If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.
– Brené Brown, Daring Greatly
One of the most common emails I get is from people who say, “Joelle, my friend just told me that s/he was sexually abused as a child. I don’t know what to do.”
This short, easy-to-read book will give you an understanding of the survivor’s need to disclose; why he or she may have decided to tell you; finding help, resources and referrals; reporting to law enforcement; and (most important) how to be a healthy, empathetic support system.
Originally slated to be a chapter in my upcoming book, this information was not relevant to a parenting toolkit. But it’s far too important to cut completely. By giving away the information for free, I hope that we can get more survivors to disclose and report and change civil and criminal laws to help victims of sex crimes.
The information in this book comes from the work that I and others have done to help thousands of other survivors find a voice and speak out. Were it not for groups like SNAP, The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and their tireless work, I (and countless others) would still be sitting in silence.
There’s a banner that hangs outside of Costa Mesa’s (California) Whittier Elementary School. Its slogan— Children are our first priority—is a painfully ironic reminder of one of the biggest problems plaguing our public schools.
That problem is child sexual abuse by public school employees—an epidemic that is raging out of control.
Don’t believe it’s a problem? Here are some recent stories that should change your mind.
Where is the outrage? Why are we not learning more about school employees who are arrested for abuse? What about school district officials who know about these predators but do nothing? Why aren’t we having in-depth investigations and document exposés like we see in the Catholic Church?
The answer is simple: we have bad laws—bolstered by big money and teachers’ unions—that leave parents without viable options and children at risk of abuse.
But unions are not the only bad guys. The state is riddled with bad civil laws that protect public schools from being held responsible for child sexual abuse. According to a recent study by the Associated Press, these bad laws allow “passing the trash” —that is, allowing accused teachers to quietly move to other schools and districts. Why? Because of regulations that require allegations against teachers to be expunged, short statutes of limitation for abuse and reporting, and additional protections for public entities (hence the reason we see lawsuits against private schools and not public schools). The result? Predators stay in classrooms and victims have little to no recourse.
Even if a student reports abuse, parents are caught in a Faustian bargain: to get the education their child needs, parents have little choice but to keep their child in the school where the abuse occurred. Sure, parents can attempt civil action—if the abuse is reported in time—but that is where their choices end. If they don’t have money to send their child to private school or cannot move, many parents have no other options.
For special needs children, the stakes are even higher: with no other access to funding for the services their child needs, parents are “held captive” in the same public school system that allowed the abuse to occur.
If we truly want public schools where children are the first priority, we must push lawmakers to hold public educators and districts fully accountable for the safety of every child in public education. We must strengthen our reporting laws, require better training, and give victims a greater ability to use the civil system to expose cover-up and “passing the trash.”
Children must be our first priority. And it’s time for the California legislature and every district in the state to remember that public school students should ALWAYS be protected over deep-pocketed interests, criminal behavior, or the status quo.
Abuse memoirs are usually a tough read, but Mary discusses her life with grace and respect—very similar to the way she lives her life.
While I am not done with the book, something struck me at the very beginning of her narrative. From the book (emphasis mine):
Not more than a week passed before I got to the circle of other women at Therapy and Renewal Associates (TARA) for the Archdiocese of Seattle—and there I spun some more, listening for the first time to stories of other women within the Catholic Church who had been abused by priests. Many of their stories were like mine, except I was the only woman who had been abused as a child.
I was floored.
I don’t have an answer or an analysis. Just questions.
His drama teacher had been found with child pornography on a school computer. This same teacher—Lynn Seibel—had admitted to being complicit in “Naked Dance Parties” with male students in school bathrooms. Seibel was also rumored to have conducted a special AP (Advanced Placement) class in penis enlargement.
What is the headmaster of one of the nation’s most elite boarding/day schools to do?
Shattuck-St. Mary’s (SSM) in Faribault, Minnesota is considered a “feeder school” for the National Hockey league. Their alumni list is a “who’s who” of the professional sport. Tuition is $29,000 a year for the day students and $43,000 for students who live at the school. There’s a lot at stake.
Plus, Stoneman had no idea how many students had been “peeked at,” groomed, or molested by Seibel. He also had no idea if Seibel had created pornographic images of any of SSM’s students.
It gets worse. There were other teachers at the school who had molested students. While we don’t know how much Stoneman knew in 2003, but by 2012, Seibel and another teacher, Joseph Machlitt, would be criminally charged for molesting SSM students. In 2008, a third, Leonard Jones, would kill himself after one of his victims confronted Jones about the sexual abuse.
But I digress. Let’s get back to Stoneman’s 2003 dilemma.
He had two options:
The first would be to call the police, cooperate with any and all investigations, reach out to alumni who may have been abused, and ask for help from the community to make sure that predators like Seibel never have access to students again. Sure, he would take a PR hit and parents would be upset. But if he dealt with the issue head on, he could easily win the support of parents, especially if he took charge to ensure that the school was a safer place.
The second option would be to keep things hush-hush and pay off Seibel to make him go away.
(Seibel went on to teach in Rhode Island and act in small roles in Hollywood before he was arrested and convicted of molesting SSM students in 2013.)
So, why would a headmaster—whose personal mission should have been the education, emotional encouragement, and safety of the children in his care—make this kind of decision?
It’s simple. He loved and feared the institution more than he cared about the children in it.
He took the dangerous “long view” and thought, “Gee, most of the kids who knew Seibel will graduate in a couple of years. But the school will be around for a lot longer. This is a small problem that the school will live through. The kids come and go, but the school’s legacy is eternal.”
In his heart of hearts, I bet he actually thought he was doing the right thing. He was so indoctrinated into the “institution,” he completely forgot what the institution was supposed to do.
Sounds a bit harsh and over-simplified, but that’s basically what happened.
Stoneman is not an outlier. We saw this behavior at Penn State and continue to see it in Catholic dioceses and other hierarchical and secretive religious groups across the country. In fact, even in my own case, the then-principal of Mater Dei High School Fr. John Weling let the man who abused me and other girls quietly resign. Years after the cover-up was exposed, Mater Dei gave Weling its “Ring of Honor” award (And when you think about it – it makes sense. He did protect the school from scandal, which seems to be their mission). Later administrators at the school covered up for abusers such as Larry Stukenholtz and Jeff Andrade – even letting Andrade back on campus after admitting to molesting at least one girl for more than a year.
So why does Stoneman still have a job? Why do the principal and president of Mater Dei?
Because when it comes to institutions, our society has a tragic blind spot. Donors who give these schools millions of dollars think, “These administrators have made these schools into powerhouses. They have educated thousands of children. Why let one rotten apple spoil the barrel? What about the money I donated?” Parents who send their kids to the school say, “Things have changed. Besides, who knows how ‘willing’ those victims were? My child would never go to naked dance parties or an AP class on penis enlargement.” (I will address the problem with this view in a later post)
Stoneman and the administration at Mater Dei have jobs because we let them. And when we let them, we tell victims and predators that NOTHING has changed. Because NOTHING has.
Institutions are only as good as the people who run them. If they are rotten, so is the institution.
Stoneman had a choice. He made the wrong choice. Now, it’s up to SSM.
UPDATE – 2/10/14
Shattuck-St. Mary’s issued a statement about recent coverage of the Seibel case.
“The crux of the matter is simple: did we do the right thing in deciding to remove Lynn Seibel from our school and did we do it the right way? Even with the benefit of 12 years of hindsight, we believe we made the right decision for the right reasons, made with the facts as we knew them.”
A boarding school. Naked dance parties. Child pornography. Molestation. An arrest. A suicide. Allegations. Lawsuits.
A cover-up.
Total institutional ethical failure.
When I first heard about the scandal at Minnesota’s Shattuck-St. Mary’s (I’ll refer to it from now on as SSM), I had a hard time wrapping my arms around the extent of the criminal behavior. And let’s face it, I am not a novice when it comes to these cases. It takes a lot to shock me.
SSM, a grade 6-12 Episcopal boarding and day school located about 50 miles from Minneapolis, also reminds me of a school a little closer to home—one that suffered its own huge institutional failure when it came to child sex abuse and cover-up.
There is so much to discuss, that I have decided to write a series of posts about SSM and what happened. I am also going to try and tackle some of the questions we are all asking. Things like:
The drama teacher and child molester, who allows victims’ attorneys a glimpse into the mind of a predator and the sticky, tangled spider web that is grooming.
That’s a lot to talk about. But the only way to stop this kind of cover-up in the future is to truly understand how and why it happened here.
