From Challenge Comes Change

 

I've been having trouble sleeping this week.

I suspect I'm not the only one. A week beginning with a call to #ChooseToChallenge the ways in which inequality still impacts women has coincided with real world events that have brought the reality of this into sharper focus.

First came Piers Morgan, doubting the veracity of Meghan Markle's account of her own suicidality, swiftly followed by horror and devastation as we learned of the disappearance and murder of Sarah Everhard, a 33 year old Durham graduate and marketing executive living in London, described by those who knew and loved her as "strong and principled", "popular",  "incredibly kind" and most poignantly as a source of joy to her family.  

Even as Sarah’s body was being recovered and identified, #NotAllMen began to trend on social media, accompanied by posts judging her for taking what would be her final walk, “at night alone” (without a chaperone at 9.30!! Imagine!?)

Speculation on Sarah Everard’s culpability in her own murder did not abate even when it emerged the suspect in her kidnap and murder was a member of the police force, and so, presumably, exactly who she might have thought to approach if feeling unsafe.

I don’t know what I could possibly usefully say about any of the above except, just like pretty much every other woman I know, and most men, I’m really tired. I’m tired of these huge traumas, and all the little ones. I’m tired of the same old discussions, had in the same old way, over and over again, stirring up hatred and division and harm and changing absolutely nothing.

I’m tired of this, most of all. I want us to change how we talk (and don’t talk) about rape and sexual violence. I want us to be empowered to talk about it in ways that bring real change, not waste time and energy shouting into a hashtag void.

 

********************

 

Why do I care?  Some years ago, in a therapeutic training context, memories of my own rape came flooding back to me after twenty years. These had rarely troubled me in many years, having been lucky enough to access a caring, compassionate response from sensitive professionals at a Rape Crisis Centre after the initial attack.

When I sought to get some advice on how to manage this in the training setting,things didn’t go so well. Looking back, all these years later, I view what happened as a consequence of a very normal, everyday communication breakdown that met with too hasty and too brutal an institutional response beyond what anyone involved might have hoped for or wished for or wanted.

I understand and have compassion for this, as a human thing, and yet this week, despite that and against everything I’ve ever wanted,  I chose to "go public" to highlight non-responding by the institution to my feedback on these experiences – because I knew it was literally the only way to get a response.

We need to change this.

********************

 

In attempting to understand what went wrong for me in disclosing my personal history, and why, I have come to believe that  institutional defensiveness may have prevented engagement with this simple human story in a more humane, compassionate way.

My disclosure was made in writing. Many people first disclose traumatic memories in writing, because of how the brain works.

When traumatic memories arise "out of nowhere" a part of the brain called the amygdala has detected something in the present it registers as having implications for access to future resources or relationships. This happens quickly, and automatically. It’s not something we choose. When the brain can't easily work out “what’s going wrong and why”, it can become overactivated and hard to soothe and settle. This can make communication fraught, in some contexts.

Writing the story to a trusted person is a healthy and wise choice a person can make in response to this experience: a calm, wise way of reaching out to share something frightening and difficult.

Writing, as a mode of communication, frames experience in a particularly useful way when things feel confusing or stressful. Writing allows the experience to be referred back to by the person, either by themselves or with another, providing a stable point of reference for shared communication and understanding. 

Of course, in any situation, in any context, writing can be a particularly challenging mode of communication to interpret and respond to with sensitivity and care, but in our institutions. it's a mode of communication that can trigger fears around legalities and, for public servants, what might be shared without consent online.

The very same reasons someone may want to share their experience in writing - to stabilise it on a page so it can be referred back to, revisited – also activate misunderstandings and communication breakdown.

My sense is that, as soon as I pushed for a response to this disclosure, the university felt the need to protect itself from the potential legal or reputational ramifications of not being 100% perfect in writing.  

I understand how this happens. I also know that, when it comes to trauma, it’s not good enough.

In my case, in taking a defensive stance at the first sign of communication “trouble” (a normal, important part of everyday human interaction, the navigation of which creates and sustains the social glue that keeps us together as groups), I was suddenly pulled into conflict over a conversation that was very much needed, and yet could now could not be had.

I will never forget the Head of School at the time, in an informal meeting about this some months later, saying “I am sorry for you on a human level, but this is how institutions go”. I was furious and devastated by this phrase for a long, long time – but of course, he was only speaking the truth.

********************

That Head of School was Professor Alan Carr, a professional expert in the Ryan Report. I’ve watched Professor Carr speak to survivor groups about the need for trauma informed services.

I have seen him speak, with emotion in his voice, about the catastrophic impact on survivors of institutional abuse of the gagging order imposed by the Ryan Commission.

For a long time, his words about "how institutions go" in my own case rang in my ears as a mark of hypocrisy, evoking hurt and anger.  In the months after my father (a survivor of clerical sexual abuse) died, I thought of them often in bewilderment, disappointment and grief. 

Recently, however, my perspective has changed.

Maybe, in fact, in using these words, in this context, Professor Carr was being extraordinarily truthful, reflective and brave about his perspective on institutions that simply have not been designed to meet the needs of sexual violence survivors in a society that still struggles to look the reality of rape and interpersonal harm in the eye.

**********************

This week, the Technological Higher Education Association (THEA), the representative advocacy body for the technological higher education sector in Ireland, launched its comprehensive report, Propel: Promoting Consent and Preventing Sexual Violence on behalf of ten higher education institutons in Ireland: AIT, Dundalk Institute of Technology, the Institute for Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technolology, the Institute of Technology in Carlow, IT Sligo, LYIT in Letterkenny, LIT, the Munster Technological University and the Waterford Institute of Technology.

The report has taken a comprehensive, trauma-informed approach to beginning a conversation on these issues. involving key stakeholders across the higher education sector in creating detailed recommendations for changing cultures that contribute to sexual violence and consent concerns not only within these contexts, but across society as a whole. 

The Propel Report involved an extensive consulation process with representatives from across the sector:

-              Survivors’ groups: Rape Crisis Centres (particularly the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre), National Women’s Council, 1752 Group

-              Unions: USI, TUI, Fórsa, SIPTU, Unite

-              Traditional universities, incl. Maynooth University, NUIG, UCC, and UCD

-              Higher Education Authority

-              Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation, and Science

The report details concrete, comprehensive recommendations for change based on a significant body of research into the national and international context, with an emphasis on developing trauma-informed approaches that take into account both staff and student needs with respect to the sharing of personal and sensitive information.

Of particular relevance to my own history, the report is sensitive in its recognition of the need for disclosure training for all staff in higher education contexts, highlighting the need for emotional and professional support for staff receiving content that they may find challenging or upsetting to receive. 

Notably, anyone who is working in a higher education institution could receive a disclosure of sexual violence at any given time. Therefore, enabling staff and student leaders to respond appropriately to such disclosures through Disclosure Training is essential. A number of plans are underway in institutions to develop training to enable staff to respond to disclosures of sexual violence; some options are provided below. Training for all institutions’ staff is imperative. 

This report does not distinguish between academic staff and professional, management, and support staff in this regard. Institutions’ local staff and students’ union representatives should also be included in such training.

 Emphasising its report as a "beginning conversation" , the Propel report recognises that issues in our institutions always reflect attitudes in our society. As a country, we need to face the challenging reality that sexual violence and abuses of insitutional power are a cultural faultline in Irish society, as surely as race and slavery are in the United States of America. 

We have seen that every important social change in Ireland in the last fifty years has come from people sharing personal stories, allowing us all to step back and see the size of the cloth we are woven from. 

Much of this change has been driven from outside our institutions by those most vulnerable persisting and sharing over and over again the most intimate details of their lives: "going public" about private grief and pain on the airwaves, in print media and more recently, on social media. 

The Irish people have proven time and time again, our capacity to respond with kindness, care and compassion to these stories.

Now, however, we need to embed listening and responding within our institutions, working together to reduce the struggle to be heard.

 *******************

Experiencing conflict around disclosing rape was unexpected for me. Meeting it pushed me to the brink of myself.  Thankfully, I had the personal, financial and social resources to manage this effectively, so that today, I can speak with equanimity and balance about that dark time in my life. The stark reality is such supports are not freely available to all.

 As a society, we know we want to foster environments where disclosing current or retrospective sexual and interpersonal violence is facilitated, encouraged and supported. This matters to making our society safer for all. 

In the cyber-age, there's added urgency to dealing with this more proactively. Forcing personal disclosures into public domain is a risky business. We know there are clusters of high risk groups who engage in posting anonymous  rape and death threats who coalesce around topics of rape, misogyny and homophobia. 

We also know there are similarities in the discourse patterns used by those posting lower level abuse (sarcasm etc) and these groups, posing risks of increasing hostility and aggression both on and offline over time. 

Worryingly, Frances Fitzgerald MEP, in conversation recently with Professor Ursula Barry at UCD, noted how this environment is driving women from participation in politics, impacting equality, diversity and inclusion in society as a whole. The implications of how we listen and respond to disclosures of sexual violence can have far reaching implications we may not always initially imagine.

The Propel report reflects that highlights that higher education institutions are ideally placed to bring change for the future, as highlighted in this quote by Mary Mitchell O'Connor, former Minister of Higher Education:

‘Every part of our society is touched by sexual violence and harassment, but our higher education sector is in a prime position to change that. Those walking the corridors and sitting in the lecture halls of our third level institutions represent our future leaders and thinkers. Their contributions will shape the generations that lie ahead. By instilling values of dignity, respect and equality, we are underpinning a bright, safe and more equal future for all of society.’  

The Propel report recognises that we need to put an onus on public providers to engage with respect, compassion and care - but also to be supported by their management and our government through funding and oversight to equip them to address any communication breakdowns openly, non-defensively and curiously, in line with best evidence on communicating around traumatic experience.

********************

Our painful past is quite recent. We, as a society, must learn together to communicate better around these topics. We have to recognise survivor expertise by experience as important within this process, eschewing non-questioning acceptance of hierarchies that led to abuses of power in the past. At the same time it's important to applaud the very many significant changes of recent years, and recognise there is significant will on the part of those in our institutions to bring positive change.

From challenge comes change – but let’s  work together to make it safer for everyone to engage constructively by engaging more flexibly with challenge when it arises.

Let’s learn to distinguish with maturity between criticisms of process and criticisms of people, and not confuse a challenge brought in the hopes of influencing positive change with selfish agendas or emotional reactivity. 

Let's not forget what we all truly want: a future free from the sexual and institutional abuses of the past, where people of all genders feel safe to walk the streets at night. 

I hope we'll all sleep better when that happens.