided reports, and most of all, that students who reported abuse were treated as if they were not victims, but perpetrators of harm to respected teachers.

I only ever emailed him when the teachers were targeting my son in that final hellish year and he would respond as if perplexed at what I was asking, confused because I sounded so hysterical, surprised that this closed issue was being opened up by me again and so on. He wanted me to come and speak to him which I had learned the hard way was code for “we don’t want a record, please no emails.”

I never spoke to him. The school had even issued a “Code of Conduct” that asked parents and students not to put their reports of abusive conduct into emails.

It was almost funny it was so bad. The new Director arrived on campus telling people he was there to “clean up a mess.” Really? You mean aiding and abetting child abuse is seen by you as “cleaning up a mess”? The students under your power and authority are creating a “mess” by reporting that they are being abused? That’s the sort of person who needs little enticement to engage in unethical behavior.  

Being a whistleblower in this kind of culture, it’s very important not to lose your mind or you become what they’re pushing you to do.

They want you to become hysterical.

At every single faculty meeting that occurred at least twice a week, I said not a word. I made my face blank of all emotion and simply observed. It was kind of like a mindful retreat. You maintain your power by remaining calm, cool, and collected. They never did get at my son either since he’s blessed with a steely comportment.

The last two categories of bad followers are more relatable to me. The third set obeys the leader because they are unsure what to believe; they lack resolve and confidence and of course they fear being bullied. They watch the whistleblower being driven out and can well imagine that being their fate if they dare to speak up and question what’s happening.

The last group are defined by indifference. They just don’t really care. Fair enough, when you think about the sorts of other pressures or challenges or tragedies in people’s lives. Hardly surprising to me that there is a large group who does not question bad leadership out of fear and hardly surprising to me that there is another group who is unable to take on a crisis as terrible as child abuse and so leaves it to those in power.

The ones who truly should trouble us all are those new hires brought into these crises and although they are new on the scene, they seem more than ready to victim-blame children who have reported abuse.

In our situation, there was the new Director and an even more serious “evil-doer” the new Commissioner for Teacher Regulation. It’s utterly remarkable that this eighty year old came out of retirement to take over the position and over the course of an endless year and a half, he decided that somehow all the students who reported were in the wrong and the teachers would be quietly, privately exonerated and no one was allowed to see his reasoning as to why this would be (except for unlucky me).

As the owner of his “reasoning,” I know exactly why he did not want anyone to see it. All reports are fundamentally flawed, full of glaring errors, refer to inappropriate legislation, misuse his own legal rules. Amazing.

Like I said, if you take the whistleblower path be prepared for evil-doers who are invigorated by wrong-doing, profit from it, have no ethics that get in the way of supporting bad leadership. It’s important not lose your mind.

The more clear-headed and mindful you remain, the more you can work towards positive change and a world where kids are free to pursue school, sports, home life, religion, work, arts and clubs without being abused.

The post Bad Followers and Evil-Doers: Whistleblower Series #18 appeared first on The Bullied Brain.

#18: Bad Followers

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

In writing about whistleblowers, John Solas talks about those he categorizes as “bad followers.” When abuse happens, the spotlight is shone on poor leadership, but it’s also important to examine the ways in which others contribute to a culture where abuse flourishes.

Solas organizes bad followers into four categories. The first set of followers obey and I devote a whole chapter to this phenomenon in The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health. The research into compliance or our tendency to obey orders is fascinating and relevant to any exploration of whistleblowing.

It’s the second group I want to focus on today. This group forms a more worrisome category that Barbara Kellerman in her study of bad leadership and bad “followership” refers to as “evildoers.”

These individuals have no problem participating in unethical conduct.

In fact, they appear to find conflict and manipulation to be energizing. The private school where I took the whistleblower stance hired in individual like this right in the middle of the crisis.

In the spring after the students reported the abuse, the Headmaster broke his promise to keep student names confidential. He also broke his promise, that encouraged students to speak up, that the teachers would be replaced as coaches the following season.

This was critical to students who feared retaliation for reporting abuse. In late summer, the Headmaster published widely a report written by a lawyer that was so one-sided and unprofessional it was an embarrassment and was published in full ultimately in The Toronto Star when they were exposing the school and government coverup of child abuse.

Imagine being a teenager who reported abusive teachers being treated like that after you had found the courage to speak up and report and those empowered with your protection like the Headmaster sold you down the river.

The faculty—including me—were informed that this lawyer’s report exonerated the teachers with all the allegations of abuse against them and they were celebrated for their “professionalism.” These were teachers who had outright admitted their abuse to the Headmaster who sent me an email afterwards saying that they agreed the worst of it had been done to my son, but they didn’t know it was harmful. Now they were acting publicly in front of our colleagues as if they had been the ones wronged. The year before, one of these teachers had agreed with the Director of the school that due to parental complaints, he should go on probation.

I had not even known this was happening because the school was much more focused on keeping things quiet than on protecting students. This same coach was daily abusing my son and others while also in private meetings with the Director to have him removed. It honestly just boggles my mind still.

This Director retired and into the crisis was brought a new Director who fit neatly into John Solas’ description of an evil-doer. That’s a strong word, but it’s unfortunately accurate.

From the day he arrived until the day I resigned in protest, he treated me like I had committed the crime of truth and that was unforgivable at that kind of school.

You were awarded for ensuring parents were kept in the dark, other faculty were lied to, lawyers could be hired to write one-sided reports, and most of all, that students who reported abuse were treated as if they were not victims, but perpetrators of harm to respected teachers.

I only ever emailed him when the teachers were targeting my son in that final hellish year and he would respond as if perplexed at what I was asking, confused because I sounded so hysterical, surprised that this closed issue was being opened up by me again and so on. He wanted me to come and speak to him which I had learned the hard way was code for “we don’t want a record, please no emails.”

I never spoke to him. The school had even issued a “Code of Conduct” that asked parents and students not to put their reports of abusive conduct into emails.

It was almost funny it was so bad. The new Director arrived on campus telling people he was there to “clean up a mess.” Really? You mean aiding and abetting child abuse is seen by you as “cleaning up a mess”? The students under your power and authority are creating a “mess” by reporting that they are being abused? That’s the sort of person who needs little enticement to engage in unethical behavior.  

Being a whistleblower in this kind of culture, it’s very important not to lose your mind or you become what they’re pushing you to do.

They want you to become hysterical.

At every single faculty meeting that occurred at least twice a week, I said not a word. I made my face blank of all emotion and simply observed. It actually was kind of like a mindful retreat. You maintain your power by remaining calm, cool, and collected. They never did get at my son either since he’s blessed with a steely comportment.

The last two categories of bad followers are more relatable to me. The third set obeys the leader because they are unsure what to believe; they lack resolve and confidence and of course they fear being bullied. They watch the whistleblower being driven out and can well imagine that being their fate if they dare to speak up and question what’s happening.

The last group are defined by indifference. They just don’t really care. Fair enough, when you think about the sorts of other pressures or challenges or tragedies in people’s lives. Hardly surprising to me that there is a large group who does not question bad leadership out of fear and hardly surprising to me that there is another group who is unable to take on a crisis as terrible as child abuse and so leaves it to those in power.

The ones who truly should trouble us all are those new hires brought into these crises and although they are new on the scene, they seem more than ready to victim-blame children who have reported abuse.

In our situation, there was the new Director and an even more serious “evil-doer” the new Commissioner for Teacher Regulation. It’s utterly remarkable that this eighty year old came out of retirement to take over the position and over the course of an endless year and a half, he decided that somehow all the students who reported were in the wrong and the teachers would be quietly, privately exonerated and no one was allowed to see his reasoning as to why this would be.

As the owner of his “reasoning,” I know exactly why he did not want anyone to see it. All reports are fundamentally flawed, full of glaring errors, refer to inappropriate legislation, misuse his own legal rules. Amazing.

Like I said, if you take the whistleblower path be prepared for evil-doers who are invigorated by wrong-doing, profit from it, have no ethics that get in the way of supporting bad leadership. It’s important not lose your mind.

The more clear-headed and mindful you remain, the more you can work towards positive change and a world where kids are free to pursue school, sports, home life, religion, work, arts and clubs without being abused.

References

Robert Cribb. (2015). “‘Teachers’ Bullying Scarred Us,’ say student athletes.” Toronto Star.

Retrieved From: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/03/14/teachers-bullying-scarred-us-say-student-athletes.html

Barbara Kellerman. (2004). Bad Leadership: What It is, How It Happens, Why It Matters.

Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.

Barbara Kellerman. (2008). Followership: How Followers are Creating Change and Changing

Leaders. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

John Solas. (2019). “Conscientious Objections to Corporate Wrongdoing.” Business and Society

Review, 124 (1), 43–62.

View other posts from the How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower series.

The post #18: Bad Followers appeared first on Exit Bullying.

The Power of the Truth – Whistleblower Series #17

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

When we chose the whistleblower path, we had no idea that we were actually going to save our son’s life by unleashing the power of the truth.

We thought we were ruining it, but that it was a necessary step in order to halt abuse. You cannot know how the acts you do in the present will impact the future, but for all those whistleblowers who speak up about abuse, you can at least know that stopping victims from identifying with the abuser is incredibly powerful and protects the victim going forward. Let me explain.

What happens with abuse is that the victim, all too often, identifies with the aggressor.

The reason is that it’s psychologically much safer to believe you deserve to be blocked from opportunities, ignored, put down, humiliated, berated, threatened, assaulted. During this onslaught of harm, you’re painfully aware that speaking up means more suffering, more fear, more punishment. This is age-old power dynamics.

What’s interesting to me about the whistleblower’s shaky, risky stance is that they dare to speak truth to power. They refuse to identify with the aggressor. They take the Brené Brown vulnerability position very consciously. Let me show you how this panned out for our son.

We took the whistleblower stance on abusive teachers.

We reported—along with close to fifty others, students and parents—that we would not tolerate our children being subjected to emotional and physical abuse on the part of their teachers. We refused our children to be humiliated, shamed, threatened, berated, yelled at in the face, detained for more and so on. We were subjected to retaliation for taking this stance. Still, we did not stand down and we have not since that time. If it sounds miserable and horrible for our kids. It was, and especially for our son who was at the epicenter.

Cut to four years after the years of abuse and coverup. In his final year at university in the U.S., our son did his term abroad. As a student in International Studies, he went to France to do a term in Lyon. One day, as he was running around a track at a high-school in the neighbourhood where he was living with a French family, a group of teens and twenty somethings had gathered and they began throwing stones at him as he passed. They appeared to be immigrants or refugees from the Middle East. Our son ignored the stones and kept running.

Much to his surprise, the group of about ten abruptly attacked him.

They were grabbing, kicking and punching. His Under Armour shirt ripped. They were maneuvering him behind a wall at the school where he would be out of sight of the road. In a sudden flash, he realized on a visceral level that if they got him down, behind that wall, they would kill him.

In that moment, he drew on his intense rage that he had held in check while day after day his teachers abused him and the others. He tapped into something that our society says youth need to suppress because adults deserve respect. He found within an anger that blew ten assailants away from him so that he could see the fear in their eyes. He conveyed to them that he was beyond sick of being assaulted and he would go down fighting. Granted he is 6’4″ and nothing but fitness and muscle, still, he made ten violent, herd-mentality assailants fear for their lives and back off. The rage he unleashed on them allowed him to walk to safety without any further violence.

That’s the power of the truth.

It’s funny how it all unfolds. If you can make victims clear that they never deserved the abuse they received, that no one deserves ever to be humiliated or berated or held back from fulfilling their potential, then they will store up the power within to use at a later time when once again they find themselves at the centre of an attack.

This moment, for us, made every single moment of suffering as whistleblowers worth it.

We are so thankful to those teachers who so often hurt our son. All their repeated harm did was make him ten thousand times more strong. Why? Because he maintained clarity and sanity. He never believed in their abusive falsehoods; he never identified with the aggressor. In fact, along with other courageous students, he reported them to Canada’s most widely read newspaper and on CTV’s investigative journalist show W5 (part one / part two).

The post The Power of the Truth – Whistleblower Series #17 appeared first on The Bullied Brain.

#17: The Power of Truth

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

When we chose the whistleblower path, we had no idea that we were actually going to save our son’s life.

We thought we were ruining it, but that it was a necessary step in order to halt abuse. You cannot know how the acts you do in the present will impact the future, but for all those whistleblowers who speak up about abuse, you can at least know that stopping victims from identifying with the abuser is incredibly powerful and protects the victim going forward. Let me explain.

What happens with abuse is that the victim, all too often, identifies with the aggressor.

The reason is that it’s psychologically much safer to believe you deserve to be blocked from opportunities, ignored, put down, humiliated, berated, threatened, assaulted. During this onslaught of harm, you’re painfully aware that speaking up means more suffering, more fear, more punishment. This is age-old power dynamics.

What’s interesting to me about the whistleblower’s shaky, risky stance is that they dare to speak truth to power. They refuse to identify with the aggressor. They take the Brené Brown vulnerability position very consciously. Let me show you how this panned out for our son.

We took the whistleblower stance on abusive teachers.

We reported—along with close to fifty others, students and parents—that we would not tolerate our children being subjected to emotional and physical abuse on the part of their teachers. We refused our children to be humiliated, shamed, threatened, berated, yelled at in the face, detained for more and so on. We were subjected to retaliation for taking this stance. Still, we did not stand down and we have not since that time. If it sounds miserable and horrible for our kids. It was, and especially for our son who was at the epicenter.

Cut to four years after the years of abuse and coverup. In his final year at university in the U.S., our son did his term abroad. As a student in International Studies, he went to France to do a term in Lyon. One day, as he was running around a track at a high-school in the neighbourhood where he was living with a French family, a group of teens and twenty somethings had gathered and they began throwing stones at him as he passed. They appeared to be immigrants or refugees from the Middle East. Our son ignored the stones and kept running.

Much to his surprise, the group of about ten abruptly attacked him.

They were grabbing, kicking and punching. His Under Armour shirt ripped. They were maneuvering him behind a wall at the school where he would be out of sight of the road. In a sudden flash, he realized on a visceral level that if they got him down, behind that wall, they would kill him.

In that moment, he drew on his intense rage that he had held in check while day after day his teachers abused him and the others. He tapped into something that our society says youth need to suppress because adults deserve respect. He found within an anger that blew ten assailants away from him so that he could see the fear in their eyes. He conveyed to them that he was beyond sick of being assaulted and he would go down fighting. Granted he is 6’4″ and nothing but fitness and muscle, still, he made ten violent, herd-mentality assailants fear for their lives and back off. The rage he unleashed on them allowed him to walk to safety without any further violence.

It’s funny how it all unfolds. If you can make victims clear that they never deserved the abuse they received, that no one deserves ever to be humiliated or berated or held back from fulfilling their potential, then they will store up the power within to use at a later time when once again they find themselves at the centre of an attack.

This moment, for us, made every single moment of suffering as whistleblowers worth it.

We are so thankful to those teachers who so often hurt our son. All their repeated harm did was make him ten thousand times more strong. Why? Because he never believed in their abuse; he never identified with the aggressor. In fact, along with other courageous students, he reported them to Canada’s most widely read newspaper and on CTV’s investigative journalist show W5.

References

Robert Cribb. (2015). “‘Teachers’ Bullying Scarred Us,’ say student athletes.” Toronto Star.

Retrieved From: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/03/14/teachers-bullying-scarred-us-say-student-athletes.html

Victor Malarek. (2015). “Personal Foul” Part One. CTV W5. Retrieved From:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/ctv-national-news/video?clipId=569994

Victor Malarek. (2015). “Personal Foul” Part Two. CTV W5. Retrieved From:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=569996

View other posts from the How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower series.

The post #17: The Power of Truth appeared first on Exit Bullying.

Speaking up is dangerous – Whistleblower Series #16

If you have not read the other blogs in this series, How I Became an Unlikely Whistleblower, you can read them here.

Speaking up is dangerous and that is why most people don’t do it. What’s fascinating is that research shows the majority believes that they would be whistleblowers when in fact they wouldn’t. Psychologist Piero Bocchiaro at the University of Palermo did a study in 2012 to explore the act of being a whistleblower. They created a realistic setting where participants learned an experimenter was conducting cruel sensory-deprivation research. They were asked what they wanted to do in response to what they had discovered. They were given the chance to walk away.

This allowed 149 participants to deal with an unethical request by the experimenter with options of obeying, disobeying, or “blowing the whistle”.

“Results revealed that the majority (77%) complied while the minority was split between those refusing (14%) and those reporting the misconduct to higher authorities (9%).” Okay, let’s pause for a moment to let that sink in. Only 9% spoke up.

Put another way, when asked to be unethical 91% complied.

It’s only the outliers that chose the whistleblower path. Now, you’d expect that there would be something notable, glaring even about the whistleblowers in contrast to the vast majority. But they did not find defining or different qualities. “No significant differences were found in personal characteristics and dispositional variables distinguishing between obedient, disobedient, and whistleblower participants.”

Begs the question: what is it that makes someone speak up?

In another study done by Bocchiaro and his team, they discovered a fascinating opposite reaction. In this study, they asked 138 individuals to predict whether or not they would take the whistleblower path, defy the authorities, refuse to comply with an unethical request and 96% said ‘oh yes, this is exactly what I would do. I would never obey an unethical request from an authority.’ As Bocchiaro explains, “People want to see themselves in the best light and believe that they are generally more moral than the average person.”

We live in a society where people believe that they would defy those requesting wrong-doing, but in fact these beliefs are only that. When put into actual situations where they must choose, the vast majority obeys, some resist with silence, and a very small crew speak up and report the unethical conduct. What this suggests to me is that we want to do the right thing. We do not want to align ourselves with those who are corrupt or harming others, but it’s a double-edged sword.

It’s one of those wretched forks in the road where you know on a deep cellular level that speaking up is dangerous.

It’s going to bring suffering. It might risk those you love. No joke people choose to obey. I get it. I still knowingly, fully aware, chose to speak up and yeah I suffered, but maybe suffering isn’t all that bad. Maybe we need to redefine suffering. In the next blog, we’ll look at this to see if there’s another way to frame it. 

The post Speaking up is dangerous – Whistleblower Series #16 appeared first on The Bullied Brain.

#16: “To Obey or Not to Obey”

Psychologist Piero Bocchiaro at the University of Palermo did a study in 2012 to explore the act of being a whistleblower. They created a realistic setting where participants learned an experimenter was conducting cruel sensory-deprivation research. They were asked what they wanted to do in response to what they had discovered. They were given the chance to walk away. This allowed 149 participants to deal with an unethical request by the experimenter with options of obeying, disobeying, or “blowing the whistle”. “Results revealed that the majority (77%) complied while the minority was split between those refusing (14%) and those reporting the misconduct to higher authorities (9%).” Okay, let’s pause for a moment to let that sink in. Only 9% spoke up. Put another way, when asked to be unethical 91% complied. It’s only the outliers that chose the whistleblower path. Now, you’d expect that there would be something notable, glaring even about the whistleblowers in contrast to the vast majority. But they did not find defining or different qualities. “No significant differences were found in personal characteristics and dispositional variables distinguishing between obedient, disobedient, and whistleblower participants.” Begs the question: what is it that makes someone speak up?

            In another study done by Bocchiaro and his team, they discovered a fascinating opposite reaction. In this study, they asked 138 individuals to predict whether or not they would take the whistleblower path, defy the authorities, refuse to comply with an unethical request and 96% said ‘oh yes, this is exactly what I would do. I would never obey an unethical request from an authority.’ As Bocchiaro explains, “People want to see themselves in the best light and believe that they are generally more moral than the average person.”

            So we live in a society where people believe that they would defy those requesting wrong-doing, but in fact these beliefs are only that. When put into actual situations where they must choose, the vast majority obeys, some resist with silence, and a very small crew speak up and report the unethical conduct. What this suggests to me is that we want to do the right thing. We do not want to align ourselves with those who are corrupt or harming others, but it’s a double-edged sword. It’s one of those wretched forks in the road where you know on a deep cellular level that speaking up is dangerous. It’s going to bring suffering. It might risk those you love. No joke people choose to obey. I get it. I still knowingly, fully aware, chose to speak up and yeah I suffered, but maybe suffering isn’t all that bad. Maybe we need to redefine suffering. In the next blog, we’ll look at this to see if there’s another way to frame it. 

References

Bocchiaro, Piero. (2012). “To Defy or Not to Defy: An Experimental Study of the Dynamics of

Disobedience and Whistle-Blowing.” Social Influence 7.1. Retrieved From:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/.... 

Svoboda, Elizabeth. (2017). “What makes whistleblowers speak out while others stay silent

about wrongdoing.” The Washington Post. Retrieved From:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/s....

The post #16: “To Obey or Not to Obey” appeared first on Exit Bullying.