Category Archives: Abuse of Power

Exposed as a Bully

Abuse of Power, Trump, Trumpism

 

The author E.J. Carroll won a big award from a jury as compensation for defamatory remarks made by the former President Donald Trump. The jury awarded her $83 million after the second trial. Immediately after the first trial, Trump defamed her again, eliciting a second trial, and second multi-million-dollar award for damages. Together with her two female attorneys she was interviewed by Rachel Maddow.

 

Carroll is an 80-year-old author who had been sexually abused by Donald Trump. That was determined by the jury in a private tort trial. It was not a criminal trial. The government’s Department of Justice did not start the claim.  Teh jury reached the conclusion on the basis of a balance of probabilities. This was not a case of the “deep state” nor “started by Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice” as Trump is so quick to claim in other cases. Carroll admitted she was terrified before the trial. She was so scared she lost her voice and could not speak.  But she had been sexually abused by Donald Trump and did not want to let him get away with it. As Carroll said triumphantly on the Rachel Maddow show “We’ve planted our flag.  We’ve stood up to the man…He is not there…He is like a rhino snorting.” She emasculated the bully.

At the trial Carroll realized Trump was a bully, and like so many bullies “he was nothing. We don’t need to be afraid of him.”  Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan said after the verdict had been rendered, “We can stand up to the US’s biggest bully. We are not afraid of him.” The other lawyer for Carroll, Shawn Crowley who gave the summation to the jury asked them to consider “How much does he have to pay in order to stop him.” The first verdict was $5 million in the first case.  But Trump could not keep quiet and defamed her a second time right after the first verdict. He just refused to follow the rules. Crowley said about the jury, “They just saw it with their own eyes.”

Roberta Kaplan, the other lawyer for Carroll, said,

“Our thesis in this case was that Donald Trump was a bully who is incapable of following the rules. Then during the trial he acted like a bully and showed that he was incapable of following the rules. We almost didn’t need to say anything. The jury just watched him.”

 

I wish the Trumpsters had seen him. The case exposed the former president as a weak bully!

I really don’t care about Trump. I do care about people who vote for him. I know some Americans like bullies. They want a bully as President. But I really think a majority don’t like bullies. Let’s wait and see. The election will tell the story.  This upcoming election will tell us a lot about who the electors like.  If they like Trump, you know they like bullies.

Psychopaths and Sociopaths raising children

Abuse of Power, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Usually, Father Doughty took a boy to his room at Kuper Island Indian Residential School, but occasionally, often under the influence of alcohol, he would just jump into bed with a boy in the dorm and have sex with him while the other children were listening. But the boys all stayed silent about the abuse. As Duncan McCue the CBC host of the podcast series said, “for many the abuse and silence carried on for years, bottled up, ravaging their hearts, minds, and souls.”

These were the “fathers” that were raising indigenous children in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools because the government thought it would be unwise to let them be raised by their savage parents.

For years, after he was an adult, James Charley, one of Doughty’s victims, said, “My wife had to clean up the mess.” That, of course, is a very common occurrence. The children who are abused later abuse others, including the ones they love the most. This is what they learned in  residential school. This is how the problems are rolled down the generations. Religious leaders taught this to them. Victims of abuse later lashed out at other vulnerable people. They didn’t learn to be good parents. They learned to be abusers. This is the hideous legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools.

As one member of the community said, it is a community in which “Psychopaths and Sociopaths raise children and that has everything to do with missing and murdered children.”

The effects of the abuse truly do cascade through the generations. It is never fair for us to suggest to the victims, or even the next generation,  that they “should just get over it,” as I have heard more than once. It really is an ignorant and unbecoming comment to make.

 

Oblates were Holy Men

Abuse of Power, Exploitation, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

I want to warn people this post contains some difficult details of abuse at Kuper Island Indian Residential School. I don’t want to emphasize the sexual abuse because the abuse at such schools went so much farther than that. But these issues should not be avoided either.

Brother Glenn Doughty was a young Oblate at the school who had been taught (indoctrinated?) to sacrifice himself to God. He would not pursue wealth. But there were things he would pursue—with determination. Doughty was stuck on a remote island where there was little he could do except look after a bunch of kids. Yet Doughty thrived there.

The Oblates at the school were tough. They dominated the children. Now that was not uncommon in schools at the time.  I also attended schools in Steinbach at about the same time  where the teacher tried to dominate the children, but the domination in our schools was on an entirely different plane than Kuper Island.

The Oblates ate relatively lavish meals, at least compared to the less than modest fare of the children. This special treatment for Oblates was of course justified, the brothers universally felt, on account of the sacrifices they made for God. They “deserved” lavish meals.  So at least they thought. As Duncan McCue of the CBC said, “they had a strong sense of entitlement.” That is not uncommon for religious leaders of young children.

One day Brother Doughty told Tony Charley, one of the students, that he would be getting his own room. Charley thought this was a special privilege. That wasn’t quite right. In Tony’s first week in the dorm after he stopped being a day student and became a dorm resident, he was invited into Doughty’s room. Doughty told Tony “We should get to know each other.”

When it was time to sleep Doughty told Tony to sleep with him. “he grabbed me inside my pyjamas and started to rub my penis. Then he grabbed my hand and put it over his penis, so I did the same thing. It was very shocking to have that happen.”

Father Doughty was friendly with many boys in the dorm often inviting them to his room for the night for what he called “magic tricks.” Tony encountered Brother Doughty regularly. Tony did not know what to do. He wondered, “This is a holy man. Why is he doing this?” He could not understand it. At the time Tony knew little about sex. There certainly was no sex education in the Catholic school. The abuse lasted from September of 1967 to December of 1967. After that Tony exercised an act of resistance.  Tony moved to the upper bunk bed, and Doughty stopped coming. But of course, he moved on to other boys in the dormitory including Tony’s younger brother James. There are always more victims available in a residential school. There was an endless supply of vulnerable children far away from protection.

That is of course heaven for sexual predators. And hell for the victims.

In the hands of the Oblates

Abuse of Power, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

What was it like to be a student at one of the most notorious residential schools in Canada? One episode of the CBC documentary on Kuper Island told the story of two very young indigenous brothers James and Tony Charley who shared their accounts of multiple incidents of sexual abuse at the residential school on Kuper Island and in particular abuse they suffered at the hands of a young Oblate who was the chaperone for more than 30 young boys as part of a special trip to Expo 67 in Montreal.  This was brother Doughty.

This incident came as a bit of a shock for me. I was also at Expo 67 that summer as part of a trip I made with 4 friends on a mad adventure to Montreal. For us it was a joyous experience.  For the young indigenous boys, it was not all idyllic. Far from it in fact. They were in the hands of brother Dooughty.

The Oblates are an order of Catholic missionaries who ran nearly 50 residential schools in Canada including Kuper Island Indian Residential School. The order was founded in the 19th century with a mission to evangelize the poor. This missionary spirit was important. Most teachers at residential schools had degrees, but their wages according to Duncan McCue, the CBC the host of the podcast,   were “Piddling wages.” Why did they come to such schools to teach? What was it that attracted them there? Perhaps it was a steady supply of vulnerable children.

Survivors James and Tony Charley shared stories of horrendous sexual abuse at the hands of members of the Oblate at Kuper Island Residential School who they trusted absolutely as a representative of God.  They had been taught that everything the Oblates did was in the service of God. Even if it seemed strange these were men of God who should be considered spiritual leaders.

This spiritual element of the abuse added a cruel existential element to their experience.  Their stories showed in the words of Duncan McCue  “The abuse poisoned every aspect of their life at the school, even things that were supposed to be fun.” Or things that were supposed to be sacred.  It doesn’t get much worse than this.

Each child had different experiences in those schools. Some experiences were much worse than others. Some survivors testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that their experiences were positive. But those were rare. And very few if any were spared.

Rife with Sexual Predators

Abuse of Power, Colonialism, Indigenous--Indian Residential Schools

 

Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, as we now know, were rife with sexual predators that attacked boys or girls.  As always they chose the most vulnerable.

There were not just a few rotten apples among the religious leaders, like many Canadians believed. I know that was my initial opinion when I first heard about Indian Residential schools as an adult. I thought it must be just a few bad apples. The system could not be abusive. Could it? I was wrong.

The schools were infested with sexual predators. For decades children were kidnapped by legal authorities, taken against their will from their parents and families to get rid of the “savage” influence from parents, and dumped into residential schools often far from home, where the children were isolated from their families and then were vulnerable victims of horrid abuse.  It is not coincidental that where victims are powerless, the exploiters find a safe haven.  That is how abuse works. In fact for decades the Canadian governmnent knew what was going on, but little to stop it.

As CBC series host Duncan McCue said, “The abuse poisoned every aspect of school life, even stuff that was supposed to be fun.”

That is how Canada tried to change “savages” into good Christian citizens

Priests and Nuns

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Abuse of Power, Catholic Church, Male Dominance, religion, Sexual harassment/Assault

 

Priests have been not just been assaulting young girls and boys in their parishes. They have found other victims. They have found nuns.

I heard a former nun speaking on NPR and she demonstrated this phenomenon. She said that when she was a nun she was not allowed to think for herself. She was always taught that priests were superior to her, as was her Mother Superior. It was her duty to do as they directed without question. With hindsight, she believes this was spiritual abuse that prepared the way for later physical abuse.

One day a priest came to visit her in her room, and he started to remove her clothes. She told him, “You are not allowed to do this.”  He continued his actions. He continued to remove her clothes and then raped her. She felt compelled not to scream out. After all she was expected to do as the priest desired.

When the nun reported the incident to her Mother Superior, the superior got so upset that we was shaking violently and jumped on the table shouting wildly. And she was shouting at the nun. The Mother Superior was radically upset at the nun. She was mad at the nun for reporting the incident. Of course she did nothing to help the nun. Somehow it must have been the nun’s fault. The priests could do harm in the eyes of the Mother Superior.

Only years later did the nun realize that this was part of a pattern of abuse in the church. When she learned how some priests had abused young girls and young boys, the nun realized that she had to speak up. She had to challenge the abuse. She realized she had to speak out, even though other members of her church would not support her for that. Everyone believed the nun had done something she should not have done to lure the priest into trouble. It was the victim’s fault.

The woman who interviewed the nun could not understand how this happened. The nun explained to the interviewer that this is what happens often. When powerful men have power over powerless, defenceless, or vulnerable women (or even worse children) some men choose to use that power for their own self-satisfaction.

Such abuse reveals an ugly element of abuse. When the abuser is thought to have authority from God the abuse is even more poisonous. If God sanctions it, the victim feels, it must be all right.

Of course this is problem that is not unique to the Roman Catholic Church. It is a problem in every region where men have authority over women

This is actually what happens in many institutions. For example, this year in Phoenix it was discovered that a man who worked in an institution of seniors, had impregnated a woman who was basically in a vegetative state. When the powerful find themselves in control of the vulnerable, power often leads to sin.

The same thing happens in politics. As Martin Luther King said, the United States is the world’s greatest purveyor of violence. The United States is the most powerful country in the world, and it uses that power to get what it wants, as powerful countries have done since time began. The problem is inequality of power, not who is holding it.

Recently I suggested that maybe it is time to give women the chance to have power over men. I was not really serious about that. I don’t want anyone to have power over others because so often it leads to abuse. What I really want to see is equality, not just a changing of the guard.

Inequality of Power in the Military

Abuse of Power, Human rights, Male Dominance, Sexual harassment/Assault

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqn5jwmvsk8cb60/Screenshot%202019-03-27%2023.13.07.png?dl=0

 

The military is peculiarly powerful. This is particularly true in the United States where I have spent the last 3 months. It is also one of the most hierarchical institutions on the planet. Wherever you have a military you have those in power and those subject to power. You have the officers and the grunts. You don’t want to be a grunt.

If you add sexual/gender power imbalances things get even worse. Arizona, where I have been living, has been exposed recently by an American Senator of all people. Recently Arizona U.S. Senator Martha McSally surprised the state and even the country by announcing during a Senate subcommittee meeting that she had been raped while she was in the Air Force. McSally spent 2 decades in the Air Force before she became a Senator. Much of that time was served here in Arizona at very bases close to where we are living. In fact she was the first female pilot to see combat. She also said she felt like she had been victimized again when she reported the incident to her superior officers. Interestingly, she said, “I thought I was strong, but I felt powerless…The perpetrators abused their position of power in a profound way…I was horrified at how my attempt to share generally my experience was handled…Like many victims, I felt like the system was raping me allover again.”

If this could happen to a woman who ultimately was promoted to Commander, we have to wonder what would happen to a less powerful female in the Air Force? The uncomfortable fact is the American military, probably like every other military in the world, Canada’s included, has for too long been a male dominated institution in which there is a strong power imbalance that is magnified when gender inequality is added creating a truly toxic brew.

As reported by the Arizona Republic, The Pentagon officially reported 6,769 sexual assaults in 2017, nearly a 10 percent increase over the prior year. But advocacy groups such as Protect Our Defenders say the true number is likely 15,000 to 26,000 annually. I don’t know about you but I found that a shocking number. According to the Pentagon’s own statistics that amounts to about 20 sexual assault per day! If you accept the number from the critics it could be as high as 722 per day! According to a Rand Corporation Report last year, in a Sierra Vista base here in Arizona, about 1 in 12 female soldiers were sexually assaulted during the year of the survey. Remember these are assaults not harassments.

The American military, like the Canadian military, has for years been trying to stamp out sexual assault and harassment under pressure for various sources. Clearly their success has been about as great as the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, the Arizona Republic reported that a recent Pentagon report showed that sexual assaults spiked nearly 50% in 2017-2018 despite years of focus on the problem. That report also showed that 60 percent of military victims who reported rapes suffered career-ending retaliation. It is hardly surprising that young women are reluctant to come forward with complaints.

The report also identified 2 particularly vulnerable groups: young, unmarried females of lower ranks and personnel aboard ships (where women are far from protection.) It is clear that the issue is power. Powerful men (and yes most of these are men) abuse vulnerable women. It really is that simple. Not all of the men, but too many. The inequality of the power is the key. Just as it is in cases of coaches abusing athletes, priest and nuns or priests and young people in the church , employers and employees, teachers and students, parents and children, and men and women. Wherever power is uneven, people must be on alert.

I don’t know if there is any evidence that women would do a better job of this than men, but it is difficult to believe that they could do worse. Maybe its time to give women a chance. We need someone like John Lennon to create a song about that. We can’t all compose songs, but at the very least it is time for men to speak up. All of us.

Male Dominance: a Dying Ideology

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Abuse of Power, Catholic Church, Male Dominance, religion

 

There have been more discussions of the ongoing mess in the Catholic Church. Recently the highest Catholic yet was found guilty of sexually assaulting young boys. The mess never seems to stop.

It is my belief that this will never stop until the Catholic Church democratizes and adds women as full members including giving them the right to become priests. The bishops just don’t catch on. Pope Francis called a meeting of cardinals and bishops to discuss the issue in Rome. What took so long?

We heard a leading Catholic bishop from Chicago discuss the issue. He acknowledged that women had to play an important role in the church. He said before he makes any important decisions he always asks for advicefrom women in the church.  The bishop did not realize that this is not good enough. The reason is that he“decides.”  Women can give advice but only men decide.  That is a big difference.

The Roman Catholic Church needs transformation and until male dominance is ended it will never learn. The sickness in the church will continue. It is in its DNA. Male dominance must collapse or the church will.

I still remember seeing a portrait of the board of directors of T.E. Eaton’s and Sons just before they went bankrupt. Each and every member of the board was a man. Not one woman. Most of them, if not all, were also white. No one took into consideration that most shoppers are women. So how could women’s views be important? To me it was not surprising that a company that had been dominant in Canadian retail shopping went belly-up after 110 years in business. Could the same happen to the Catholic Church? Why not?

Male dominance is a dying ideology. It can’t die fast enough. It won’t be missed.