Kinja reply list

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jinniRachel Vorona Cote
5/09/16 11:33pm
“Over the last 10 or 15 years, there’s been a growing openness to acknowledge and investigate past abuse in all kinds of youth-serving institutions,” he writes. “That’s a healthy development, even if it means that today’s school leaders must grapple with abuse cases—and organizational missteps—from the past, when norms and expectations across society were different.”

Sounds fine. Until you actually read it. Norms and expectations were different?

Um, how so? Because as far as I remember sexual abuse of students was not condoned in the 90's.

They didn’t expect to be caught? They expected the students to cave?

That’s all I got.
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  $7Coffeejinni
  5/09/16 11:42pm
  Maybe they expected a change of scenery would make a predator not be a predator.
  
  Oh you know how Chad gets all predatory when he’s been working too many hours. Let’s give him a promotion to clear his head.
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  jinni$7Coffee
  5/09/16 11:43pm
  Sounds eerily familiar.....
  
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ChocolatescroogeRachel Vorona Cote
5/09/16 11:36pm
There are times I wish I could still report my experience from years ago, but I couldn’t handle the disbelief and victim blaming. I can only ever speak of it anonymously. My SOs certainly can never know.
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  jinniChocolatescrooge
  5/09/16 11:40pm
  We’re here. Talk anytime.
  
  *hugs*
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  Oh Donnaaaaaaa! Donna Strunk!!!Chocolatescrooge
  5/09/16 11:42pm
  I’m so sorry you’ve had to carry a secret. I understand the reasons for keeping it too and I’m so sorry for that as well.
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$7CoffeeRachel Vorona Cote
5/09/16 11:39pm
“... public schools, where one federal study found nearly 10 percent of students are targets of unwanted sexual attention by educators in grades K-12.” - from the original article

Crawls in hole. Enough internet for today.
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  Zeetal$7Coffee
  5/10/16 4:29am
  it’s seriously serious out there.
  
  There are things that parents can do to prevent their child (and themselves) from being groomed and preyed upon. Protecting the Gift is the most commonly given one, but I’ve noticed looking around that simple practices of talking about things like consent, safe and unsafe privacy (‘secrets’ vs privacy), body sovereignty, the proper names of body types, trusting one’s own instincts (and as an adult, backing the child’s instincts), being allowed to turn down touch for any reason at any time (no, you don’t have to kiss granny if you don’t want to. granny, you have no right to demand allowance to touch the kid or for the kid to touch you, etc), and knowing the proper names of one’s body parts — all of these are immensely useful in keeping a child safe from predatory adults.
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  KendalMintcakeZeetal
  5/10/16 6:16am
  That unwanted affection thing! I have a three-year-old and I often have to be firm about not making her receive hugs from her little friends because their parents think it’s “cute”. She doesn’t like it and doesn’t want it. It drives me crazy.
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nbnbRachel Vorona Cote
5/09/16 11:47pm
I went to one of these schools. My story involves a soccer coach handy with all balls, but mostly just my best friend’s. (A senior. Very sexually sophisticated.) They had a full-on relationship that everyone knew about; one which, to this day, my friend claims was healthy and fun. The coach looked like Jason Priestly then. (This was considered an attribute in the early 90s.) He looks more like Tori Spelling now. Recently, I ordered a taco which was served to me by him from his busted taco truck. Karma is no joke.
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  nbnbnbnb
  5/09/16 11:53pm
  To be clear, I have nothing against trucks or those who make tacos in them.
  
  Only specific kinds of tacos and specific kinds of trucks occupied by sexual predators.
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  zombiebarbienbnb
  5/10/16 12:43am
  My brother went to boarding school and when I was talking to him yesterday, he told me all kinds of crazy ass stories about sexual shenanigans at his school. One involved his lacrosse coach and a fifteen year old, and when it came out, the coach shot himself in the head on campus. His roommate had sex with the art teacher, and then after graduating started dating the dance teacher, and apparently ruined their friendship. I was like...what the hell was going on there, dear God. The most shocking part was he thought it was more or less normal.
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KeevaSRachel Vorona Cote
5/10/16 12:04am
“...allegations, going back decades, include claims of rape, fondling, molestation, and oral sex by trusted adults in positions of authority, including, in one case, an admissions officer.”

Not to belabor a point, but these horrors were not committed in public restrooms by transgender individuals. Not one.

Maybe they need to focus on where the actual sexual assaults are being committed by authorized adults. Places like Pennsylvania college football locker rooms, Illinois high school wrestling practice or hoity toity New England private schools.

It seems to me that the public restrooms may be the safe place.
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  jinniKeevaS
  5/10/16 1:58am
  Excellent points.
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  Dinosaurs and Nachos, girlfriend!KeevaS
  5/10/16 7:40am
  I’ve argued this point myself. Adults do more to put children in vulnerable situations than to send them to into public restrooms. So many people I know, especially those in positions of authority don’t really want to “rock the boat.” They don’t want to be the noisy one calling out inappropriate behavior or identifying red flags.
  
  This applies to all sorts of situations, not just sexual abuse of children, but it’s what allows abusers and bullies to flourish. Predators don’t *need* public restrooms. They have the rest of the goddamn world to do their shit. And so many people just.....let them keep on keepin’ on.
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owo9jaRachel Vorona Cote
5/10/16 2:43am
approximately 3 per school over a 25 year span is hardly a large number. yes we want it at zero, but lets not overstate the problem. it appears to have actually improved
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  Lannister Handjobowo9ja
  5/10/16 8:36am
  The number will rise. These are the people willing to come forward now, with community support more victims will step into the light and corroborate and/or name other perpetrators.
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  NomNom83owo9ja
  5/10/16 9:36am
  That we know of. And it’s not so much the number of victims, but the conspiracies of silence and the cultures in which abuse can flourish.
  
  It may be quite surprising to a number of readers that even affluent, well-educated, powerful (via their parents, if not in their own right) students can be victims who keep silent or blame themselves.
  
  Sexual abuse is insidious and predators know what they’re doing. The more people let this sink in and realize that it’s not just something that happens to x, y or z “kinds” of people, the better.
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j4x_Rachel Vorona Cote
5/10/16 9:47am
I spent the summer before high school at an elite all-boys boarding school in CT. During the summer the program was geared for high-school students with “behavioral” problems that kept them from graduating.

Of roughly 100 students, I’d say 75% were 17+ and there were about 15-20 scrawny kids as young as 14.

The younger kids were beaten, robbed and raped by a handful of older students on a relatively regular basis.

Personally I was very lucky, I got away from the summer with only a handful of beatings, which required stitches on multiple occasions. We would be hunted across the campuses in the afternoons someday’s, hiding in whatever closet (not an exaggeration) we could find.

I have an incredibly vivid memory of pretending to sleep while holding a dinner knife against my chest while the kid in the bunk-bed below me was attacked, hoping they ignored me.

Not a single adult on campus wanted to hear about it, it was made clear that reporting such incidents were grounds for punishment and that all other students would be made aware you complained.

Not a single adult believed me back home, because I was sent to the boarding school in the first place for being a disobedient, lying little shit. No one even believed me about the fights, talking about what went on after lights-out wouldn’t have been tolerated.

It took a very long time for me to objectively admit how that changed my personality at that age, when I entered high school that fall I had adopted a completely new persona.

I had been a troublemaker but a relative loner who preferred to stay somewhat isolated at school. Within (what feels like) the blink of an eye I had become not just outspoken, I was confrontational and quick to attack anyone for challenging me in any way.

That place taught me anger&violence was an acceptable solution and that led to the largest mistakes in my life to date.

Anyway, yeah, not only do I believe it I understand exactly how it goes on for so long.
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  NomNom83j4x_
  5/10/16 10:05am
  You can’t be punished for reporting it anymore and you will be believed:
  
  Contact us: The Spotlight Team would like to hear from readers with tips about this series. Confidential messages can be left at 617-929-7483. Email the team at spotlight@globe.com.
  Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com. Jenn Abelson can be reached at jenn.abelson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @jennabelson. Bella English can be reached at english@globe.com. Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @twallack.
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  j4x_NomNom83
  5/10/16 10:17am
  A gracious thought friend.
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MinaRachel Vorona Cote
5/10/16 12:00am
Having your child under the care of a bunch of adults you don’t know and can’t supervise for months on end. What possibly could go wrong?
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  MidwestCoastBiasMina
  5/10/16 12:41am
  Yeah, I think in some ways this type of article is a bad idea because it focuses on schools as opposed to “Isolated organizations with few checks and balances” or what not.
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  NomNom83Mina
  5/10/16 9:40am
  And yet, in that kind of fishbowl, I imagine that it’s actuallypretty hard for such relationships or abuse to be a complete secret. Special “attention” or seeing people together in odd places or times — they’re flags. In how many of these cases did other people know or suspect something, but said or did nothing? It’s not a nice thought, but it’s worth considering how much “I don’t wanna rock the boat or get my friend/colleague in trouble” may have allowed a lot of this to go on. So I think it speaks to addressing the culture so people expect to be believed and supported.
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goddessoftransitoryRachel Vorona Cote
5/10/16 1:15am
So for anybody who wants to snark that print media is a dinosaur/dying/irrelevant? Please to take a look.
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  Ronald Raven Symoné goddessoftransitory
  5/10/16 6:30am
  Print media is dying, but it’s far from irrelevant and that is the tragedy.
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NomNom83Rachel Vorona Cote
5/10/16 10:07am
Also at the link but worth posting:

The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center provides support and resources around the clock at 1-800-841-8371 and www.barcc.org .

Contact us: The Spotlight Team would like to hear from readers with tips about this series. Confidential messages can be left at 617-929-7483. Email the team at spotlight@globe.com.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com. Jenn Abelson can be reached at jenn.abelson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @jennabelson. Bella English can be reached at english@globe.com. Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @twallack.
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