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.”…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…