For a long time, I really thought bringing things into the light would make a difference.
Jerry is very good at keeping different parts of his life separate. People can know him in one context and have no idea what is happening in another. I experienced that myself. It took me a long time to understand how much I did not know because everything I did know made me feel like I had a pretty complete picture.
Once I started seeing the larger pattern, it seemed important to put the pieces together where other people could see them too. I thought that if people could see what I could see, surely something would change.
And some things absolutely have. There are people who have done far more than listen to me or tell me they believe me. More than a few people have helped share my story, pass along information, warn others when they thought there might be a safety concern, and make sure people had access to information they otherwise would not have had.
Some of them have done that knowing it could complicate their own relationships or their place in a community. Some have taken real social risks to help me make sure the information did not disappear.
I am incredibly grateful for that. Those people have also kept me from becoming completely cynical about community. There really are people who believe that if they know something that might help someone else make a safer or more informed choice, keeping quiet is not always the right thing to do.
So this is definitely not a story about nobody caring. Plenty of people care, and some of them have cared enough to actually do something. What I did not understand before all of this is how different caring, knowing, and accountability actually are. People can know what happened and care about it without having any idea what to do next. A community can talk constantly about consent, safety, justice, accountability, or care and still be pretty lost when an actual complicated situation lands in front of them.
Sometimes there is no real process. Sometimes there is technically a process, but it gets much less clear when actual people and relationships are involved. Sometimes people are afraid of getting something wrong. Sometimes they do not want conflict. Sometimes they do not want to risk a friendship or their own place in a community. And sometimes they just decide it is not their problem.
I think I expected getting people to understand what had happened to be the difficult part. It turns out that telling people creates a whole new kind of work. Once you tell the story, you explain it. Then you explain another part of it. You document things, answer questions, clarify details, and try to make sure people understand what you actually know versus what you think might be happening.
I have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to be precise because that matters to me. I do not want to make claims I cannot support. I do not want anger to make me careless. I worry about saying too much. Then I worry that I have left out something important. And after all of that, people are still free to decide what the information means to them. I think that has been one of the harder things for me to accept.
Some part of me believed that once enough of Jerry’s life became visible, it would become harder for the same patterns to continue. If secrecy helped make all of this possible, then surely less secrecy would change something. Maybe it does. I still think it does in some ways.
I still believe visibility matters. I think people deserve information that may affect their choices. I think patterns are easier to recognize when the pieces are not scattered across different people who have no idea the other pieces exist. I think there is value in saying plainly, This happened to me, and letting other people decide what they need to do with that.
But I have learned that visibility and accountability are not the same thing. People can know and still minimize something. They can decide it is private. They can decide they do not have enough information to get involved. They can know something deeply concerning and still maintain exactly the same relationship with the person they had before.
They can also know and quietly do quite a lot. That is another thing I have had to be careful not to flatten. Some of the most meaningful support I have received has happened outside my view. People have shared information. They have had conversations I was not part of. They have made sure other people knew things they thought were important. I probably do not know everything people have done, and I do not need to.
That matters to me. At the same time, I think I have lost some of my ease in community. I used to hear talk about safety, consent, inclusion, accountability, or care and assume there was something reasonably concrete behind those words. I assumed that if something difficult happened, there would be some idea of what came next. Now I know that is not necessarily true.
A group can have genuinely good people and genuinely good values and still have no idea how to deal with a real situation when relationships, loyalties, uncertainty, and possible consequences all get mixed together. I understand that better now, and I think I move through communities differently because of it. I pay more attention to whether there is actually a process behind the language. I notice who is willing to ask uncomfortable questions. I notice the people who are willing to share information even when doing so might make their own lives more complicated. I notice the people who take safety seriously without needing anyone to congratulate them for it. I also notice when everyone seems to be waiting for an uncomfortable situation to go away on its own.
None of this makes me think bringing things into the light was pointless. I am still glad I did it. I am enormously grateful for the people who have helped me, especially the people who took risks I never asked them to take. I just understand the limits of visibility differently now.
I can document what happened. I can tell the truth as carefully as I know how. I can make information available. Other people can help that information reach places I could never reach myself. What none of us can do is decide what everyone else is going to do once they know.
I think that is the loss here. I did not lose faith that people care. Too many people have cared, and done too much, for me to believe that. I lost the idea that once something hidden is finally visible, what happens next will somehow be obvious.