“By not acting, you’re enabling.” Why survivors are abandoned to protect institutions.

MICHIGAN
Michigan Radio

August 25, 2020

By Anne Clark

Dr. Robert E. Anderson was a physician at the University of Michigan from the late 1960s to early 2000s. Hundreds have accused him of sexually abusing them in the time period. The doctor is not here to answer for his actions. Most—but not all—of the people accused of enabling him are gone too. What, then, does justice look like?

The following interview is featured in this story by Anna Clark about those survivors, his enablers, and the institution that is finally facing a reckoning.

Amos Guiora grew up in Ann Arbor, and his father was a faculty member at the University of Michigan medical school at the time that Dr. Robert Anderson worked there. He describes himself as “the world’s biggest Michigan football fan” and “the ultimate son of Ann Arbor.”

Now, he is a law professor at the University of Utah and the author of the forthcoming book Armies of Enablers: Survivor Stories of Complicity and Betrayal in Sexual Assaults. It looks at the culture of complicity that made systemic sexual abuse possible at Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics, Ohio State University, Penn State, and the Catholic Church. The only son of two Holocaust survivors, he is also the author of The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander in the Holocaust.

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