Institutional betrayal is the social cancer of modern society. It destroys jobs, obliterates careers, robs victims of dignity and peace of mind and inflicts untold damage on emotional and physical health. It can be life-ending. While it can occur wherever powerful organizations betray the trust placed in them by individuals and cause harm by what they do, or fail to do, in, for example, the healthcare setting or in the Church, we have chosen to focus on the widespread issue of institutional betrayal involving sexual violence and sexual harassment.
This is the great underreported and largely unvoiced issue of the #MeToo era even though it inflicts, as our story documents, boundless waves of avoidable and life-altering harm on its victims.
Only by knowing the true face of this enemy can we hope to end institutional betrayal and the culture of sexual violence and sexual harassment it enables.