"Silence is Permission: Our Collective Duty to Protect Children"

“When we excuse evil because it comes wrapped in power, we become complicit. Silence is not neutrality. It is permission.” Anonymous

This anonymous quote hit hard. It explains the constant shame and disappointment I now carry, not as a headline reader, but as someone who has sat in rooms where the details were not abstract. They were documented. Recorded. Verified.

I was once a Child Protective Services Hearings Manager. For four years, I worked in a division that heard cases where a local social services agency had already determined that an adult abused a child. Before that job, I was a social worker. I have seen the paperwork. I have heard the testimony. I have watched children try to describe the indescribable. I have seen the hopelessness in their expressions when the person they thought would protect them, fail to do so and minimize their distress. So when allegations swirl in the public sphere, when powerful names are attached to unspeakable acts, it does not feel like gossip to me. It feels eerily familiar. That familiarity makes it heavier.

Lately, I feel as though I am navigating my world wearing at least 100 pounds of armor. When I take a breath, it is labored. When I walk, I feel unsteady as if I will topple over. When I try to sleep, rest eludes me. My body tosses and turns as if it is trying to outrun something it cannot escape.

Is it the heaviness of the armor or is it the weight of silence-induced complicity?

Every day I feel more discouraged because I know tomorrow the weight will still be there. The details may change. New revelations may emerge. But the pattern remains the same: power shielding itself. Influence insulating wrongdoing. Systems bending in ways they were never meant to bend.

History has shown us something deeply uncomfortable — wrongdoing thrives in silence.

When powerful people harm the vulnerable and society shrugs, that shrug becomes a shield. It protects the perpetrator more than the child. It protects reputations more than innocence. It protects access more than accountability.

And children notice.

Children depend on adults to be brave. Not performative. Not outraged for a news cycle. But brave. Brave enough to ask hard questions. Brave enough to demand transparency. Brave enough to say, “I don’t care who you are — if you harm a child, you absolutely will answer for it and face consequences for your actions.”

We cannot claim to love children and then retreat into silence when systems fail them.

We cannot say, “That’s just how things work.”

We cannot convince ourselves that this is someone else’s fight.

Because the truth is unsettling: when we stand idly by and see wrongdoing and do nothing, we participate in the culture that allows it to continue. Silence is not passive. It is active permission.

Accountability is not political. Protecting children is not partisan. It is moral.

And morality requires courage.

Courage to withstand the discomfort of confronting power.

Courage to examine the systems we once trusted.

Courage to admit that we may have underestimated the depth of the problem.

The armor I feel may not be shame alone. It may be grief, grief for children who were not protected, grief for trust that has been broken, grief for a society that sometimes seems more outraged by exposure than by abuse itself.

This blog isn’t about politics. It’s about the truth that silence is not neutral. When we excuse wrongdoing because it comes wrapped in influence, wealth, or status, we participate in the culture that protects the powerful instead of the vulnerable.

But armor, though heavy, is also protective. Perhaps this weight is a reminder that I cannot afford to be numb. That none of us can.

We do not get to look away.

We do not get to be fatigued into indifference.

We do not get to excuse evil because it is inconvenient to confront.

Children are innocent. That innocence is not a political talking point.

If we are exhausted, we must still stand.

If we are discouraged, we must still speak.

If we are disillusioned, we must still demand better.

Because a society that fails its children does not collapse all at once. It erodes slowly, each time silence is chosen over courage, each time influence outweighs integrity, each time we convince ourselves that someone else will handle it we are giving permission for it to continue.

Lou