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 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…

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…

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…

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…