Willful Blindness— How Abusers Groom Kids In Plain View

There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

-John Heywood

I recently watched a documentary on YouTube called “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”. This movie discusses how the company Enron was able to fool the world into thinking it was a profitable billion dollar company, when it was mainly just smoke and mirrors.

One of the common questions that people kept on asking throughout the film was “Why was it that no one asked? How could it be that so many people were silent?”. The signs of fraud and irregularities were there well before they were made public. So why were people both inside of the company as well as those outside of the company so quiet?

They were quiet because when the results are desirable, we don’t want to ask questions.

Those that asked questions were “encouraged” to remain silent. One questioner was fired from his position with an investing firm, and the firm immediately obtained a favorable contract with Enron after his firing.

When people or companies are providing us with what we want, why should we risk it by asking questions? Is it advisable to bite the hand that feeds us?

In legal terms this is referred to as willful blindness, and the US Supreme Court has consistently ruled that willful blindness is not valid defense.

There are too many stories of parents, teachers and communities being willfully blind to child molesters.

Former Penn State player and coach and current convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky ran an organization called The Second Mile. It was for underprivileged youth, providing help for at-risk children and support for their parents in Pennsylvania.

The signs were there, but no one wanted to think that the person helping all these underprivileged people was abusing them.

While the Sandusky case was more high profile than other cases, it was by no means unique. Many child molesters utilize this modus operandi. They put themselves into a giving position, taking a role which would leave a major void if they were removed from that position. They try to be the missing parent, the missing sibling, the missing financial provider, all in an attempt to create willful blindness.

And it works.

Rather than seeing the truth and acting accordingly, people are more afraid of potentially losing the benefits that this molester is currently providing.

People are also willfully blind because the ramifications of the truth scare them.

We as parents and community members need to stop being willfully blind. We need to realize that sometimes things ARE too good to be true when it comes to others helping our children. Most importantly, never should we ever feel that protecting our children from a molester is too big of a sacrifice.

Willfully blind doesn’t work in the short term, and it definitely doesn’t work in the long term. Learn how to ask the tough questions and ask them. Be ready to act appropriately if concerns of abuse are validated.

Yisroel Picker is a Social Worker who lives in Jerusalem. He has a private practice which specializes in working with people of all ages helping them understand their own thought processes, enabling them to improve their level of functioning, awareness, social skills and more. He also lectures on the topics of communication and child safety.  

You can email Yisroel at yisroel@ympicker.com

Follow Yisroel on LinkedIn here 

Products of Our Surroundings - Twitter

"Twitter is not a technology. It's a conversation. And it's happening with or without you."

-Charlene Li

There is a perspective in the social work profession known as “person-in-environment”. It states that people are a product of their environment. Social, political, familial, temporal, spiritual, economic, and physical factors combine to create this environment which shapes the individual. This concept includes the idea that one cannot adequately understand a person’s actions without consideration of the various aspects of that individual’s environment.

News stories and political climate are also part of this environment which affects us.

We are currently living in the Twitter era.

In an instant, millions of people hear one side of a story and they are immediately demanding action.

These demands are then heard by people and companies who often care more about themselves and their profits than they care about truth.

This is an idea that has been on my mind for quite some time, but recent events are causing me to write about this today.

Recently in Minnesota, a small group of African Americans walked into a fast food restaurant and attempted to place an order. The manager told them they needed to pay before they placed their order.

The consumers objected. They insisted and questioned why they were being treated differently than other customers who didn’t need to pay upfront. This entire event was videoed.

Scores of people took to social media to call on boycotting the restaurant. Many others called for the manager’s dismissal.

The company obliged and fired her.

All because of a video and post which depicted one side of the story.

As this former manager sits at home unemployed, news is breaking that these customers allegedly made a habit of taking their orders without paying.

Reports include accusations that they had even posted about this habit on their social media pages and that this restaurant had been a victim of theirs before.

So without this manager even getting the opportunity to defend herself and her decision, she lost her job.  All because people heard one side of the story and felt that they had all the facts they needed in order to act.

Link to Story

This case isn’t an isolated incident, and these behaviors are contagious.

Our children see this “quick to judge” mentality, and they follow suit. They are living in this “twitter/quick judge” age.

Living in a society which demands immediate judgment and action not only affects our children, but it rubs off on us as well.

Do we give our children the opportunity to defend themselves, or do we immediately believe the teacher when they call us to complain about our child’s behavior?

If we judge our children without hearing them first, we have added more “quick-judge” to their already “quick-judge” environment.

If we want to break the cycle and if we want to raise children who are able to hear all sides prior to forming an opinion, these lessons need to start at home. These lessons can’t be verbal, our children need to see that this is how we act with them and with others. That’s how we can break this destructive habit.

Yisroel Picker is a Social Worker who lives in Jerusalem. He has a private practice which specializes in working with people of all ages helping them understand their own thought processes, enabling them to improve their level of functioning, awareness, social skills and more. He also lectures on the topics of communication and child safety.  

You can email Yisroel at yisroel@ympicker.com

Follow Yisroel on LinkedIn here 

Resistance and Friends/Family Members

ASAP!

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.

-James Cash Penny

The goal of communication is to convey your message over to the listener in a way that will enable them to understand your message in the way that you intended it to be understood. Problems arise when the message that the listener hears isn’t congruent with the message that the speaker intended on delivering.

Issues can occur when the speaker uses relative terms or terms that have shifted from their original meaning. In order to ensure that messages are understood correctly, one should try to be as clear as possible, choosing words that leave little room for ambiguity.

Example of a relative term:

A parent sends their teenager to the store to purchase a new pair of sneakers. The parent gives the child their credit card and says “Please don’t spend too much”.

How much is “too much”?

Does “too much” for the child mean the same as “too much” for the parent?

If the child spends $150 on the sneakers, did the child err? If so, who is to blame?

If the parent wanted the child to stay within a $100 budget for the purchase, they should have said so clearly. The child is not at fault for interpreting a relative term differently.

There are also terms that have changed over time. The term “ASAP” (as soon as possible) used to mean exactly that, please do this as soon as possible.

Today ASAP means something very different, it means: “Drop everything and get this done. This is your new #1 priority”.

If one party is using the old definition and the other party is using the new meaning, it will be problematic.

When engaging with people who are toxic, one thing that you will notice is that they are heavy users of vague terms. They do this for a reason. They are trying to set you up for failure, while keeping their hands clean.

Try to recognize this as soon as possible. If you can’t avoid engagement with them, try your hardest to make sure that they are 100% clear with their statements. It might cause some minor headaches initially, but it will save major headaches down the road.

Yisroel Picker is a Social Worker who lives in Jerusalem. He has a private practice which specializes in working with people of all ages helping them understand their own thought processes, enabling them to improve their level of functioning, awareness, social skills and more. He also lectures on the topics of communication and child safety.  

You can email Yisroel at yisroel@ympicker.com

Follow Yisroel on LinkedIn here 

Should I Try?

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

-Alan Lakein

Very few pieces of advice are universal, the rest require the wisdom to figure out when the advice applies, when it doesn’t apply, and when it is detrimental.

When I was young, I received the following advice: “Don’t say that you can’t, always try”.

I do not believe that I was alone in receiving such advice. As with most advice I received as a child, I believed that it was universal.

In the summer of 1998 I saw firsthand how the advice has its time and place, and by no means is it a universal.

In June I went to Shea Stadium to watch my beloved Mets play the Baltimore Orioles. Prior to the first pitch a woman came out to sing the National Anthem. I am not very musical, but even I was able to tell that she started on too high of a note. When she got to a high note in the song, she cracked.

Rather than continue on, she shouted “That’s it, I can’t do this anymore!”, and she ran off of the field.

Anyone who knows New Yorkers knows what happened next. There was a huge chorus of boos from the 30,000 in attendance. Some of the loudest boos I’ve heard in a stadium.

That’s when I learned that this isn’t a universal rule. She tried and she couldn’t, but she really didn’t have an “escape”. Her name was on the scoreboard and she just left 30,000 people after telling them she was going to perform for them.

In retrospect, it would have been better had she never gone on the field, than having gone on and quit in the middle.

A person needs to develop foresight and learn how to use it. A person should know the answer to the following questions before deciding whether to go ahead and try:

● What can I do if I realize it isn’t working?

● Is there a possibility of backing out or am I stuck once I’ve decided to try?

● What’s the likelihood of my trying and making things worse?

● What’s the potential penalty were I to make things worse? (e.g. If I try to fix a small problem on your iPhone, what’s the likelihood that I might break it to the point that I’ll owe you a new iPhone?)

Parents need to assist their children with preplanning and discussing the possible issues along the way. This will allow their child to develop healthy decision making practices. For example, If your child is invited to a hike, sit with your child to make sure that they understand what it means to be on a hike, write down the reasons to go, the reasons not to go. Make sure your child understands that a hike means that there is no quitting in the middle. This will enable the child to make an informed decision. It will also show your child the advantage of making informed decisions versus impulsive decisions. 

Here is a more recent example of how I suffered from someone who misapplied the rule:

Someone decided to try and be helpful and attempt to move my baby’s crib to a different room in my home. The issue was that in order to move the crib out of its current room, it needed to be disassembled first. This person started disassembling the crib, only to give up after taking apart two thirds of the crib.

Before they “helped” I had a fully functioning crib, albeit in an imperfect place.

Now I had a disassembled crib in the same place.

Sometimes trying is enough and sometimes it is better not to do anything versus to start and quit.

Help your child develop the skills to determine which applies when.

Yisroel Picker is a Social Worker who lives in Jerusalem. He has a private practice which specializes in working with people of all ages helping them understand their own thought processes, enabling them to improve their level of functioning, awareness, social skills and more. He also lectures on the topics of communication and child safety.  

You can email Yisroel at yisroel@ympicker.com

Follow Yisroel on LinkedIn here