BCS 2.0: The Takeover

March 2021 – March 2023

Written by Jenna Bulis

March 2021 should have marked a milestone. After two years of organizing, testifying, and building infrastructure, we were finally moving toward formalizing Breaking Code Silence as a nonprofit. The momentum was there. The RISE accelerator was wrapping. National legislation was underway. Survivors were mobilized. And we had just helped pass historic reforms in multiple states.

But something was shifting beneath the surface. Jen Robison had the heart to carry the project this far. But she’d be the first to tell you that she’s a creative, not a CEO. She was being crushed under the pressure and exhausted by constantly mediating disagreements. She announced at the beginning of March that she had decided to step back from leadership, hoping to help guide and support from the sidelines. This left a big hole in leadership that we all needed to figure out how to fill.

On March 9, Katherine McNamara aka Katie Mac resigned. She sent a statement to the group claiming concerns about leadership qualifications and structure. It was jarring but not entirely surprising. Tension had been building for months. A meeting was scheduled for March 14 with the remaining founders and leadership to regroup and decide how to move forward. Katie Mac chose not to attend.

I attended in good faith. I listened, reflected, and acknowledged that our leadership structure was not perfect, but I was still committed to continuing what we had built. The message was clear: If someone no longer aligned with the mission or direction, they were free to step away. View Chelsea’s statement HERE. That felt fair. Later that same day, everything changed.

I went to log in to Slack and found I was locked out. Then came the emails. G Suite access gone. Website locked. Social media profiles inaccessible. The drive where we kept all our files and documents had been wiped clean of our access. I was kicked out of online groups I built, and Suburbia’s Dirty Little Secret hosted. One by one, members of the founding team reported the same. Katie Mac, who had previously been managing IT, had allegedly revoked every credential and taken control of the infrastructure.

Within days, she filed the paperwork to incorporate a nonprofit under the name Breaking Code Silence. She registered Doing Business As filings in both Washington and California, covering multiple name variations. She filed new competing trademark applications removing the other founders. She personally funded the effort with one hundred thousand dollars in startup legal costs and named a new board: Vanessa Hughes, Jenny Magill, Bill Boyles, Jeremy Whiteley and herself, Katherine McNamara.

There was no conversation. No warning. No process. Just a lockout and a rebrand. The rest of us were left stunned. The infrastructure we had spent years building was taken over in a hostile move, and the organization we had poured our trauma, labor, and love into was suddenly being used as a legal weapon.

A Florida-based company was temporarily formed with my name listed as President. This filing was done solely to protect the rights to the work we had created, allowing for the fastest path to incorporation. There was never any intention to launch a nonprofit under the name Breaking Code Silence. Our fiscal sponsorship had always operated under the Breaking Code Silence Project, and the nonprofit we intended to build was going to be called the Breaking Code Silence Advocacy/Action Network. The filing was a protective measure taken in direct response to Katie Mac’s attempt to seize control of our work. She later used that act of defense to construct a false narrative, painting it as a profit-driven scheme to justify her own actions. But there was no profit motive. There was only a need to safeguard the integrity of our advocacy.

Soon after, the narrative began to shift. We were accused of quitting, of stealing the organization’s assets, of trying to profit off the survivor community. One of the most absurd claims was that we had infringed on a trademark that we legally owned. None of it was true. But the damage had already been done. Shortly after forming the nonprofit, Katie Mac’s Breaking Code Silence filed a federal trademark lawsuit against me, Chelsea Filer, along with Jen Robison and Martha Thompson, who had served as our original treasurer. Once the legal action was filed, the Florida incorporation was dissolved. 

The misinformation continued to spread. A survivor advocate who had once published a personal blog or online book titled Breaking Code Silence in 2018 was convinced to claim he had used the name before we did. That false narrative became the foundation for the lawsuit meant to discredit us. Our names and reputations were dragged through the mud, both within the survivor community and in public view. Although the case was meritless, it still dominates the search results for our unique legal names and continues to impact our personal and professional lives.

On May 19, 2021, the lawsuit was published publicly on breakingcodesilence.org, now run by Katie Mac’s team. Alongside the legal documents was a carefully crafted narrative portraying us as harmful actors, using the movement for personal gain. Screenshots spread across advocacy spaces. People picked sides without knowing the full story. The cost to defend ourselves reached sixty-five thousand dollars. The case was eventually dismissed, but the damage was done. We were all mothers forced to use personal funds to defend predatory actions, putting our own children’s future at risk.

On May 19, I was in family court mediation. The lawsuit’s announcement timing felt targeted. The night before the legal documents were published, Katie Mac’s attorney spoke with my co-parent’s attorney. I cannot say what was said, but the following day, my name and the suit were public. I was in the middle of negotiating custody, and this release weakened my position. I ended up signing a contract I would never have considered under less hostile circumstances.

On June 4, Katie Mac filed for a protection order against me in Los Angeles. It was denied the same day. In her petition, she claimed that I had doxxed her home address. This was not true. Another survivor had shared a copy of a public record trademark filing, which Katie Mac herself had submitted and signed, listing her address. The post appeared in an advocacy chat where people were discussing what was happening with Breaking Code Silence following the release of her lawsuit website. Katie Mac also claimed that I had encouraged someone to send harassing messages to her wife. I have never met her wife, I do not know her phone number, and I had no connection to the individual she accused of making contact. These claims were presented as fact, yet no evidence was submitted to support them, and the court denied her petition. I do find it odd that her wife files records requests on me and posts about me on social media. I find it to be harassing of me, not her.

Ten days later, I received a cease-and-desist letter from Katherine McNamara’s attorney accusing me of defamation. It listed two posts by me. The first was a link to a news article about a survivor who died during a welfare check, which I had shared privately in a survivor chat with a comment that read, “I don’t know the details, but this was sent to me.” The second was a ring video showing a welfare check on survivor Jen Barr in Florida. I posted it with a caption that said, “Stop, this is harassment.” I did not name Katie Mac in either post, nor did I imply she was involved. The video spoke for itself. Her response to it, however, was telling. The cease-and-desist was never followed by a lawsuit, but it was used to support a false narrative and justify further harassment against me.

That chapter broke something open. Not just for me, but for the movement. The dream of a unified, survivor-led campaign was hijacked. The very systems we created to protect each other were used to lock us out. I had spent months trying to hold the movement together. When Katie Mac took over, she rewrote the story from the outside and told it like we never existed. We were not gone. But we were erased.

When we finally had the chance to appear in court, the truth came to light. The same individual used to justify the lawsuit admitted he had been misled and submitted a declaration in our defense. The judge granted the motion to dismiss, finding no evidence to support the claims. By the end of 2021, I thought the worst was behind us. The case had consumed our time, energy, and savings, but I held onto hope that we could finally move forward. That the attacks might stop. That the work might be allowed to speak for itself.

The Destruction of BCS 2.0

In December 2021, Katie Mac once again seized control. She allegedly locked the BCS nonprofit board out of all assets, just as she had done to our founding team the previous spring. This time, however, it was the very leaders she had appointed herself. I could not help but wonder if she sensed the truth was about to surface, that the lawsuit had been frivolous all along, and needed someone else to take the fall to avoid responsibility. The move felt calculated, the timing exact, and the pattern impossible to ignore.

Then came the day that crossed another line. On December 30, 2021, she posted my family court records in multiple Facebook groups, including Survivorland. These were private legal documents involving my children and my custody case. There was no reason for anyone to see them. No purpose beyond humiliation and pain. It was the second time she had used my legal records to target me. 

I made a public post asking her to stop. I reached out to the group administrators. I explained what was happening. I asked for my privacy to be respected. Instead, Katie Mac told people that my attempt to draw a boundary was harassment. I felt completely exposed. My advocacy work was being buried beneath a constant stream of character attacks and public betrayals.

On February 11, 2022, the lawsuit against us was officially dismissed. Just a few months later, the organization Katie Mac had founded, Breaking Code Silence 501c3, filed a lawsuit against her for Computer Fraud and Abuse. Days after that, on May 23, my arrest record (of a charge dismissed with prejudice) and a personal home video were doxxed and published online. That made three times I was doxxed. Three documented incidents where I was deliberately targeted and exposed. And still, the attacks kept coming.

Then a new website appeared. It was called breakingcodesilencelawsuit.com. It presented a false narrative that there had been a plot to sue her. That I had been part of some coordinated effort to take her down. The documents posted were twisted to fit a story that never existed. See Plot Twist.

The truth was simple. Before that lawsuit was dropped, the 501c3 board reached out to me. They asked me to consider returning to Breaking Code Silence. I said no. I did engage in a brief conversation to see if they would help cover the legal fees I was still carrying. No agreement was made. The conversation ended. Eventually, they reached out again, not to fight, but to apologize. And I accepted. Not because the harm was erased, but because advocacy needed space to heal.

Through it all, Chelsea and I kept going. We launched ICAPA Network, a 501c4 built to fight institutional child abuse and pass survivor-led policy. We repaired our relationship with 11:11 Impact and got back to work. We even wrote and released our own CAPTA amendment petition. Because despite everything we endured, we were still here.

We chose to rise. We chose to lead. And we never stopped telling the truth.