Chowchilla prison-rape case poses challenges on issues of justice and helping victims

The recent horrific story about prison rape must challenge us all. No doubt the details aroused some, triggered others, and ignited rage and despair.

How many more stories, now offering details never allowed before, do we have to hear before we realize the power abusers get away with it because we look the other way? Some are directly complicit protecting their jobs, not wanting to get involved, or protecting the institution. Most have little connection to the criminal justice system, believing it is not their problem.

What causes someone to violate, exploit and dehumanize another? Some would say it’s because it happened to them. They are dissociated, unable to feel. Hurting another makes them high. Power addiction is lethal. So is its twin, identifying permanently as the victim. Both mindsets degrade and anchor one to survival thinking, a toxic fear-based mode in the world.

While we must focus on accountability for perpetrators and healing for the victims, we must also work together on prevention. The scale of child sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, harassment, and dehumanizing others impacts everyone. We have allowed this by numbing out, denial, and rationalizing while the media, Hollywood, and celebrities glorify the darkest sides of human behavior. The costs are immeasurable financially and morally.

What do solutions look like? How do we ensure leaders respond immediately? How do we go deeper and ensure every child is safe, develops agency, finds a career path, and feels valued?

We are living in a time where the secrets of the darkest shadows in humanity’s history and ours specifically are being revealed. Highly sensitive people can tell if someone is a predator. We need to listen to them. Others, those more oriented to action, need to recognize valuing emotions and personal experience is practical. The years of an unhealthy stoicism has passed. It is time to become whole, healthy people able to work together with respect and accountability if we are to prosper and create inclusive communities.

Let’s end the school-to-prison pipeline by investing in solutions, not outdated methods and curriculums. Let’s teach all children essential life skills, how to solve problems, and how to work on a team.

We know how to do this. We are doing this. Rather than define someone by their past, their day job, or a visible difference, we are learning to look for a willingness to learn and contribute, natural abilities, and hands-on skills. We have learned no one need be limited by circumstances of birth or difficult experiences. We know how to heal invisible wounds once considered incurable, which reduced people to labels based upon behavior, not essence.

Each year I serve as a judge for law lab at the Center for Advanced Research and Technology. The student projects are well done, inspiring and often sobering. Their topics address the social problems we have allowed to fester. While this poem by Jon-Michael Power speaks to homelessness, its insights transfer to a host of issues we can resolve if we share responsibility for solutions.

Blind Eye

We in this country have turned a blind

eye to the millions of Americans

like you and I

We walk the street needlessly scared pretending

as if they and the homeless were

born in even squares

As much as some complain and wail we deep down

truly wish the law would drag

the homeless to jail

We are so trapped in our fantasies

we would be willing to accept any formalities

to the casualties

to other people’s families

As a perpetrator and as a sinner I am not

blind to my and your flaw, we as a class have mistaken

ourselves as the bourgeois

We have decided to replace our inherent humanity

for the fulfillment of our vanity

I am not sure if I am speaking radically

when I proclaim our society functions on brutality,

As even I have lost my morality

Deborah Nankivell is the CEO of the Fresno Business Council