In the early hours of Saturday morning, as thousands across the country rose from their beds to participate in Darkness Into Light, an event aimed at raising awareness for mental health and suicide prevention, a family was engulfed in a wave of inconsolable grief. The reason behind their devastation was not just the loss of…
Toxic workplaces, the not so silent epidemic that claims lives and leaves countless others shattered. This tragic death was preventable, the loss of Dr Vaish Kumar’s life, and the loss her family and friends will feel is lasting. This headline will move down the website into oblivion, their pain is forever. BBC covered the story…
Sharing your unique experiences of trauma can indeed be a difficult and painful process. When faced with someone who responds dismissively, it’s important to remember that no one else can truly understand the depth of your trauma except for you. People who make statements like, “I wouldn’t have got that from them,” lack the insight…
After I reported teachers’ abuse at one private school, then watched administrators and the board cover up, I resigned in protest. I was hired to work at another private school. In my third year at the new school, a student reported directly to me that she was being “sexually harassed by a teacher.” I didn’t…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Speaking up is dangerous. 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.…
When you are abused, you often lose yourself, your authentic self. You become disconnected from your essential self. You are the self lost to abuse. My mission is to recover her and honour her. This is why you see her on my website. That confident, glowing, young, vibrant woman. I am dedicated to returning her…
A culture of cruelty I’ve learned, living in a society that enables rampant child abuse, that I’m definitely comfortable with being an outlier. Other whistleblowers talk about being ousted for speaking up about child abuse. Elizabeth Svoboda interviewed gold-medal gymnast Dominique Moceanu about how top coaches “belittled”, “harangued,” and “encouraged” athletes to “train while injured.” Svoboda was…
Our society normalizes abuse When the tragedy of 9 / 11 happened, my brother was living in Brooklyn. Roofers were working on his brownstone so after the first plane hit and the world went into panic, he went up to watch with them what was unfolding on the other side of New York city. When…
One of the lessons I learned on the path of being an unlikely whistleblower was that my crime of “committing the truth” would be judged harshly while those in the wrong, either perpetrators of abuse or those enabling them, would receive hearty applause for their puppet show. When I say puppet show, what I mean…
If a coach is successful and wins championships, does it excuse bullying conduct? The best way to answer this question is to ask it first about kids: if reports come in from multiple sources that a child is bullying and hurting others, should a school principal factor in whether or not the child won…
I Transformed from a Bystander into an Advocate Whistleblower Series #1 I transformed from an unwilling bystander to someone who is a vocal advocate, researcher, consultant and writer about child abuse and the system that enables it. This is my former life that I had to give up when I spoke up. From the…
Hopefully you’ve seen the film Spotlight about relentless journalists exposing rampant child abuse in the Catholic Churches of Boston. My key take-away from the film is that being a whistleblower requires a lot of grit and commitment. If you want to make actual change, whistleblowers have to stay the course. People say “it takes a village to…
Kyle Beach is a brilliant example of how being a whistleblower is not self-sacrifice, but self-determination. If you haven’t been following the story, this is a picture of Kyle Beach who yesterday moved from abuse victim into the whistleblower role as covered on TSN. I told you at the start, I decided to write this blog…
Whistleblowers are afraid because those you expose attack what you care about. While whistleblowers are often praised after the fact for being courageous, few talk about how frightening it is to take this role. Dorothy Suskind writes that “whistleblowers place themselves in the path of an oncoming train in an effort to force a reckoning.”…
Only Child Abuse Could Make Me Speak Up I am an unlikely whistleblower, but where I find courage is when I hear directly from children they’re being abused. Only child abuse could make me speak up. I know what it’s like to be an unwilling bystander and a self-protective sheeple, but the only thing that…
Collision of Consciousness and Circumstance I had always been a believer in education, justice, and government in my country. Cut to the collision between consciousness and circumstance: five years I watched how school administrators handled abuse reports about the one teacher, who was ultimately fired, showed me a coverup-culture at work, but belief-systems constructed through childhood…
School Culture that Looked the Other Way I was an “unwilling bystander” in a school culture that looked the other way when abuse was occurring. This was before I stepped into the whistleblower role. I knew about an abusive teacher, but my attempts to stop his harmful treatment got me nowhere. Instead, I encountered all…
I transformed from an unwilling bystander to someone who is a vocal advocate, researcher, consultant and writer about child abuse and the system that enables it. In the picture above, you can see that I am calm and surrounded by copies of my wine thriller Crush that was a lot of fun to write. There I am, signing…
It’s one thing to know the definition of the whistleblower, but it’s another to examine what exactly they do. I mean what does the job actually entail? No matter what context whistleblowing occurs in—from exposing corporate poisoning of the environment to reporting that children are being abused and the government is covering it up—whistleblowers must…
Research shows that whistleblowers don’t leap onto the path guns blazing. No. Whistleblowers try everything they can to solve the problem internally so as not to rock the boat, expose wrongdoers, cause trouble. That said, for whistleblowers, exposing injustice is an obligation, not a choice. I tried to address the crisis at the school in…
Whistleblowers must take the long road. We tend to imagine being a whistleblower as raising one’s hand and saying “no, that’s not okay,” or sending in a brown envelope with incriminating materials, or being a “deep throat” who exposes corruption to someone who will take action. We expect that in a shocking, revelatory moment that…
Gifts that come with being a whistleblower are sanity, clarity, exposure of enablers, who re-victimize children and coverup deadly abuse. In an article about “Conscientious Objectors” (aka whistleblowers) in the workplace, British Social Sciences prof John Solas describes the behaviour that creates the conditions for corruption. He explains: “Bad leaders would not be able to realize their…