As one of the senior program leaders in the Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International community, I wanted to be part of the team that is pulling together to create more safety resources to share online during the pandemic.  We know that being on stay-at-home orders create new challenges for families.  The Kidpower Children’s Safety Comics, available in paperback or as a Kindle e-book, provides a valuable resource that presents core Kidpower safety skills and strategies in a format that is easy to share and practice with family members.  Adult leadership is key in protecting child safety, and right now families are facing changing circumstances.  So I teamed up with fellow Kidpower North Carolina leaders, Center Director Maryjane Hayes, and Senior Instructor Jared Hayes, to create a new webinar, “Parents & Caregivers’ Guide to the Kidpower Children’s Safety Comics.” We demonstrate how to use the book as a teaching tool that covers core Kidpower skills, and how to flexibly apply these skills to a wide variety of situations.   New challenges arise with school on hold and many kids and grownups are working from home or in new situations. Some of the issues that can be addressed with Kidpower skills include:  knowing when to interrupt a busy grownup and when to wait; following new rules about social distancing that determine whether and how to play outside; and how to make a safety plan for rules about answering the door, the phone, or communicating online.  The safety comic is an adaptable, confidence-building teaching tool that provides a great jumping-off point to help you become your child’s most powerful safety advocate.

You can find the free webinar registration HERE

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No one ever shows up at brunch and says, “Oh my gosh, I was so sober last night!” Risky behavior draws attention. As a result, people tend to assume that everyone else is doing it more than they really are.

This resonated with me because the two most important ethical frameworks in my life each use the power of positive practice to enhance learning. In Kidpower personal safety training, we practice what to do, rather than dwelling on what not to do. As kids practice looking at their surroundings with awareness, or moving away from an unsafe situation, or yelling “No,” we cheer on their successes and progress. We can help shape their behavior and encourage them by telling them what they are doing well, and encouraging them to keep practicing, with specific, positive coaching. When it comes to talking about rules for strangers, we teach “Stranger Safety.” The rules for interacting with strangers are different than the rules for people we know well, but that does not mean that strangers are “bad.”

This also comes to mind when I think about my martial arts practice, To-Shin Do ninjutsu, which has a 14-point Code of Mindful Action. We recite it at the beginning of each training session, as shown here at Chapel Hill Quest Martial Arts:

Each of the 14 points contains a contrasting set of ideas, one to do and one to avoid, such as:

“I protect life and health. I avoid violence whenever possible.”

“I respect the property and space of all. I avoid taking what has not been offered.”

[An-Shu Stephen K. Hayes, the founder of To-Shin Do, discusses the finer points of the 14 Point Code of Mindful action in “Consider a Code of Ethics”.]

The positive ideas and negative ideas are both explored, but the experience of saying the Code of Mindful Action feels positive to me. It is a great way to get in the right frame of mind to train. My husband Michael and I were talking about this today and he said, “I think that I have been able to train safety for 7 years thanks to the Code of Mindful Action setting the right intentions in both me and my training partners as we step onto the mat.” And as you can imagine, training safely is the name of the game for longevity in a martial art. It is fun to train hard, but personally I don’t think it is fun at all to train recklessly!

So in my life, I am thankful for the Warrior Code of Mindful Action and Kidpower’s Positive Practice Method. What are the positive examples that you can use as your guiding star in your life? From the Golden Rule on up, there are many. But in a modern world that sometimes feels flooded with negativity, it is worth seeking out the positive examples and bringing them to the forefront of our lives and our practices, for our kids and for ourselves.

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Here are my 3 recent posts on this issue, as inspired by my work as the co-author of Doing Right by Our Kids–Protecting Child Safety at All Levels, and Executive Producer of the documentary The Rape of Recy Taylor. In Doing Right by Our Kids we propose many solutions that can help stop abuse at all levels of society, and I truly believe that to be effective we must act at all levels.

Kavanaugh assault allegations: stop accepting the thin veneer of denials and excuses that protects white men’s respectability. September 19

What Brett Kavanaugh, Roy Moore and more tell us about white male privilege and complicity. September 21

Healing our culture by breaking the cycle of abuse, guilt, complicity and privilege. September 23

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I have been studying and teaching about abuse prevention for over two decades, and just finished years of research for the new book “Doing Right by Our Kids–Protecting Child Safety at All Levels,” co-authored with Kidpower founder Irene van der Zande. (Important note: this article reflects my own opinion and analysis and not anyone else’s). I am also an Executive Producer of the documentary “The Rape of Recy Taylor,” about the 1944 gang rape of an African-American woman by white teenage boys. Recy Taylor bravely spoke up and reported her rape immediately, but even after public outcry in support of Mrs. Taylor and an investigation that yielded confessions, her assailants were never indicted by a grand jury.

Synthesizing all these experiences and more, I can see the dysfunctional system that binds our culture together, that preserves a sexist, authoritarian power structure for itself. And whether you are talking about “boys will be boys” sexual assault (as alleged against Brett Kavanaugh), abuse by priests, or abuse within families, the pattern looks like this, going on in a repeating cycle:

*Adults in power abuse children. This causes trauma, shame and powerlessness among children of all genders. It is harmful for boys as well as girls and drives wedges and separations between males and females, reinforcing gender stereotypes and causing young women to fear young men and feel responsible for their own safety, and in some cases feeling pressured to become a guardian of virtue who makes sure she does not “tempt” the boys in her life. Listen to the excellent “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” (9/18) interview with “Pure” author Linda Kay Klein about how Klein broke free from the evangelical purity movement. The amount of shame and self-hatred she and other girls felt toward their own bodies and sexuality was incredibly debilitating and harmful. These girls were put at war with themselves, as well as being turned against the boys in their lives.

*Children and youth abuse each other, through bullying and sexual assault. In many cases, young men are actually encouraged by society to commit sexual assault as a “rite of passage” into manhood. This is what happened with the gang rape of Recy Taylor. White teenage boys would “get a woman” as they pleased, kidnap and rape women, especially women of color, as they “became men.” Sometimes as young teenagers they would watch the older boys as bystanders, and then would participate in assaults themselves when they got older. This process is akin to the cycle of hazing, which is still replicated in many parts of our society. (See the work of Dr. Susan Lipkins, the Blueprint of Hazing, https://www.insidehazing.com/) It is important to note that not every child who experiences the trauma of abuse goes on to abuse others. And not every person who engages in abusive behavior was abused. But at a societal level, the abuse of children by adults is a major force perpetuating this destructive cycle. Young people can be shamed into silence if they experience abuse, or guilted into complicity if they commit abusive acts. This complicity is part of the next step of perpetuating the cycle.

*As teenagers hurt each other, the “boys will be boys” defense kicks in. That idea persists to this day, right out there in plain sight but I think we need to grapple with the purpose that these so-called “youthful indiscretions” serve in our society: committing these assaults makes these young men complicit in the system. They inherit the guilt of the corrupt system as they join it as young adult men. That means that for the rest of their lives they have to defend the system. Even if men did not personally assault someone, they don’t want to see their brothers, fathers, sons or friends get sent to jail. This was the case with the grand jury that would not indict Recy Taylor’s rapists. How many of those men on the grand juries had also taken advantage of the “privilege” of raping a woman? They were not going to put these “boys” in jail for something that was not only culturally normalized, but behavior that some of them had likely engaged in too. For another stark example of the system protecting itself, revisit the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 protecting Clarence Thomas. Go back and watch the videos–these Senators could not bring themselves to believe Anita Hill, who was clearly telling the truth. As we can see now with Brett Kavanaugh, people are worried that “any man could be accused next,” and there is some truth to that–the system protects itself by making sure that many young men participate in it an unethical, amoral way. Even if they “grow up and settle down” later, these men will always need to protect the status quo system in order to protect themselves and shield themselves from the guilt of past behavior–the ugly code of “Bros before hos.” Even though many young people reject violence and toxic gender roles, if a critical mass of people in power participate, the system churns on, protecting its own and perpetuating violence for another generation.

This is heavy and depressing and taking a toll on all of us, all the time. People have worked hard for generations to dismantle this system and we have seen two steps forward, one step back. We have to keep working to make a better world. The current sickness in our culture really does hurt everyone. There are two ways to move forward:

First, we must work on protecting Safety at All Levels to break the cycle of abuse among today’s children, youth and adults. This includes supporting and healing adult survivors of sexual abuse at any age. To stop abuse of today’s children, we MUST hold organizations accountable to Put Safety First, ahead of their own glory, fame, finances or reputation. This is hard work! As we can see with so many cases, including the Kavanaugh allegations, many powerful and respected institutions have failed to do this. Just look at the toxic culture within the 1980’s prep school Kavanaugh attended. It is the epitome of this whole sick system of raising privileged boys who dehumanized and used girls, but think that that behavior should not be held against them later. The Georgetown Prep boys were culturally groomed and encouraged to participate in rape culture as they ascended to the most privileged positions in our society. As Kavanaugh himself literally said in 2015, “Fortunately, we’ve had a good saying that we’ve held firm to to this day, as the dean was reminding me before the talk, which is ‘What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.'” “That’s been a good thing for all of us, I think.” Relentless grassroots questioning and pressure from parents, survivors and activists is the main force that has caused very necessary change within organizations and institutions. Change has taken way too long in so many cases, see for example abuse by priests; Bill Cosby; Penn State’s Jerry Sandusky; and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. We need to RADICALLY shorten the path to stopping abusers in their tracks on the first try, not after the 20th or 100th person has been victimized! My hope is that the #MeToo revolution will help with that going forward. Our book “Doing Right by Our Kids” describes practical steps you can take to prevent and stop abuse. Stepping forward still takes a lot of courage, but we provide solid information and strategies, including the key strategy of finding allies to work alongside us.

Second, I believe that we need to start discussing Restorative Justice paths that will help people who have engaged in abusive behavior in the past, in many cases white men, to make amends for the harm they have caused. I know from my work on the Title IX Task Force at UNC-Chapel Hill that making amends can be an important part of healing, in addition to any other paths to justice. I want men to be able to make genuine amends, apologies, reparations for past abuse and continue to function in our current society when possible. I don’t think that pathway has been built yet, and it would be fantastic if men themselves would take the lead in figuring it out, with sincerity and humility rather than defensiveness. I cannot yet point to a public success story in this area. Recently, famous men including Louis C. K., Jian Ghomeshi and John Hockenberry have attempted ill-received, defensive comebacks. That is not the model. Neither is Joe Biden’s lukewarm and self-congratulating recent “apology” about how he and his Senate Judiciary Committee treated Anita Hill back in 1991. (We–and more importantly, Anita Hill herself–still haven’t heard a real apology on this issue from Joe Biden.) But I want to think that path is possible. Understanding the cultural context does not take away the responsibility of abusers, and every case is different, so it is impossible to write about this perfectly. In psychology, getting people to change their minds and to overcome cognitive dissonance (“I think I am a good person, so how can I admit that I did something really harmful to another person?”) is one of the hardest things to do. If we want men to help dismantle the sick system that perpetuates abuse, I believe we have to provide more opportunities to make amends–otherwise how people who have caused harm open themselves up to taking a real look at what is going on, what they have participated, in, and to change themselves and the system that protects them? This is the cutting edge where many of us find ourselves thinking, “#MeToo –now, what’s next?” and I hope we can work together to continue this conversation and turn it into action!

***
Additional reading, excellent reporting from The New Yorker:

After the Kavanaugh Allegations, Republicans Offer a Shocking Defense: Sexual Assault Isn’t a Big Deal by Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker, September 20, 2018.

But a startling number of conservative figures have reacted as if they believe Ford, and have thus ended up in the peculiar position of defending the right of a Supreme Court Justice to have previously attempted to commit rape—a stance that at once faithfully corresponds to and defiantly refutes the current Zeitgeist. These defenders think that the seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh could easily, as Ford alleges, have gotten wasted at a party, pushed a younger girl into a bedroom, pinned her on a bed, and tried to pull off her clothes while covering her mouth to keep her from screaming. They think this, they say, because they know that plenty of men and boys do things like this. On these points, they are in perfect agreement with the women who have defined the #MeToo movement. And yet their conclusion is so diametrically opposed to the moral lessons of the past year that it seems almost deliberately petulant. We now mostly accept that lots of men have committed sexual assault, but one part of the country is saying, “Yes, this is precisely the problem,” and the other part is saying, “Yes, that is why it would obviously be a non-issue to have one of these men on the Supreme Court.”

The Boys’ Club That Protects Brett Kavanaugh by Emily Witt, The New Yorker, September 22, 2018.

Breaking news of a second woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct while they were students at Yale, supported by corroborating witnesses:

Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of Sexual Misconduct, from Brett Kavanaugh’s College Years, by Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, September 23.

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The following comes from a piece I wrote about Roy Moore earlier this year…there are so many echoes with the Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations. I understand why people feel that these allegations threaten “all men”–to perpetuate a sexist, racist system, enough men must be guilty of assault, ideally at a young age, to force them to protect the sick system. The privileges confer and so does the guilt and complicity.

Following up on the case of The Rape of Recy Taylor–for an introduction please read my previous post:

The teenagers who kidnapped and raped Recy Taylor went free, many left town to join the military, fought in WWII, and were seen later as good family men and honorable veterans. They were people who could be our sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, friends, neighbors. What is this sick system that has “normal” boys and men “going out to find a woman” to kidnap and rape as a rite of passage?

I realized that ritualized assault committed by young men is more than a rite of passage, it is an act that irrevocably binds these boys/men to the world of racist male privilege. The boys would “get the privilege” of having sex with just about anyone they wanted, by force if necessary, and many other privileges of their status, but equally importantly, they would also inherit the guilt, and become part of this oppressive system. They had to become complicit in the system at a young age, just on the brink of “manhood,” so that they could never speak out against it later on. That is why I think that the Grand Jury, made up of 12 white Alabama men, would not even indict Recy Taylor’s assailants. They probably saw themselves in those “boys” and had committed similar acts.

So for this power system to perpetuate itself, it is actually important that young men on the verge of adulthood commit acts that make them guilty and complicit. This makes it akin to hazing, by bringing them into the group through extreme behavior–though it feels wrong to say that because I do not in any way want to minimize the damage done to their victims, both women and men through the terror of sexual assault and lynchings. The assailants are still responsible for their actions. There was certainly no benefit to the jurors to pull back the curtain on misdeeds committed by white men–see also the story of the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, and the acquittal of Till’s killers.

So with the Roy Moore story, the now-disgraced former Judge Moore is a man from Alabama who more grew up in this system. Moore was born in 1945, two years after Recy Taylor’s assault, and 8 years before Emmett Till’s murder. Moore “took advantage” of girls and women, often through his position of power as a lawyer (ADA) or judge. For example, he “picked up” his 14-year old victim Leigh Corfman when the girl and her mother were at court for a custody hearing. Moore offered to watch the girl so her mother did not have to take her into court, according to the now-grown woman’s account. Through that trust and access, Moore cultivated the young teenager and later preyed on her sexually.

Moore would think that he had the prerogative to do so. It really would not be that far out of the norm for 40 years ago–at least not violating the unstated norms of male prerogative that hid in plain sight.

***
Next post to come: what is the way out of this oppressive system?

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As an Executive Producer of the acclaimed documentary by Nancy Buirski, “The Rape of Recy Taylor,” I have had a chance the study this case in depth and with many audiences. At a screening last month, an audience member asked the question, “why didn’t the boys just admit openly that they had done it, if they weren’t going to be prosecuted?” While some did eventually confess under interrogation that sexual acts had happened, the teenage assailants made up lies and excuses, claiming that Mrs. Taylor was a prostitute and that they had paid her, so it was not a crime. The audience member’s question made me think about how willingly we accept very flimsy lies and excuses for assaults, harassment and other crimes, and the role that our acceptance of the lies plays in protecting a system that perpetuates abuse by protecting male (often white male) prerogative and giving so much weight to empathizing with abusers rather than those who are assaulted. It is up to each of us to keep asking tough questions by digging deeper and not just accept answers and excuses that clearly don’t add up.

The lessons of Recy Taylor’s assault flashed like a beacon for me during the Roy Moore US Senate run, as well as right now with Brett Cavanaugh’s nomination to become the next Supreme Court Justice. Kavanaugh is up for a lifetime appointment and now he is facing serious charges of an attempted sexual assault alleged by a fellow high school student in 1982, when she was 15 years old and he was 17, with a friend of Kavanaugh’s also present in the room. At this moment the Senate Judiciary Committee is trying to figure out how to proceed to hear the allegations. Long story short, the Senators don’t have an established process in place and have a terrible track record given how they mis-handled the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, when Anita Hill was treated horribly by the committee as she testified about Thomas’ harassing her when he was her boss at the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser, reported that their was a third person in the room during the violent assault, Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge. Mark Judge’s initial defense of Kavanaugh’s character was tissue paper thin when held it up to the light of Mr. Judge’s past writings. As reported by The New York Times:

Mr. Judge, an author, filmmaker and journalist who has written for the conservative Daily Caller and The Weekly Standard, said that the students were raised in Catholic homes and taught that the kind of behavior as described in the letter would not be tolerated. “Something like that would stick out,” he said, “which is why I don’t think it would happen.”

This same man, Mark Judge, wrote a novel about his blackout drinking days of partying while being a student at Georgetown Prep with Kavanaugh, Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk. This gives lie to his claim that being raised in Catholic homes and going to Catholic prep school means that the assault would not happen. Kavanaugh himself gave a speech in 2015 saying it is a good thing that they lived by the rule of “what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown prep.” Their yearbooks from the time show lots of references to drinking and partying, and Mark Judge featured a Noel Coward quote about hitting women his personal page: “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.”

If you scratch the surface even a little bit, Judge’s claim of cultural innocence doesn’t hold up. There was the public image of the school and the reality. This might not mean it is a bad school, but you can’t just argue that we are good Catholic boys so this would not happen. (You would think that other abuse allegations in the Catholic church would have destroyed this kind of blanket denial by now, but apparently not.)

I will share just one more example. Yesterday evangelist Franklin Graham made statements defending Kavanaugh that provide a fig leaf of supposed credibility for any believers who will be placated by it. In an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network Graham said not only that the accusations are “not relevant” but also:

“Well, there wasn’t a crime that was committed. These are two teenagers and it’s obvious that she said no and he respected it and walked away.”

There is a lot going on in those two offensive sentences. Graham’s conclusion is totally at odds with Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegation, in which she said that the assault was so violent that she was afraid that Kavanaugh would indavertently kill her. Graham isn’t saying that Blasey Ford made up her story entirely, he is saying that if it did happen, it didn’t happen the way she reported it, but the way he wants to spin and diminish it. So now we have the men saying that either it didn’t happen at all, I wasn’t there (Kavanaugh and Judge) OR, if it did happen, it doesn’t matter, it wasn’t a crime, it wasn’t violent. Like saying that Recy Taylor was a prostitute and they threw a few dollars on her after raping her, so it was okay. That is an insidious, gaslighting kind of denial.

WHEN will we insist on better than this? Please let the answer be NOW. The path forward is an FBI interview of all parties implicated in this assault. The Senate Judiciary Committee is not equipped to handle this, we need trained FBI investigators to evaluate the credibility of each person’s story and other corroborating witnesses as an extension of the FBI background check of Brett Kavanaugh. Who has the power to ask for this FBI review? President Donald Trump, himself accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women, who this morning said “But I can only say this, he is such an outstanding man. Very hard for me to imagine that anything happened.” So stay tuned, but don’t hold your breath.

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Starting now, we’re reaching out to key leaders and influencers, leading up to a September 4th official book release. If you would like to receive a review copy, please send a request with your name, address and organization title though this website’s Contact page. We are happy to send a review copy to people who:

* Would like to invite authors Amy Tiemann or Irene van der Zande to speak to your organization or conference.

* Would consider sharing the book widely within your organization (PTA, parenting class), or adopting it as a class textbook (child development, education, or others).

* Would review the book Amazon.com, your blog, or other outlet.

For media inquiries, please call Cynthia Fioretti at 301-367-0664 to arrange an interview.

We are excited to see who the book speaks to! I for one am really eager to get out and give book talks, by request. If you can gather an audience who is genuinely interested in the book, invite me, and I will do my best to find a way to speak with your group!

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My own mother grew up in a financially secure yet emotionally insecure and unsafe environment. Her stressful and traumatic childhood took a toll on her, yet she became a wonderful mother against all odds. She consciously strove to do the opposite of what her own parents did, and she got constructive training through Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, and P. E. T., Parent Effectiveness Training. Both of these classic books are still in print, and my favorite modern-day parenting resource is the Positive Parenting Solutions course and book by Amy McCready, “If I Have to Tell You One More Time….”

But even before we consider skillful and effective parenting and communication, we need to form a base of safety and security that is free of violence and abuse. That core belief fuels my commitment and dedication to Kidpower training and the new book co-authored by me and Kidpower Founder Irene van der Zande, Doing Right by Our Kids—Protecting Child Safety at All Levels.

How has my experience as a neuroscientist shaped me? I have a vital curiosity about the brain, human behavior, and how the environment affects people. My Stanford training and years as a research scientist honed my research skills and have helped me identify and create key resources that promote child safety, abuse prevention, and harm reduction.

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