Why Whistleblowing Sucks

A chat on Twitter this morning prompted me to jot down a few of my thoughts and experiences in case it's helpful to others trying to define whistleblowing.  There seems to be a lot of back and forth on Twitter about, "oh everyone is a whistleblower now", etc., this is often said in such a way as to disparage someone for looking as if they are seeking to portray themselves as whistleblowing when they are "just" raising concerns, as if whistleblowing is an entertaining new craze.

This isn't the first time I've seen this and I'm hoping that sharing this information might throw some light on the "nuance", because 'just raising concerns' can very easily become whistleblowing, depending on how those concerns are met. Sometimes you have a "choice" about whether to be a whistleblower, but sometimes you just don't know until it's too late.

It took me a while to realise that I was becoming a whistleblower.  It took me even longer to realise that in fact it wasn't me who blew the whistle, but my child.

She reported bullying, which school policy said to do.

The school did not follow it's own policy, did not address the bullying, but kept saying it would.

We, as parents, flagged up the fact that the school was not doing what it said on the tin.

She continued to report the ongoing bullying, the school continued to procrastinate, we continued to flag that up.

A precipitating incident occurred - a boy threatened her with an axe.

The teacher lied about having been present during this horrible event, then admitted he hadn't been.

The school expelled all our children.

What made it hard to see the truth, that my child had been targeted as a whistleblower, on an internal procedure, was the way the school kept insisting that it was our actions in asking them to follow their own procedure that caused them to act against the children.

At the point that we began to try and publicise what the school had done, which led us to find out how many other people it had happened to over the years, we began to blow the whistle on a cover-up.

But it was our daughter, within the school, who was the real whistleblower.  They created that reality for her by pretending to be interested in doing something about bullying, and then targeting her for following school policy.  She was targeted both by them not doing anything and by them expelling her. She was the one that discovered first hand what happened if she did as she was told in that school.

When we came to the UK when my mum was dying two years ago, we met some people called "Steiner Critics", they were all over us like a cheap suit because we were using comedy to lobby the Government about unregulated schools, because we were so determined and because this type of school are globally notorious for treating children and families in this way, but all the stories are anecdotal. (And we know why.)

One critic asked me to write on the Local School's Network about what had happened and she told me to remember to say that all those flagging up concerns about Steiner Schools were whistleblowers.

She then subsequently targeted our whole family because she got really angry about something tiny that she's never told us.

To cover that up, she told all the other "critics" some tosh which made them all join in targeting us while my mother was dying and any protest about that targeting are framed as "evidence" that we deserve that treatment.

They've carried on doing that ever since.

Because they've done that, they refuse to spread the information that our initiative in New Zealand ended up with a Human Rights settlement in which the school admitted that they had expelled a bullied child.  They admitted that everything we did, in trying to support our child in addressing it, was both natural and dutiful.  This is effectively an historic settlement about the most often reported problem worldwide with these schools.

Nevertheless, the critics and skeptics now say, like the school did, that it was "our behaviour as parents", that meant that the school had to expel our children, who they pity for having parents like us.
One of the skeptics has justified this position by saying that he doesn't have to acknowledge a Human Rights settlement from another country.

The critics and skeptics continue to seek a platform representing the dangers of Steiner Ed to people who ask for information about victimising families and children, but they won't share our historic case, in which we actually succeeded, even when people actually directly ask, which they do fairly often, for concrete evidence of unchecked bullying.

The critics and skeptics side with the school, and the school's supporters will side with the critics and skeptics in order to attack us, which they both continue to do.

All this came about because a child reported bullying internally which the school's own procedure policy said was the correct thing to do.

So, to sum up:

The child became an internal whistleblower when she continued to report bullying, even though nothing was being done and it was being covered up.  She was 8.

The child became an external whistleblower when she was expelled from the school, with her sisters, because we supported her actions in following procedure.

We became whistleblowers when the school tried to cover up what they had done by projecting it on us, rather than admit they had made a mistake.  We suffered community mobbing, false police reports, the lot.  We kept going and were contacted by many people both locally and internationally who had similar experiences at that particular school over decades.

The critics and skeptics have targeted us for secondary wounding as whistleblowers by first encouraging us and then turning on us, ostracising us, and smearing us widely, and deliberately denying people who are asking for it relevant information that could certainly effect child welfare.

The critics and skeptics in so doing, have rendered my child's original whistleblowing completely invisible, and they have actually crowed about what happened to the children, while telling journalists that what we have achieved is impossible anyway.The critics and skeptics continue to seek a platform based on a stated concern for children, whilst covering up real abuses against real children for their own benefit and to make us go away.

We continue to try and expose this, because of the lies about us that are being widely circulated, because of the personal duplicity of certain skeptics and because skeptics generally are seeking ever more influence over all of our lives, and at least in this case, we can prove that this is based on rank dishonesty.

Co-incidentally, a lot of "top" skeptics, also have medical connections/qualifications/platforms.


So, bottom line.... if you use the term whistleblower because you think it sounds fun to be one, you are probably not whistleblowing although you may be highlighting real concerns.  It's the cover-ups that create the whistleblowers, and many people, like our child and us, had no idea that they were going to be whistleblowers at all, until it was too late.

Nobody who has experienced the targeting that ensues when you really blow the whistle on a dirty secret, would think that sounds anything like fun.  A lot of the time, when you think you are just raising a concern, a cover-up will ensue, and you will have to either shut up or shout louder, when it becomes whistleblowing.

Then you need to duck. As I've said before, whistleblowing sucks.