The Split – Power, Pressure and the Politics of Structure

March 2020 – March – 2021

Written by Jenna Bulis

By the time This Is Paris premiered in September, the energy behind Breaking Code Silence had surpassed anything we had expected. The documentary hit a nerve. Reporters called. Lawmakers reached out. Production teams showed interest. Survivors filled our inboxes with their stories. We had prepared for this moment, but the scale was overwhelming.

Jen Robison stepped into leadership that summer while I remained involved in ongoing personal proceedings. She carried the role with strength and care. She never asked to lead but did so out of commitment. She gave her time and energy to keep the movement going. I trusted her completely and still do.

Our team had grown. Chelsea Filer and I led legislative strategy and were forming policy partnerships across multiple states. Paris Hilton hired an Impact Coordinator to manage her direct involvement. At that point, we were no longer coordinating with the production team. We were working directly with Paris and her staff. The dynamic had changed. To manage the growing volume of work, we expanded our committees and began bringing on more volunteers. We created formal accounts in the Breaking Code Silence name and started building out our infrastructure to establish ourselves operating as a non-profit organization. 

Emily Carter and Rebecca Moorman built out our research and reporting systems. From that work, Parents Breaking Code Silence was formed. Katherine McNamara aka Katie Mac continued to manage our digital platforms and systems. Everyone was contributing in different ways, and we were operating under constant urgency. Jen and I coordinated a team working on everything from story publication to media engagement. We did our best to protect the original mission while adapting to constant public attention.

When Paris suggested a rally in Provo, Utah, we knew it would be significant. Utah is the center of the troubled teen industry. Organizing a protest there was not just symbolic. It was direct action. I supported it through media, social media coordination, and messaging, though I was not able to attend in person.

By fall, the pace of legislative work was unsustainable. Chelsea and I could not keep up without help. We expanded the team and focused on developing the West Coast Pact, an initiative that began in 2019. Our goal was to stop taxpayer-funded placements in out-of-state facilities and instead direct those funds toward local support services and crisis response. It was a real solution, rooted in prevention and accountability. That work is now continued through icapanetwork.org.

We also launched a new partnership with the American Bar Association. Together, we created legal education webinars Far From Home – Far From Safe to inform attorneys about the troubled teen industry. Many had never heard these stories before. It was an important step toward systemic change from within the legal field.

Paris Hilton’s Impact Coordinator was brought in to manage her public platform and protect her interests. This shifted the balance of the team. Chelsea and I remained focused on legislative details. We wanted bills to be tight and enforceable. We refused to support any reform that allowed vague language or dangerous loopholes. Others believed that any progress, even imperfect, was better than nothing. The divide between systemic reform and incremental reform became clear.

Paris’ team had recommended we apply to RISE Justice Labs, a national accelerator for grassroots campaigns. We submitted a proposal based on the West Coast Pact and were accepted. Twelve of us joined the RISE cohort under the Breaking Code Silence name, although only the legislative committee took on the bulk of the work.

RISE was demanding. It included daily workshops, mentoring, presentations, writing assignments, strategy development, and lobbying efforts. We were building alongside other national campaigns. The program forced us to sharpen our work. We used it as an opportunity to shift from state-level action to national legislation. We studied past failures and began drafting a federal bill to address systemic abuse through CAPTA reform.

We supported bills in Utah, Oregon, and Montana. Oregon passed reform. Utah’s bill passed as well. Montana’s proposal, which aimed to remove the religious exemption that protected abusive programs, did not make it through. Still, advocacy was strong. Survivors organized, testified, and spoke up. The movement had found its voice.

At the same time, the internal pressure became unsustainable. 

The legislative team was burning out. RISE required rapid response on top of weekly calls with lawmakers and new bill language and meetings every day. There was no single person speaking for the movement. The absence of a clear central voice led to confusion, duplicated efforts, and power struggles. Some supported any reform. Others refused to endorse anything that left children vulnerable. The resulting conflict slowed progress.

The research team was overwhelmed. They were fielding hundreds of reports, helping survivors navigate complaint processes, and managing data. The emotional labor of listening, documenting, and responding became too much. They were exhausted.

Media was under siege. Requests came in nonstop. Dozens of survivors wanted to share their stories. Journalists asked for comments and interviews. There was competition and conflict about who would be featured. These decisions became political. Media had once been a platform for all survivors. Now it felt selective.

The community groups were unraveling. Facebook was full of personal disputes. Admins and moderators argued with one another. Members lost faith. Tensions were personal and constant. Group chats became battlegrounds. 

We were under fiscal sponsorship and preparing to transition into a standalone nonprofit. Questions about governance, structure, and decision-making became constant points of debate. Who was in charge? Who got to speak for the movement? What was the right path forward? 

During RISE, Utah’s SB127 entered its final stage. We helped lead a large-scale lobbying effort. Survivors flooded the inboxes of legislators with testimony and calls for reform. Then, in the eleventh hour, language was inserted that would have allowed the cruel and unusual use of strip searches and cavity searches at the discretion of the staff. We weren’t comfortable with the cruel and unusual use of anything, let alone something that could easily become sexual abuse. We stood for our principles and said “there will be no negotiations on allowing child abuse.” We threatened to pull support if the language stayed. We were not going to compromise child safety to appear cooperative. We stood by our decision. Some people saw it as being difficult. We saw it as setting minimum standards.

Internally, I was spending nearly all my time mediating conflict. Leadership was divided. Some people no longer saw the project as shared work. They had started to act as if the movement belonged to them alone. The original vision was losing ground. There was confusion over who made decisions. There were disagreements about structure and responsibility. It became difficult to speak with one voice.

We were still gaining attention. The movement was growing. The message was spreading. But so was the internal collapse. Some people left. Others stayed but were no longer aligned. Publicly we were united. Privately we were unraveling. The campaign had changed the conversation. It had brought national attention to an issue that had been ignored for decades. But inside the team, the fractures were visible. The exhaustion, conflict, and competing agendas could not be ignored. We were winning in the public eye, but we were losing each other.

The split in Breaking Code Silence did not happen overnight. It was not the result of one disagreement. It was the result of ongoing power struggles, misaligned priorities, and a breakdown in trust. From the beginning, we focused on survivor-led, grassroots organizing. Over time, we saw a shift toward branding, image management, and decisions made for appearance rather than impact. Those of us who had spent years advocating behind the scenes grew concerned about the direction things were heading.

The tipping point was a $500,000 grant. The original intent was clear: fund mental health services for survivors by partnering with a qualified, independent provider. The goal was to give survivors access to licensed therapy from people trained to provide real support.

Without our input, the proposal was rewritten. It became a peer-led retreat program, where unlicensed survivors would be trained to provide support to others. The model was untested. We raised concerns about safety, ethics, and the potential for retraumatization. By the time we saw the final draft, it was too late to make revisions. The money would go to a separate nonprofit run by the grant writer. That was not our preference, but it happened without our input.

Shortly after, we were told the grant writer needed to be hired as the director of Breaking Code Silence. It was presented as an ultimatum by Katherine. We declined. Having the same person lead both the nonprofit receiving the money and the one facilitating it was a clear conflict of interest. 

And a split happened. Half of us wanted to protect the integrity of the work and movement. The other half had their own agendas…

What happened next was swift and hostile.

Read the Full Story in the BCS 2.0 – The Takeover Blog