The Question

As I look back on everything that happened over the past several years, I find myself thinking less about the conflict and more about the lessons. Time has a way of changing perspective, and what once felt like a series of battles now feels like a series of hard-earned reminders about leadership, trust, and the responsibility that comes with building something bigger than yourself. When we started this movement, we were united by a common purpose: expose abuse, support survivors, and create meaningful reform. Like many grassroots movements, we were fueled by passion, urgency, and a shared belief that change was possible, but what we lacked was the wisdom to recognize that good intentions alone are not enough to sustain an organization through growth, disagreement, and success.

 

For over five years I have attempted to move forward with advocacy, but despite my best efforts, my name continues to be dragged into rumor and conspiracy that I am forced to defend. I hide the work I am most proud of for fear that survivors will sabotage it. I respond to ridiculous allegations and violate my own privacy rights just to preserve an accurate record of what actually happened. My name has become clickbait, and that is a consequence I have to live with because of choices I made early on that I deeply regret.

 

If I am honest with myself, I gave away far more than I should have. I trusted people who told me that stepping back was what the cause needed, and in doing so I lost the ability to protect something I had poured everything into. That is a mistake I will not make again. If there is one lesson I hope anyone who hears this call takes seriously, it is to trust your own power. The moment you hand that over, you lose more than control of an organization. You lose the ability to protect the thing you created and the people you created it for. 

 

Shared passion does not always mean shared values, and agreement on a mission does not guarantee agreement on ethics or decision-making. Those differences may not appear in the beginning, but they emerge the moment difficult decisions must be made. Movements need structure long before they think they need it, and without it they become vulnerable to confusion, power struggles, and the kind of fractured relationships that take years to untangle.

 

Here is the truth: I do not regret relaunching Breaking Code Silence, because real change happened and for that I am proud. But to pretend we solved the TTI problem is foolish, and to pretend that strong advocacy and protective systems are now in place is delusional. Progress has happened, and for some people that was enough. I could accept the community deciding they no longer wanted me involved. I could walk away from a significant amount of stress and unpaid labor. But that is not what is happening. I continue to be asked to donate my time and labor to this cause by members of this same community, many of whom also work to undermine me. There are very few people putting in the work to create change and a great many who want to control the movement’s voice.

 

I am going to keep speaking every time I am asked to on behalf of troubled teens, because the majority of survivor activists have forgotten the plot. I made a vow to help the children who cannot speak for themselves, the ones currently struggling to survive. I did not make a vow to serve survivors as a constituency or to absorb abuse as the price of participation.

 

I do not see anyone else in this community writing legislation besides 11:11 and ICAPA. So unless the goal is to let one organization control the entire legislative landscape, let me work. And before anyone raises the absence of survivor services as an indictment, they should look honestly at how this community treats its organizers. Nobody volunteers to be abused, and that dynamic alone explains why the need remains unmet.

 

We do not all have to be friends to create change. Nobody wins when survivors are at war with one another, and the only entities that benefit from that war are the institutions we were built to hold accountable.