The past couple of months have violently pushed those accused of sexual harassment into the public conscience. The list of prominent people especially in the entertainment industry is growing daily. Some accusations are built on innuendo while others are based on hard evidence and fact corroborated by many of those affected.
Many are the careers and personal lives that are lost or destroyed by just the accusations.
There has been no trial or a chance to defend reputations, even the smallest infraction is used to destroy another person by public opinion. It reminds one of the Witch Hunt in the American eighteen hundreds, or the ‘Commie Hunt’ of the 1900s Justice by mob rule aided by social media.
Are the accusations real? Are they justified? Are they worth destroying a human life over? Probably, – yes I believe so, – and no! By writing this way, am I condoning this type of behaviour? Definitely not, these are actions by some folks who are just as addicted to that behaviour as a drug addict is to drugs.
There is a part of these issues that is largely overlooked and treated with disdain. That is the effect of unwanted sexual aggression on the victim. Today we hear so much from the victims of misbehaviours that we almost shut off our hearing, partly because we do not want to acknowledge that we have a responsibility for the protection of the victims. Here is where we have to be aware and not lose our sense of right and wrong.
Whether at the kitchen or in other workplaces I have seen the results of abuse in a person’s life. Emotional, sexual or physical, there are always results that last a lifetime.
Just like in physics where every action produces an equal and opposite reaction; or garbage in, garbage out. I think you get my point.
For the victims of these abuses the results are as varied as the people. For many, they feel the shame and/or never feel clean again to say nothing of how their thinking processes change for the balance of their lives. Others are able somehow to set this aside and go as if nothing has happened, but as if unaware, their thinking changes as well.
While living in Edmonton about fifty years ago, a close friend was date raped. She had to keep the info from her father because he would have found a gun to settle the matter. This young girl changed; so much so that within a year she was unrecognizable to her former friends. After I left Edmonton we lost touch with each other but the path she had been turning onto was not a good one.
For the many who had difficulty putting their life back together after an incident like this is a task not all of them are up to, so they chose different paths. One of the results was to withdraw from society partly due to the shame etc., so the alternative is the street who will accept anyone.
At the kitchen we would see a young person come to town still clean except for past abuses. Although the changes would be subtle, over the space of a year or two they would change from a hurt innocent into a drug induced shaking reclusive or an aggressive demander. Once on the street, its’ accepting nature soon turns into a drug laced trap from which there is seemingly not always an escape.
The stories are varied and they are valid. Very few of the folks on the street arrived there because they planned it that way; in each case there is a story to be told and almost every story demonstrates the – cost of abuse!
Chris Salomons is the kitchen co-ordinator of Potter’s Hands in Red Deer.