Violence thrives in silence

The week leading up to Christmas has seen my social media feed dominated by two stories: the Epstein files and the unsuccessfully suppressed 60 Minutes segment on the conditions for immigrants sent to CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador. These stories have much in common. Both narratives include a cascade of information about great harm caused to vulnerable people. But there is another common thread in these stories, one I think needs a great deal more attention: the great lengths people are going through to suppress information about the perpetration of that great harm. Violence thrives in silence, and those who actively hide stories of trauma and violence are themselves catalysts for more trauma and violence.

We should hold them accountable. Not just because they are carrying water for an extremist government or a network of rapists, but also because their actions are unto themselves violent acts. Acts that inflict further harm on those who have already been victimized, but also ensure that more people will be hurt. Silencers like Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche, and Bari Weiss are for sure already being dragged through the social media muck for their frantic and incompetent efforts to bury the stories that must be told. They should also be held to account for trying to erase the trauma of real people and therefore paving the way for more trauma to occur.

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Decades ago, a dear friend told me about the abuse she experienced at the hands of family members. Abuse that didn’t just happen at home behind closed doors, but out in public spaces for others to see. My friend told me that as awful as the abuse was, so was looking into the faces of those who witnessed it and watching them turn away. It pained her that people knew, they saw what was happening to her, and they did nothing to stop it. Their silence was devastating to her, and also allowed the abuse to continue unchecked.

I was deeply impacted by that story and brought it into my 25 plus years of work with survivors of domestic and sexual violence. I never wanted to be the person who turned a blind eye or ran away from the trauma, but instead be the one to run towards it. Over my years of working with survivors, I cannot tell you how often I heard some version of that same story:

People knew but didn’t want to get involved…

I told someone with power to do something but they did nothing…

No one wanted to take on my abuser so my story got squashed…

So many of the survivors I knew ended up experiencing further abuse for longer periods of time because they were not believed. No one took action to stop the violence. So the abuse continued.

And… in many cases survivors told me they worried the lack of response also left their abusers free to victimize more people. They really struggled with that.

So did I.

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Now here we are, buried under an avalanche of news about horrific trauma that would never have seen the light of day if powerful people had their way. The Department of Justice’s willful failure to release the Epstein files on the timeline dictated by congressional intervention sends a strong and terrible message about how they value what happened to the survivors. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s flip flopping statements on what’s in the files and Deputy AG Todd Blanche’s belligerent “bring it on” response to threats of legal action show they care way more about the politics than the people impacted. This “I care more about my hide than your trauma” is some really evil stuff. Every Epstein survivor who is even remotely online has got to be enduring a barrage of reports about the people who clearly don’t care about what happened to them outside of how it impacts their power and position. It’s horrific. Then there are the many people who only holler about the Epstein files when it suits their political agenda — when they think it’s a gotcha moment implicating the Democrats. Their selective outrage hurts survivors too, and silences a larger and necessary conversation about how sexual assault permeates every aspect of our society.

And amongst all the noise about the political machinations, too many people who have likely seen what is actually in those files have remained way too silent. That is violence.

It also paves the way for such a thing to happen again. You cannot prevent something you don’t understand, and you cannot understand something if that something never sees the light of day. We must know exactly who was involved and exactly what they did. All of it. It must be studied and analyzed and talked about openly if we are to have any hope of stopping future Epsteins. We have to know who the perpetrators were and who enabled them. How the victims were drawn in and who failed to intervene. We have to know all of it if we are going to stop any of it.

And speaking of seeing the light of day, let’s talk about Bari Weiss’ clumsy and futile attempt to bury the 60 Minutes story on the torturous conditions faced by immigrants sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador. The piece is hard to watch, going into detail about the physical and sexual violence inflicted on people sent there simply for the crime of being brown. Bari Weiss pulled it, it famously made the rounds anyway, and she responded by sending a memo to CBS News staff attributing the blowback to it being a “slow news week”. So we would not have been horrified by her decision to pull the story if it had been a busier news cycle? And really, have we had a slow news week since Inauguration Day? An epically tone-deaf comment that completely brushes off the gravity of the content and the well founded horror of those learning more about what these men endured.

Bari Weiss is a silencer. She tried to erase the trauma of the immigrants wrongfully detained and deported. Imagine how the men interviewed for the piece must have felt knowing that Weiss tried to smother the story of what happened to them — the violence perpetrated against them. And to my point above, we cannot stop the regime if we don’t know what they are doing. We can’t protect future victims of Trump if Bari Weiss and others hold an opaque curtain in front of him.

Her silence will only cause more violence.

Widespread abuse can only happen with the support of an army of enablers. The army recruits water carriers and know nothings, tongue holders and blinder wearers. It is staffed by battalions of liars and obfuscators, its ranks filled with people looking down at their shoes. And it requires a cadre of people more than willing to enforce silence.

We have to turn up the volume.

The abuse is a crime. So is the act of hiding it.