Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

The dilemma with mandated reporting is that we have mass sexual abuse, and we have mass childhood sexual abuse. And what makes sense is a mass system to address it. And the truth of that mass system is that it doubles down on the violence. And it doubles down on the harm. And the other truth is that we don’t have an alternative to it. And so, the problem is that we want to stop what’s happening to children, and we want to stop sexual violence. And we’re in these roles where the solution is supposed to be making a report. And that report is supposed to make a change that’s measurable in someone’s life, towards safety. And so much of what we see is that does not happen, or it increases the risk. So then you have this tension of like, I don’t believe in activating the state, but I’m witnessing horrific violence, and I need to take an action that doesn’t lead to violence against me as the worker, and that doesn’t increase the violence against the people who are being harmed, and so now I’m in this conflict because I don’t believe in being complicit with the state, and this is the only solution that I have going, and I need to sit with how I resolve this effectively, but the truth is that there is no effective resolution for that tension. That tension exists because it’s a giant-ass problem that we need more creativity around, and we need that tension to keep us creative. If we were looking at that from just a purity politic point, it would just be “Never participate in mandate...