[wolverine876]

At a certain level it's not hard to understand, in that it's predictable: Power corrupts, and you can depend on it. People with power over vulnerable human beings, and with no check on their power, can be generally predicted to abuse it. Just look for those situations and I predict that you will often find it. (That's one reason transparency and openness are so important.)

Look at child sex abuse scandals: Who do they abuse? Vulnerable children without resources to fight back. Have you ever heard of such a thing happening to the children of the powerful? At Penn State University, at least some of the victims were in a program for parentless children (I don't remember if they were orphans, foster kids, etc.). IIRC, one had been abused elsewhere and was kicked out when he reported it - what could he do this time? You know what the abusers say: 'Nobody will believe you.' And he's a child, alone in this situation.

[sandworm101]

>> Have you ever heard of such a thing happening to the children of the powerful?

Yes. It happens all the time. In some areas of high society, in the recent past, it was downright common. Look into the history of British boys schools. I myself attended a British-style boarding school. While I never witnessed anything personally, a few years after I graduated my former math teacher was fired in disgrace. I never got the full story beyond "he had fail to register with appropriate authorities and so was let go".

The reason it seems that the children and powerful are immune is only because such issues rarely becomes public. Poor people report crimes to the police. Rich people talk to their lawyers and the issue is settled between the families.

[droppedframe]

I went to the Leys school in Cambridge as a border, and it was by far the worst experience of my life. I was burnt out for a decade and I turn 40 this year, only recently having gotten over the resentment. Much of this article rang familiar. Those British boarding schools are intended for upper class misbehaving teens who won’t conform. There’s no intent to educate, they’re trying to ‘break’ the pupils. A common tactic to sidestep accountability is to give authority to the older pupils. I can’t even think about it without getting angry and upset. They beat me to the point my whole upper body was black. I twice attempted suicide in the dorm only to be stopped and beaten more. I was sleep deprived to the point I could hardly stand. It was freezing at night and the older boys in the neighboring dorm made it a habit of sneaking in and hitting us (hard) with bats and hockey sticks. Enough, I choose not to think about it anymore. But I was unable to function in British society after that. My hatred for the people was to the point I couldn’t even speak. To this day I refuse to buy British product. I left a few years later and I’ll never go back to England.

[droppedframe]

and I’m not going into the sex stuff, but yes that was going on as well. Less with myself but it was all the way criminal.

Shame on me for not going to the police. But as a young teenager you just don’t know.

[denton-scratch]

> the sex stuff

I don't know about The Lees; the boarding school I went to was full of homosexuality, both between the boys and between certain teachers and boys. It was treated very casually; "boys will be boys".

I was a victim of (mild) abuse. I never told anyone, until my father died, a few years ago (my mother died 40 years ago). I had read an article by another victim, which named my abuser - at a different school. After my father died, I finally felt able to report my abuser to the police.

The way it works is that sooner or later, some boy reports the abuse to their parents. The parents complain to the head; the head explains to the abuser that he has two choices; he can stay and be prosecuted, or he can leave, with a clean reference. So he just gets a job at another private school.

The head absolutely doesn't want a scandal.

[bythreads]

Big hug

[bythreads]

Sorry couldn't let this one go: I hope you've internalized completely that it wasn't your fault - and you where just a kid trying to survive - again not your fault.

[droppedframes2]

My roommate who was athletic and feminine looking had it a lot worse. It was the first time I had seen any type of sex. It was violent and non consensual, and he was devastated, never the same. I felt faint there was a sense of shock. They involved me (with force) so that I couldn’t talk about it and they stopped me leaving the room. Then they said that’s part of the culture and he’s one of them now or something to that effect and stayed for an hour to see if he was going to talk. Then he and I had an argument and agreed that it just never happened, because being gay (I’m straight) is very much stigmatized and we both didn’t want our parents to find out. He went home I think a year or two later and overdosed and died. Then I really couldn’t talk about it, because my previous silence made me responsible. It depends how you look at it. I mean you never hear the story of the perpetrators in shootings. Not that I’m condoning anything like that, that’s no solution. But I do understand that level of anger and but for access to a gun at that time I may well have filled those shoes. You can only push an unstable teenager so far, and I expect these things happen behind closed doors quite frequently. I just get so angry thinking about it.

[jjeaff]

Just a side note. I don't know how the sex offender registry works in the UK, but in the US, it can be rather punitive. People can be placed on a sex offender registry for sleeping with their 16 yr old girlfriend/boyfriend on the day of their 18th birthday. Some have been convicted as sex offenders for simply receiving nude photos from their underaged significant other. I have even heard of cases where prosecutors have tried to try underage kids as adults for having nude photos of themselves on their phone.

This can then follow them the rest of their life. Being fired for failing to notify your employer could be a case as mundane as that.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/201...

[sandworm101]

He was fired when they discovered that he had not registered. They discovered that after investigating him in response to another "situation".

[throwaway999t]

Tangential side note I have to mention about that Penn State thing. I was at the uni from 2011 to 2015 and my father served on the facility senate.

Graham Spanier drew a salary from the university DESPITE being complicit in the cover-up until 2017. He merely was “removed from leadership.” It’s on us as a society to punish misuse of power more effectively. The consequences for misuse are often minor.

https://apnews.com/article/north-america-us-news-ap-top-news...

[pc86]

Since this account is ten minutes old I can only assume you made it to make this post anonymously, so I feel obliged to tell you that if one were inclined it would be trivially easy to find someone who graduated in 2015 with a father/parent in some form of [facility,faculty?] leadership.

I don't think you're saying anything here that needs that kind of protection, but just something to keep in mind.

[daccaw240]

I appreciate the thoughtful advice. You probably could figure out who I am, but I’m a LONG time lurker and the comment was docile enough. Faculty senate is 200 across all 20+ branch campuses and rotates every year. The caution is just to make automated scrapping of accounts harder.

There are some truly cowardly people and malicious incentive structures there… but I met some good folk too I suppose. Shout out to the good professors there with the patience to do the right thing. They don’t always win.

WE ARE (human traffickers?). <:(

[wolverine876]

> Graham Spanier drew a salary from the university DESPITE being complicit in the cover-up until 2017. He merely was “removed from leadership.” It’s on us as a society to punish misuse of power more effectively.

Weren't Penn State U board members who punished the wrongdoing removed from office by their constituents?

[unityByFreedom]

"Power corrupts" may explain the abusive nature of "tough love" programs, but it does not explain how the teen became troubled in the first place. Thoughtful parents and older siblings will not abuse their strength/wisdom against youth because they know they are raising a new generation that may one day make decisions for them.

[noduerme]

Most of the kids I knew who ended up in these programs were nowhere near as f*cked up as their parents - even before those parents handed their children to abusive thugs.

[unityByFreedom]

Right, so the question becomes, how do you break that cycle? These kids may grow up planning to be different from their parents. But when you become a parent, "muscle memory" can kick in. You end up parenting as yours did because that's what you know.

[noduerme]

This really is the question. Not to be crass but at least 3 of the kids I knew were grabbed at night and taken to these places broke the cycle by committing suicide. I was tempted to respond to the Englishman in this thread who posted a heartbreaking story by asking whether he/they thought this was still having ramifications forward in British society, but then I thought, well it's an extension of 400 years of beatings and rape in the British Navy so no shit it's still a cycle. A quick look at the Russian Army... or religious communities in West Texas...

Uh, how do you break the cycle. Maybe one out of ten people who are abused have the strength to see the viciousness of it and reclaim some part of themselves instead of repeating the abuse, and write about it for the NYT. The rest go to alcoholism, self-harm, anger, and repeating the same on their kids.

The only thing that's sort of worked to break these kinds of chains of abuse is when NGOs and governments go after them and expose the evil. That has had some effect on the Catholic Church, and a little effect on the worst excesses of the prison system in some states. The 20-30% of people in this country who were lucky enough not to suffer some sort of abuse [edit: Or who consider it wrong] are a minority, but thankfully in control of most of the media and civic institutions (for now: When they're not, it looks like Russia).

So I guess the best way to break this particular chain is at the weakest link, which is these kinds of "schools".

[Edit: Just re-reading your earlier response in another chain, I should clarify that I consider this type of discipline itself to be a form of abuse, often including sexual abuse. But in any case, breaking one chain or another is equally difficult when someone has been subjected to it and is now subjecting their children to it.]

[unityByFreedom]

> I consider this type of discipline itself to be a form of abuse

Absolutely. The "tough love" program made everything worse for OP, but the problem started earlier. Prior to being sent away, OP self-described as being misanthropic for years,

> The years leading up to my being taken and the eventual break out is now a blur of misanthropy.

If someone hates humanity for years, they deserve loving attention to help them see they are valued just as they are. In other words, Mr. Rogers was right, and we each need someone like that to believe in us.

[noduerme]

Definitely his report of his own behavior leading up to it is enough to make you wonder what you'd do if it were your child.

A lot of times when I'm out in the world and watch people acting out, or just behaving like they were raised in a barn, the coldest part of myself thinks their parents should have disciplined them. The warmest, fuzziest and most liberal part of myself thinks that their behavior is mostly due to abuse they suffered that was probably meant as discipline, which failed to impart its rationale and which their parents didn't know how to do any better since they were probably abused themselves, and their grandparents and so on.

So since you made me think about this, if the kids are fucked up little sociopaths already because of their families - which are incapable of valuing them and giving them that loving attention - short of taking them away from their families to some kind of utopia, what's the answer? We really can't effect a chain of kindness in those families just be being patient strangers. The only thing we might be able to do is sanction the parents and take away the institutions they rely on to perpetuate abuse. It's also possible we're just a few reasonably friendly people sitting on top of a volcano of hundreds of millions of psychotic assholes.

[denton-scratch]

> 400 years of beatings and rape in the British Navy

Ah, yes: when someone mentioned British Naval traditions to Churchill, he replied "Rum, sodomy and the lash".

[wolverine876]

> Thoughtful parents and older siblings will not abuse their strength/wisdom against youth because they know they are raising a new generation that may one day make decisions for them.

I'm not sure what you mean? Plenty of parents and older siblings abuse their power, and plenty don't.

[unityByFreedom]

I wouldn't say you can "depend on" power corrupting parents. I'd say it's more the exception, and that parental behavior is better described by how they themselves were raised. By the time a misbehaving kid is in their teens, parents are grasping at straws trying to figure out what to do. They need training, not condemnation.

[wolverine876]

> I wouldn't say you can "depend on" power corrupting parents.

I see what you mean now. I did not mean to say that we could depend on power corrupting parents ... but now I wonder: how much does it, and to what degree do we normalize it and not see it?

> They need training, not condemnation.

Yes, they are humans too. It's true of most people doing bad things (if we define 'training' very broadly).