It really begins with a well-done national inquiry, and this is why. This is what I tell my children: There are two reasons you can choose to do what's right. You can choose to do what's right because you care about the people who will pay the consequences if you don't, or you can choose to do what's right because you are afraid of the consequences. The goal is that we have organizations and leaders who want to do what's right because they care about the athletes and the children under their protection, but that is not what we have right now. The only thing that remains at this point in time is motivation out of fear of consequences, knowing that, if we do not do this right, the truth is going to be told about what we have done if we silence survivors. If we stand on behalf of abusers, if we fail to follow our policy, the truth is going to be told.
The most powerful thing members of Parliament can do right now is stand up and say, “We are going to tell the truth, and if you have not done this right, we are going to tell the truth.” Setting up a national inquiry that has the proper survivor protections in place can be done in a way that is trauma-informed and that protects survivors' identities. We talk about personal identifying information, or PII. It can be set up in a way that protects survivor PII and that is a collaborative process with the survivor community and with members of Parliament, where everyone is moving together in the same direction.
Let's do the right thing. Let's find out how we can keep our children safe. Let's work together to tell the truth. A well-done inquiry or independent investigation is a truly collaborative process, because everyone is headed in the same direction of doing what is right. It's set up with the proper survivor protections in place. It is set up so that all information that is relevant is accessible and can be told, so that we are truly pursuing transparency and accountability, and it is set up in a way that is very robust, that can look at the culture of the organization as well as policy and structure breakdowns, because we tend to find all three things.
When you have an organization that is run by individuals who are not geared towards child safety, oftentimes those organizations are set up in a way that the structure allows for communication silos, power imbalances or other corporate structural deficiencies that make it possible to ignore red flags and to cover up child abuse. You need a very robust inquiry that is going to look at all of those dynamics, is set up in a way that can truly access and report on all relevant information and is done with the proper survivor protections in place.
This can be done. I do it all the time. When everyone is headed in the same direction of telling the truth and working together to protect the next generation, a national inquiry or an independent investigation is not an antagonistic process. It's very collaborative, because everyone is moving towards protecting the next generation and bringing our community to heal from what has been done.