Betrayal Trauma and Institutional Sexual Misconduct - by “Annie O”
I am writing this on the last day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, just as news of another sexual predator, the actor Noel Clarke, has been exposed in the press. Almost six months have passed since I accidentally blew the whistle on my academic training college for all kinds of institutional abuse, and still the institution has shown no signs of accountability. Three senior members have resigned, only to be replaced by others who are already under investigation for bullying and abuse claims. Another female abuse survivor has written to me to say the institution is ‘playing the victim.’ They have reversed the roles of victim and offender, in a common gaslighting strategy known as DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender).
Jennifer Freyd introduced the concept of DARVO as well as the notion of Betrayal trauma. Betrayal trauma relates to violence done to a victim by a perpetrator upon whom they rely for protection, support and survival. Institutional betrayal in contexts such as academic and professional training colleges can be especially damaging as abuse is normalised and covered up by vague or absent safeguarding policies and complaints procedures, and whistle-blowers can get stigmatised and victim-blamed. One of the hardest things in my case of accidental whistle-blowing was how quickly the complaints process was escalated without my consent, and the abuse was individualised and projected onto me.
My case first came about after I privately raised my concerns to a manager about some serious ethical issues involving the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable clients. I do not feel comfortable naming the institution, so I will write about it in abstract terms. The issues I raised concerned the exploitation of vulnerable people and the unregulated promotion of illegal activities. I had hoped my email would remain confidential and my serious concerns would be addressed by the manager appropriately and professionally. I was a student and there was a power relationship in operation. But my trust was broken when the manager copied the organisational Chair into his response, and wrote an aggressive email, defending his position and blaming me for challenging the system. I was shocked by his response, and the inclusion of the Chair, and thought that this would endanger my own place on the course. Those concerns turned out to be justified. The Chair agreed to talk to me on the telephone. She listened silently, but did not seem to take any of my concerns seriously, and instead defended the institution vehemently. At that stage, I had not even planned to raise a grievance against the organisation, but wanted to ensure safeguarding was in place to protect vulnerable clients from harm. The Chair minimised my concerns, and instead told me how much she trusted the manager who had escalated my original concerns without consent. I became confused. I was not ‘making a complaint’ against the manager or anybody else. I was asking a question about safeguarding.
When the Chair refused to take my concerns seriously, I told her about the sexual misconduct one of the senior managers – whose job was to recruit students – was involved in. Rather than ‘recruit’ students, this senior manager was misusing his power to groom and have sex with students. I told the Chair because it had happened to a number of my friends, and the grooming had happened to me. It takes a lot of courage for women to speak out about sexual assault. We instinctively know the odds of being taken seriously and being believed are stacked against us in this patriarchal system. But what made this particularly challenging for me was that, like a lot of sexual assault survivors, I had already been revictimized. Like many women, I have experienced being stalked, followed home, subjected to domestic violence, harassment and narcissistic abuse, and I have survived rape. I am now in my 40s, and I am tired.
Even writing about this under a pseudonym, I am battling years of social, cultural and psychic resistance and internalised shame. As objects under the male gaze of patriarchy, women are socialised to compete with one another for this attention, even when it is unwanted. We are taught to compare our bodies and aspire to impossible ideals, while at the same time keeping ourselves safe and judging our sisters for inviting too much interest. As we get older, we are socialised to make ourselves appear eternally young, critique other women for either ‘ageing naturally’ or getting surgery, and we know that after a certain point in the life cycle, we are invisiblised and discarded by our culture.
When I told the Chair about the sexual assault I had been subjected to as a student at her institution, I was cautious. I expected having to explain myself. I expected being interrogated. But I did not expect her to defend the abuser, and misrepresent what I was telling her. When I told her about the students he had groomed and had sex with, she commented ‘oh, I didn’t realise they were an item’, and when I told her he had made unwanted sexual advances towards me, she said ‘but you didn’t go home with him, so I don’t really see there is anything to complain about.’
If I had been in any doubt before then about how the predator had ‘got away with it’, all doubts faded when I realised how the system was enabling and normalising sexual abuse. Speaking to other students, I came up against a similar process of minimisation and collective denial. It was as though I was ruining their illusions and spoiling their fun by rupturing the imaginary façade of an institution that seemed to be so progressive, feminist and radical. I left when I realised the institution had no intention of addressing the harms done and that I was being blamed. I filed for a subject access request, only to learn that the institutional committee members had held an emergency meeting to try and silence and push me out, blaming my ‘mental health.’ Almost six months later, the institution has had eight complaints made against it, but is still entrenched in a position of righteous indignation and victim-blaming.
