The whistleblowers and survivors of abuse in this industry are tired...

[scheherazadesghost]

12 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

Peace and healing to you and all other survivors that this activity hurt.  Thank you for your response. 

Thanks for asking. You're one of the few to do so. Leadership at SCV asked me the same thing, to their credit. I was a bit more intense in my response to them which was, in so many words, I can't offer additional free labor anymore to an organization that harmed me so fully. Now you do the work of figuring out what reconciliation could look like on the org side. For me, it begins with an apology, not the makeup work of safeguarding that should have happened a long time ago. Safeguarding is below the bare minimum at this point, so orgs don't get cookies for basic safeguarding from me anymore. It should be expected.

But it's become clear to me that the remainder of my healing (which began 20 years ago) has to happen in community. Self-care and community-care can happen together, but they are still different. So, sorry DCP, you're stuck with me for the time being. Mostly, I try (and fail) to have fun talking about corps, but when I harp on the topic of abuse/neglect again, it's likely because another survivor has reached out to me or gone public. OR, in this case, I've encountered barriers to telling my truth; and I think the community should know about it since I'm one of the few actively, publicly speaking out who can flag it for future survivors. In those moments, I feel it's my responsibility to hold community space for other survivors, just in case they decide that they are ready to be in community... or in the case enablers be enablin' online too. MAASIN is the closest group of folks who could do this, but it's kinda outside of their scope. Many survivors are not ready for community healing, but I want to be ready in case they are.

Thanks to you and everyone in this thread for engaging in good faith about a difficult topic.

[Jeff Ream]

4 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:

Thanks for asking. You're one of the few to do so. Leadership at SCV asked me the same thing, to their credit. I was a bit more intense in my response to them which was, in so many words, I can't offer additional free labor anymore to an organization that harmed me so fully. Now you do the work of figuring out what reconciliation could look like on the org side. For me, it begins with an apology, not the makeup work of safeguarding that should have happened a long time ago. Safeguarding is below the bare minimum at this point, so orgs don't get cookies for basic safeguarding from me anymore. It should be expected.

But it's become clear to me that the remainder of my healing (which began 20 years ago) has to happen in community. Self-care and community-care can happen together, but they are still different. So, sorry DCP, you're stuck with me for the time being. Mostly, I try (and fail) to have fun talking about corps, but when I harp on the topic of abuse/neglect again, it's likely because another survivor has reached out to me or gone public. OR, in this case, I've encountered barriers to telling my truth; and I think the community should know about it since I'm one of the few actively, publicly speaking out who can flag it for future survivors. In those moments, I feel it's my responsibility to hold community space for other survivors, just in case they decide that they are ready to be in community... or in the case enablers be enablin' online too. MAASIN is the closest group of folks who could do this, but it's kinda outside of their scope. Many survivors are not ready for community healing, but I want to be ready in case they are.

Thanks to you and everyone in this thread for engaging in good faith about a difficult topic.

look i have 20 years here, everyone is stuck with me. you're an upgrade to the place

[Keith Hall]

In 1976 no one knew this but....one of our sopranos was being abused by his uncle. His uncle was also on staff of our corps (although I don't know why because I, at 16, did way more than he ever did). The guy was also a cop. The kid grew up to own a successful contracting company and then committed suicide. The story was put out there in the newspaper before he died. 

It's sad that this happened back then and no one did nothing! I won't tell you what my mother endured.

[scheherazadesghost]

On 9/6/2022 at 11:05 AM, Keith Hall said:

In 1976 no one knew this but....one of our sopranos was being abused by his uncle. His uncle was also on staff of our corps (although I don't know why because I, at 16, did way more than he ever did). The guy was also a cop. The kid grew up to own a successful contracting company and then committed suicide. The story was put out there in the newspaper before he died. 

It's sad that this happened back then and no one did nothing! I won't tell you what my mother endured.

Keith, I'm sorry to hear this, as well as for what this soprano and their loved ones endured. Thank you for your emotional labor in re-sharing this with us.

This is also not the first case of suicide related to drum corps abuse that I've been told. Given my own traumas prior to drum corps, I'm fortunate to have a support system that wants me around, given the statistics on ACE and trauma survivors.

This is why I'm so serious about it.

Edited June 11, 2023 by scheherazadesghost
Edit to add: apparently I was an improvement to DCP until I named my abusers

[scheherazadesghost]

Reviving this thread to post a segment of Rand (MAASIN founder)'s statement regarding the end of the Cadets. Thank you DCAF for giving them a platform to say the right thing to a wider audience. Emphases, bold, italics, are mine:

"You don't also get to claim simultaneously all the history and victory of the Cadets while washing your hands clean of the abuse that happened. The announcement statement from the Cadets regarding the corps folding essentially says that the corps folded because of the recent lawsuit from an alum who was sexually assaulted in the 80s. Blaming the recent lawsuit as the sole reason the organization folded, knowing the kind of environment survivors in marching arts deals with is deliberately opening up that person to further abuse. Further abuse because I was already seeing a bunch of disgusting, vitriolic comments directed at them before the corps folded, I can only imagine what those people are saying now.

This sets us back. Many of us, obviously myself included, have diligently worked to make drum corps a safer place. We should be past the fear that reporting will make people think that you just want to see the organization fold, and you just want to see drum corps burn, and you'll be blamed for the uncaring actions of boards and admin. This statement from the Cadets remastered that fear in 4k for hundreds if not thousands of people.

I'm also seeing a lot of people blame George Hopkins. I understand where they're coming from and obviously you all know I'm not going to be George Hopkins defender, but this isn't solely his fault either. In my opinion, looking at George as a the sole downfall of the Cadets is likely how the board landed in this situation. Removing George from the organization didn't solve the issues inherent to the organization because George was part of the problem, not the whole problem itself.

The actual problem is that the Cadets organization became an environment that enabled abuse for many people, not just George. Obviously I've never been involved in the Cadets organization, so please take this with a grain of salt, but if any iteration of the Cadets truly cared about survivors as much as optics or finances, they would've handled this differently starting in 2018.

Disclosing being a survivor of sexual violence is difficult. People have a lot of reasons for choosing to step forward or not to step forward. But for every survivor that stepped forward, there are probably at least as many that chose not to. Even more difficult is choosing to initiate a lawsuit over it. No one has a good time in a lawsuit and the courts are not kind to survivors. Choosing to sue or engaging with law enforcement often just retraumatizes people. From my experience as a sexual assault counselor, and also being on the MAASIN support team, lawsuits are usually a last resort.

When someone gets to a lawsuit, it's likely that the organization failed in a lot of steps in making amends first. Imagine in 2018 if people in our community, but especially in the Cadets board and admin, put as much effort into support survivors as they did in trying to distance themselves from George. Imagine the idea if we took a corps fundraiser seriously and we crowdfunded for counseling for survivors. Imagine if organizations facilitated gathering feedback from alum and survivors on what meaningful change in the organization looks like. Teasing out what's tradition and what's trauma can be difficult for some people but it's a worth endeavor to invest time into.

I can't predict the future but if survivors are adequately supported, they are probably less likely to resort to suing to get their needs met. The lawsuit cannot be the only reason the organization folded. There's always more than what's the statement and we know that the economic conditions that we're living in present a huge challenge to drum corps across the board. The person at fault for an organization folding is never the survivor. This is a natural consequence of a board and admin that chose pride and profits over the people the organization is built on. ... Just remember, it was not the survivor who did this."

Edited April 17 by scheherazadesghost
transcription typos

[supersop]

meh

Edited April 17 by supersop

[JimF-LowBari]

4 minutes ago, supersop said:

This last post is where people get themselves into trouble.  I have a million things to say .... but to what end?

 

I'm sorry you were hurt.  I know that is not the response that will fix anything. 

I won't nitpick every misstatement or non factual information you've just posted.  Not worth it. 

Whatever makes everyone feel better in the moment I guess.

 

Just know that when you say things that aren't facts, opinions that cause further damage to people who are grieving ... you're not making any fans in the process.

The post was repeating a quote from MAASINs founder….

As for suing is often the last resort, same thing said about Spirits current troubles. Person reporting went to management and complaint was supposedly buried. As for attacks towards the accuser, saw them myself on Spirits own FB page

Edited April 17 by JimF-LowBari

[phantomguy1999]

MAASIN is a terrorist organisation

[Brass of the South]

Only the Reddit admins can “shadow ban” you. This would be a site-wide thing, not only one subreddit. There is a massive distinction between admins and subreddit moderators. Moderators can remove posts and ban within a specific subreddit, but the mod team there is good and I doubt that is what is happening.

 

I am just confused on the terminology. You would get a message that said you were banned if you were actually banned. If you were shadow banned, nobody could see you posts and they would have zero views. If a moderator removed your post, it would say so on the post.

Edited April 17 by Brass of the South

[BigW]

On 9/4/2022 at 3:38 PM, IllianaLancerContra said:

W/R/T sexual assault (or any kind of assault really) the jurisdiction where it occurs is where it will be investigated & potentially prosecuted.  As Drum Corps travels through the season, any incident would need to be reported almost immediately, before the Corps leaves for the next show site.  
 

For assaults that come ‘out of nowhere’, the victim knows what happened is wrong, and can get Corps leadership & law enforcement involved right away.  
 

More difficult are cases where the victim is groomed; it seems that it sometimes requires time to pass before the victim realizes what happened is wrong & that they (victim) did not (or could not) consent.  In these cases, Corps leadership certainly can act against the offender, but from a law enforcement angle it could well be difficult to prosecute. 

Indeed. And I can tell you prosecutors want to make absolutely certain that they don't go in half cocked against an abuser Why? They do NOT want to fail and inoculate someone like that from further prosecution. It was a serious concern in the Sandusky case and was why they made sure they built a very strong and ironclad case before they moved.