How the Powers that Be Can Cause Harm: Institutional Abuse

In our last blog, we discussed how RZIM’s varied responses to allegations that Ravi Zacharias, a prized, powerful and lucrative member of their team who had sexually violated and abused multiple women during his life and ministry, were at first abusive and then later, after RZIM completely changed its approach, healing. Today, we describe what Institutional Abuse is and what measures institutions can put into place to prevent the harm that occurs through these institutional misdeeds.

Institutional Abuse is the mistreatment of a person from a system of power. The acts of harm can range widely from child abuse, elder abuse, sexual harassment or, physical or emotional domestic abuse. Often, this form of abuse takes place in institutions charged with housing children, the elderly, or others but that’s not all. Institutional abuse regularly happens in the the form of Double Abuse, especially where, like in the RZIM matter, an individual comes forward and discloses that a member of the institution’s leadership team is guilty of some form of abuse. Institutional abuse is a very powerful form of abuse and is extremely damaging to victims.

This is due in large part to the fact that institutions carry a significant weight of responsibility and power when they become informed of maltreatment or wrongdoing within the organization. They are regarded as authoritarian, professional and influential and therefore carry the ability to impact individuals and other institutions positively or harmfully. They are publicly perceived to carry high integrity, therefore victims carry a higher expectation that the institution will do the right thing. The disparity between this expectation and what actually occurs when there is Institutional Abuse significantly exacerbates the trauma the victim experiences. So, the potential for wide-reaching impact and influence within an institution itself and upon other individuals and outside organizations and institutions makes how an institution responds even more crucial. When an Institution has been informed of maltreatment and has verified it, in part or in full, it is incumbent upon the Institution to hold leadership to account, rectify the maltreatment, provide reparations to the victim commensurate to the harm done, and to take steps to make sure it never happens again. Unfortunately, however, Institutions often deny such abuse exists. Or they justify or minimize its effects. Other times they stall implementation of consequences upon the abusers and reparations to the victims through various avoidance actions, such as:

taking time to educate the victimizer rather than to follow through on immediate consequences for them, thereby keeping the victim in a devalued, insignificant place and at the same time maintaining a cultural tolerance for abuse in the Institution;
not disclosing or addressing the abuse in order to save the abuser’s reputation in fear of reprisals, jeopardizing employment standing, and/or protecting titles or status.

The more this Institutional Abuse and psychological trauma winds its way through the systems within the Institution, the more insidious and harmful the impact is on the victim. Institutional abuse and psychological trauma carried out in order to protect the abuser from taking responsibility and experiencing consequences, while delaying reparation to the victim, creates Double Abuse. When an institution allows Double Abuse to happen, the institution also becomes an abuser.

Dynamics of Double Abuse

Psychological dynamics of abuse show up in many institutional structures and cultures, causing a regular occurrence of what we have just defined as Double Abuse. Double Abuse becomes systemically embedded in the atmosphere, activities, leadership, and reactions toward others who are routinely put into downgraded positions.

These manipulations have subtle purposes or outcomes:

maintaining preferential treatment,
protecting status,
exerting dominance,
attempting to avoid institutional liability, and
simultaneously increasing institutional liability.

The organizational structure of such Institutions is designed to support individual members of it by denying, reversing blame, justifying, lying, diverting, or masking guilt by offering partial or weak apologies. These tactics actually exploit the victim. Any of these secondary reactions to Original Abuse on the part of an Institution is an urgent signal of a much deeper problem: actual abuse is taking place at one or more systemic layers within the structure of the Institution.

Institutional abuse often presents itself as righteous indignation or hierarchical or patriarchal preferential treatment towards the abuser, but in actuality the abuse equals organized immorality by a collection of people who deserve the consequence of public outcry and appropriate liability. Anything that avoids fully acknowledging the truth and the layers of harm done including avoiding subsequent reparations to the victim becomes Double Abuse at the highest level.

Ill Effects of Reaching Out

The ill effect of this high-handed authority upon such victims is the escalation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (“PTSD”) into even greater Complex-PTSD. When a victim gets the courage to speak up about the wrongdoing, they are likely reaching out in the hope that family, friends, or Institutional Leaders will do what is right, to stop the destructive behavior or practice, and seek mercy and justice. But when institutional abuse occurs in response, the Institution escalates the rejection of the victim and the denial of responsibility, which results in a far greater reach of the disavowal of the victim’s story (rather than acceptance), and causes varying degrees of the victim’s emotional and physical collapse, disease, depression, and greater isolation.

Exploiting the Victim

In one of the most damaging and menacing forms of Institutional Abuse, members of the Institution may even employ self-aggrandizing tactics to become the “hero,” perceiving or presenting themselves as noble in the broadest sense, which masks their continued overpowering of or scapegoating of the victim. These tactics are meant to create the appearance that the Institution has handled the allegation with the utmost of care and attention, when in fact, they stall, reduce, or escape consequences for perpetrators, protecting those who are guilty. In doing so, they take over the victim’s story, re-traumatizing them for their own benefit. Public acknowledgment of wrongdoing upon the victim’s request, accountability, and consequences to the abusers with appropriate reparations to victims in a timely manner is the only process with moral congruence and integrity.

How to Identify a Defensive Mindset

In general, when a person has done harm innocently or inadvertently and that harm is brought to their attention, they will not become defensive, deny, or avoid the topic of their actions. Instead, they will take the time and make the effort to understand what their actions have provoked and make changes, offer amends, and craft reparations. They will “work” with their own defenses.

By contrast, when someone’s actions are abusive in nature and those behaviors are based upon a person’s mal-developed character structure, they will not be flexible enough or self-reflective enough to own their own actions. Instead, the opposite occurs, meaning that either they deflect, deny, and justify by shifting the blame onto the victim. When the abuser does not demonstrate immediate remorse and empathy measurable in the form of behavioral change and an accompanying attitude seeking to provide reparations equal to the harm done, it is a sign that confirms abusive thinking. In the process, this intensifies the abuse, and their defenses may become focused on retaliation through slander, harmful positions of influence, status, power, control, and covert or overt heavy-handed authority. The power brokers re-write history or create a maze of obstacles in order to delay or prevent accepting accountability and a necessary reparative process. In so doing, they discredit the victim and the victim’s story and exploit them further.

Trauma of Double Abuse

Complex-PTSD and its effects impact the families of victims as well. Witnessing traumatic experience often results in vicarious PTSD within family members. We cannot stress enough the importance for individuals and Institutions to adopt strict protocols, leading by example the implementation of the highest legal or Title IX criteria, but that alone is not enough. Formalized protocols cannot be used as a minimal standard of correction or as a way to look for loopholes. The intent behind the protocols must remain in focus. Dr. Gwyn Erwin, trauma expert, emphasizes, “Protocols are meant to protect victims and their families from more harm. For an Institution to knowingly delay consequences, allows them to extend institutional abuse and its layered cycle of trauma against the victim and into the larger community. Recognizing institutional abuse as destructive and morally defiant is vital.”

When is an Independent Investigator Necessary

If the Institution and the victim cannot come to a meeting of minds, it is best to bring in a non-affiliated or independent Investigator to determine how best to protect the victim, identify areas of abuser culpability, and bring into better focus cultural defects and the intent behind social justice and legal protocols. This also can protect the Institution from further liability. These areas would include, Title IX mandates for higher learning institutions, legal regulations for corporate institutions, and moral and social obligations in religious settings. For Institutions, the primary purpose of ethics is to protect the organization over any one individual’s misdoing and managing areas of culpability. If the Investigator is not entirely autonomous, they can become a tool of the Institution, wittingly or unwittingly. If the Investigator and the Institution are not adopting the highest legal protocol to protect victims, their motives are not of the highest caliber. When either the Investigator or the Institution has divided loyalties, or are subtly or overtly pressured to take a path that serves either of them in any way, they sacrifice objectivity and impartiality, along with the priorities necessary for the victim’s safety and recovery. This lack of honoring the victim and the intent of legal and social justice heaps more injury upon the victim, and in failing the victim ultimately accommodates the abusers, leading to a covert collusion that exploits the victim and their families even in extraordinary ways, while exposing the Institution to greater liability.

When Victims Reach Out

Victims reach out in desperation to Institutions (churches, temples, mosques, schools, corporations) for help when facing Original and Double Abuse because possibly no others in their immediate circles are believing them, acknowledging them, or confronting the abusers. Too often, rather than receiving the interventions or support, they need to stop the maltreatment or to implement accountability, victims are met with Institutional judgments, systemic bias, disbelief, or, worse, with another layer of abuse via inappropriate ultimatums directed at the victim that then further oppresses them while pushing them towards incorrect interventions and away from those that could be helpful.