Passenger Abuse Resembles Child Abuse
By Arthur McCaffrey
I have just completed an extensive, comparative review of international cases of child abuse, revealing common trends and historical patterns shared across countries. These similarities also extend to the recent case of abusive mistreatment of a passenger by United Airlines, which demonstrates many of the typical features usually associated with clergy abuse of children. For instance, a common feature of abusive environments is an asymmetry of power, often involving institutional authority figures-- priests, teachers, gymnastics coach, football coach, airline cabin crew, airport security-- who wield their authority to overwhelm the victim. The different means used differ only stylistically: while a priest may woo and groom his target, in the United case airport police took a more brutal, direct approach. The end result is the same: an unconscionable attack on the dignity of the human person. Next, you have the availability of hapless, powerless, vulnerable victims who are preyed upon--an innocent 10-year-old altar boy, or a foreign-looking passenger who may not know enough English to protest. Then comes the abuse, either sexual in the case of Catholic children, or physical in the case of the United passenger. In either case, the powerful rape the powerless, often with an almost reckless sense of invincibility, confident that it would be too risky and costly for their umbrella institution (Church or corporation) to blow their cover. One might label this the Sandusky Syndrome, after the notorious case of pedophilia at Penn State University involving assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Finally, there is the post-abuse institutional response, which is usually self-protecting and company-shielding - in other words, damage control to minimize the fallout, and, above all, put the best spin on the employee misbehavior and the company reputation. The initial response by United CEO Oscar Munoz fits this category perfectly - lots of back-pedaling and self-serving formulaic responses, which make Munoz sound like a Catholic bishop. What should be our response to this kind of mistreatment of innocent victims? How do we redress the injustices? Fortunately, Bishop Desmond Tutu has supplied a remedial formula. After President Mandela appointed him to chair South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1994, Tutu declared that decades of institutional injustice against victims of apartheid needed to be remedied in four ways: Apology, Compensation, Punishment, and Reconciliation. What happens when we apply Tutu's formula to abused altar boys or harshly handled passengers? Apologies are offered almost universally by guilty religious institutions, plus some token of financial reparation, albeit reluctantly. Consequently, several lawyers (like Mitchell Garabedian in Boston) have become well-known champions of the abused by bringing successful lawsuits against archdioceses. Compensation carries substantial financial consequences for abusive institutions who get caught: settlement costs to the Catholic Church had reportedly reached more than $1.5 billion by 2007, and are still climbing, leaving a trail of bankrupt dioceses in their wake. United Airlines, instantly caught and found guilty in the glare of cellphone headlights, has hewed to the universal response pattern of clumsy apology plus offer of financial compensation for the inconvenience. We can probably expect a costly out-of-court settlement with the abused passenger, akin to the Fox News resolution of its own internal cases of abusive harassment. However, there is one additional punitive option available to United victims that a religious institution does not have - the market. The stock exchange may already have started to devalue United shares, a kind of corporate punishment at least, though perhaps small comfort to an abused passenger. What about Tutu's toughest categories of Punishment and Reconciliation? Criminal prosecution for clergy abuse tends to be rare; by the time the case finally surfaces, the statute of limitations for initiating criminal proceedings has often expired, leaving civil litigation as the only recourse. Many adult survivors would still prefer punitive justice to cash, and hanker for a penal solution to salve their suffering. The raw cruelty witnessed on board the United flight is more likely to trigger criminal proceedings, unhampered by statutory restrictions. Reconciliation? Lacking a just solution, forgiveness and reconciliation are unlikely, whether in the pew or in seat 25B middle. Tutu emphasizes that forgiveness is not a freebie donated by the victim - the abuser has to earn it to deserve it. Can the Catholic Church earn it? Can United earn it? The rage expressed on social media would suggest that reconciliation with United will not happen anytime soon. There is, nevertheless, another response to injustice not covered by Tutu's remedial formula, and that is group solidarity. Unless you count cellphone photography as a form of solidarity, such evidence of common cause was conspicuously absent on the United plane. Where was the popular revolt by passengers against the uncivilized mistreatment of the Asian doctor? Who stood up to block the aisle to prevent the atrocious abduction of a fellow passenger, a fellow human being? Most of the videos I have seen indicate that everyone stayed in their seats throughout. Perhaps the stress of modern air travel causes the flying public to adopt an anomic, three-wise-monkey strategy for coping with troubling encounters -- hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. This detachment only reinforces a common finding from generations of abuse cases, namely, that, at the very time a victim most needs an ally, he or she is most alone.
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