- by Jon Farmer

If you can talk about a scary thing openly, you’ll be better equipped if it happens. That's the principle behind the fire drills we practice as children throughout our time at school. It amazes me that we don’t take the same proactive approach to sexual violence.

Neither sexual violence nor fire should happen; no one wants them. When someone’s house burns down we raise funds to help them rebuild. And yet while people speak openly and with sympathy about survivors of fires, we don’t have the same comfort level or compassion to talk about sexual violence or the people who have survived it. This is a problem.

I’m 31 years old. Last week, a man who taught me in grade eight was convicted of sexual exploitation of a teenager who he knew through teaching. In 2016 a retired teacher from my high school was convicted of the same crime.

Both men were charming teachers, enthusiastic coaches, and community volunteers. During their court processes both men received letters of support from friends, family, and colleagues declaring that they were good guys and otherwise good teachers. Their charges and eventual convictions were covered in the local news but the coverage of the incidents stopped there. Appropriately so, to preserve the dignity and privacy of the women who were courageous enough to come forward as survivors.

Unfortunately, there was no follow up coverage or community conversation about the issues underlying these crimes, what makes the exploitation and violence possible, how to support survivors, or what we do as a community when the perpetrators return from jail and conclude probation.

This kind of abuse impacts individual survivors as well as their networks and the community as a whole. But we don’t have a way to address that wider harm. Left unaddressed it festers and cannot be healed. Conversation and education are the first steps towards that healing.

I’m not suggesting that people aren’t talking about these perpetrators and their crimes. They absolutely are but those conversations are confined to private discussions in group chats, around coffee tables, and in quiet corners of the places where we gather. I’ve seen these conversations happen and watched people try to make sense of their shock, shame, personal memories of uncomfortable interactions with these men, or fear that they allowed their friends or children to be around them.

Our inability to talk about sexual violence comes from discomfort and a cultural reluctance to talk openly about violence or anything vulnerable related to sex. It’s a side effect of inadequate sex and relationship education in school and at home. Our collective ignorance about grooming, power imbalances, and cycles of abuse makes it easier to excuse the perpetrators and blame the victims. It also makes it difficult to figure out what we expect accountability to look like.

It’s not up to one person to provide answers to these questions but we can each identify some of the difficult questions that these situations raise.
Questions like:
How can we support survivors while also protecting their privacy and dignity?
What makes it possible for a colleague or peer to claim that someone was a good coach or teacher when that person sought sex from teenagers under their supervision?
Do the people who defend perpetrators also need to be accountable for that support?
How do we balance the fact that the people who have done harm are members of our community with friends and family who love them?
Do we expect friends and family to disown the perpetrator or to support them in being accountable?

Personally, I believe in the possibility of accountability and positive change. I think it takes hard work, the willingness to be honest about the harm caused, and the ability to consistently work to make amends.

However with sexual and intimate violence like this that has such specific individual harm and such a rippling public impact, it’s difficult to gauge accountability. Going to jail and completing probation are good measures of punishment but poor measures of personal action towards accountability. How can we know whether a perpetrator has made changes when they return home? How do we balance our own anger or discomfort when we see them on the street, shopping, or as a volunteer at a local club?

Violence like this rips the social fabric. We can try to repair that fabric or further divide the community into camps of good/bad or ostracize/support. Repairing our social fabric is more difficult when we know that some of our neighbours voiced support for the perpetrators and when we don’t understand or respect those actions. This raises further questions.

Is it fair to also expect accountability from the people who vouched for the perpetrators in court?

Is it fair to expect accountability or apologies from the institutions that gave the perpetrators access and failed to keep the young people safe? Are protective policies enough or should institutions make public statements of solidarity and support for survivors?

Discomfort is by definition uncomfortable. People try to avoid it. The easiest way to avoid it in this case is to ignore the issues all together. I’ve also heard folks voice the urge to run perpetrators out of town in the historic spirit of tarring and feathering wrong-doers. It would after all be easier to retaliate than confront the underlying issues but retaliation ignores the perpetrators’ connections in our community. It’s tempting to think that the options are only to ostracize or ignore the issue all together but those aren’t our only options. We also have the ability to address complex issues and to figure out how to talk about these things.

If we as individuals - and together as a community - can bring these issues into the open then change is possible. After all, abuse thrives in silence. From my perspective, the goal in all of this is to keep people safe, and to make healing possible for the individual survivors of the violence as well as for our community as a whole.

One person can’t provide all the answers for how to fix this. There is no simple answer. It’s up to all of us to take the first step of talking about it and raising awareness in our personal networks and among our wider community connections. We can have these conversations at work in staff orientations and meetings where we explain policies about harassment, abuse, and safety. We can speak about these issues on the boards and at the annual general meetings of our clubs and volunteer organizations. We can raise these concerns in our communities of faith. We can host public forums and invite expert speakers. We can write letters to the editor and call in to radio talk shows.

There are some basic facts that will help us to dispel myths and create deeper understanding as a starting point. We all need to understand that abusers often create a charismatic persona in other areas of their lives to distract from their abuse, gain access to vulnerable people, and make it harder for the targets of their violence to come forward. Being well liked does not mean someone cannot do harm. We also need to understand that sexual abuse and exploitation do not primarily look like strangers hiding in the bushes but instead most often take the form of people in positions of trust or authority manipulating the vulnerable to get what they want through a prolonged process know as grooming. Most of all, we need everyone to understand that abuse is never the survivor’s fault but rather always the perpetrator’s choice and responsibility. Survivors of this type of violence also need to know that there is support for them (see the Violence Prevention Grey Bruce website or call 211 for a full list).

I want to live in a world where all people are safe, respected, and supported. Sadly, that is not the state of things in the world at large or in Owen Sound. But we can get there if we take steps to increase our individual understanding and compassion, and if as a community we can begin to have these conversations more openly. It’s hard work. It’s uncomfortable. It can even feel tedious as people dismiss the need or try to take shortcuts, claiming to already know the drill. But just like a fire drill, the cost is small if it reduces future disaster.

Jon Farmer lives in Owen Sound.