The personal losses suffered by
whistleblowers are often forgotten by the public whose interest we hope to
serve. It is a thankless task which is why so many give up and just go on
with their lives. Only the truly committed or the foolish continue and
even fools find the risk of loss too great to bear. Therefore I have found that
the persons I have met on this journey are those who have been tested for their
personal moral courage. There are many ways to show courage.
Bravery does not come with a gun, a pulpit, a title, or a megaphone.
I remember the words of Mohandas Gandhi "There is a higher
court than the courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It
supersedes all other courts.
In the wonderfully insightful article by K. R. Sawyer* The Test Called
Whistleblowing a paper Delivered to the National Conference of
Whistleblowers Australia, "Whistleblowing: Making It Work , I found
an analysis of the courage that I see in my whistleblowers.
K. R. Sawyer describes whistleblowing ".. "As a test of values,
whistleblowing becomes a test of a culture. As many have recognized, only
through cultural change will the attitudes to whistleblowers change."
The First Test of Whistleblowing is a test of moral and ethical values.
Values are supremely important to whistleblowers. It is these values that
give them their inner strength and resolve. Without these values they
have nothing to stand for, and they would cease to be
whistleblowers. Those responding to whistleblowers will try to dilute
the importance of values, to find some way to distract and disguise the true
nature of the ethical and moral problem facing the whistleblower and
society. So the first test of whistleblowing is related to values.
It is by the whistleblower's values that they are able to identify themselves
to themselves, and also to others. Relinquishment of these values
is not an option considered by the whistleblower, although many around him/her
may urge him/her to do so. The whistleblower stays steadfast in face of
this pressure much to consternation of family, friends, co-workers and others.
The Third Test of Whistleblowing is that imposed by the justice system, a
test where pragmatic technicalities of the law dominate truth and where the
statute of limitations often runs out. In the slow grinding
pathway through the legal system the whistleblower,who is a natural conformist
puts his faith in the rule of law. The whistleblower finds out that his
very values are of little consequence. The justice system with all its
complexity invariably allows pragmatic legitimacy to dominate moral legitimacy.
For the whistleblower, this is a betrayal of all he/she believes in becomes a
moral wounding of the soul, a deep personal loss of confidence in the very
system of government. Many a whistleblower who believed in the justice
system, has come forward relying on the protection of the law only to
find that the system is slanted so strongly against them that there is no
possibility to win a moral victory. They instead see their
hopes dashed time after time, in appeal after appeal. The right to
freedom of expression is sometimes a hallow promise, and a faded shadow
of Constitutional Rights under the First Amendment (Freedom of Speech).
The monopoly of power of those who have symbiotic relationships with the
accused will show no wish to expose the corruption, instead they will target
the whistleblower for continuous reprisals. The agency to which the
whistleblower discloses often lacks independence and there is usually no right
to appeal.
This was certainly true in my case. The system of control was more
important to the court than the truth I wished to reveal. There was such a
close connection between the regulators of my profession and those criminally
involved that the wall of protection was oppressively effective. The lack
of independence of the court system and the clear bias of the judge meant there
was no place to find protection from abuse. So faced with judicial complicity
in the abuse, I fled.
The statute of limitations limits whistleblowers, particularly in systemic
whistleblowing cases. I was reeling from the realization that what I believed
about our system of checks and balances, constitutional rights, human rights
was untrue, and could be so violated with absolute impunity by these
criminals. I reached out to higher authorities - the Washington State
Governor, the Washington State Lieutenant Governor, the Washington State
Congress, the United States Congressional Representatives from Washington State
(both US Senate and US House of Representatives) and even testified in front of
the Washington State Senate Commerce Committee. All these actions just
brought more retaliation, employment blacklisting, surveillance,
searches of my home, destruction of documents, freezing of my financial
assets, disappearance of all my money, fraudulent interference in
my student loans, illegal takeover of my personal possessions through
fabricated guardianship, and additional attempts at intervention
abduction to silence me forever.
I filed multiple complaints " sexual assault criminal complaint, stalking
and torture abuse complaint, EEOC complaint, Civil Court Complaint
regarding whistleblower retaliation and crime victim retaliation, Washington
State consumer "lemon law complaint, and even a credit card fraud
complaint, all with no avail.
This points out The Fourth Test of Whistleblowing " the test of inversion.
All whistleblowers are very familiar with this. It is the betrayal of the
whistleblower's own belief in a fair and equitable system. Everything is
so unfair.
In a study of US whistleblowers, Alford (2001) found that: "The average
length of time between blowing the whistle and being fired was about two years.
Little of this time was taken up with appeals. Rather, most time was spent
waiting for time to pass until management could adequately disconnect the act
of whistleblowing from the act of retaliation.
There is no place to obtain justice. The personal losses are so great and
there is no eventual success that makes the loss more bearable. The
financial losses are often considerable but there are many personal losses as
well, including loss of one's professional identity, loss of the respect
of one's colleagues, loss of one's position in society, loss of
personal friends and family, loss of a sense of self worth or value, to
name just a few. The retaliation that targets the whistleblower is so
clearly unfair. There is a gap between the career path of the criminals
and wrongdoers and that of the whistleblower. The greater the gap the
more extensive is the corruption. Often the corruption extends higher and
further than the whistleblower ever initially imagined. The strength of the
negative response is a gage of how tacitly the corruption is accepted within
the organization.
"The whistleblower identifies the cancer, attempts to remove it, and
then is attacked by it"The whistleblower must at all times behave honorably;
the cancer can behave as it likes, it has all the power.
This targeting of whistleblowers is usually precise, often imperceptible to
outsiders and almost always has a deniable response from the wrongdoer. I have
experienced most forms of targeting including burglary of my home and storage
space, surveillance by a private detective and police,incessant harassing
phone calls, sexual harassment at my workplace,bugging of my phone calls,
multiple fire alarms to force me out of my home, threatening letters, drug
entrapment schemes and even a bomb threat. There are an almost limitless
number of possibilities for those who wish to target the whistleblower.
Often the court system in an upside down logic, drag whistleblowers into
court and absurd judgments are given against them. I had police officers stalk
me in an effort to try to find some kind of infraction with which they could
claim I was a criminal and thus expose all my HIPPA protected records to my
abusers. An 8 miles over the speed limit traffic ticket they escalated to
a criminal offense and put out a warrant for my arrest.
My career path rather than the steady upward progression that I had earned by
my skills, intelligence, hard work and honest effort, was instead inverted in a
downward spiral due to blacklisting and open gossip. Many whistleblowers hope and expect that
their inversion will be inverted, that the truth will become self evident and
the whistleblower will exonerated. But I can offer them few examples of that
ever happening.
Like many other whistleblowers I found that the corruption extended higher,
farther and was more extensive than I had ever imagined. Clearly the
decision to cover up the murder of Assistant US Attorney Tom Wales was done at
the highest levels of government and with full knowledge of the implications to
the public health of such an obstruction of justice.
The Final Test of Whistleblowing is the test of self-worth.
This is something that must be an internally held value rather than one based
on what others think of you. So what is the true worth of a person?
The social and economic worth of the whisltelbower is so devalued by the system
of retaliation and social ostracism, that they appear to be empty shells
of their former selves. Their detractors quickly seize on their
diminished status to gloat and brag and exalt the victorious wrongdoer over
them. The whistleblower's friends and family exit the supportive
network, as they can no longer sustain their relationships through the
trauma. These witnesses to the retaliation often beg the whistleblower to
sacrifice their internal value system for some level of acceptance by the
authorities. So loyalty becomes subservient to the social pressures of
retaliation. This reality forces on the whistleblower an acknowledgment
that his/her own worth has to be self derived. The true value of a whistleblower
is their long term value not their short term value.
Just as those who have shaped history have often not been revered and rewarded
in their own lifetime so it is for the whistleblower. That was the
true value of Mother Theresa - the Pope refused to fund her work with the
poor in the Calcutta slums and yet to many she is a Catholic Saint. Her
value was not in her possessions or in the estimation of the value of her work
to those in Rome who made church financial decisions. The contributions
of whistleblowers occur in many dimensions and surely they are contributors to
the evolution of our social society. Think of Lincoln,
Mozart, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Jesus, and many others.
The value to history is not measured in the balance sheet today but with
benefit of hindsight. The true value of a person is inestimable.
"The valuations of others inevitably affect the whistleblower's assessment of
themselves. It is difficult to value yourself highly when others have written
you down, if not written you off entirely. But, just as in the other tests, the
whistleblower must discount the values and judgment of others. The test of
values by which they became a whistleblower underwrites their own value. Their
values define their value.
I believe that the value we gain and that we give to others by our
whistleblowing experience is greatly enhanced by a clear, directed, concise
message that is shown in all our thoughts words and deeds. This is difficult
because the trauma experiences often make us bitter and desirous of some
financial restoration to acknowledge our deep personal loss. Through all the
court battles, appeals, administrative hearings and public media attention, it
is hard to keep constant to that goal. It is important to remember the message,
rather than the needs of the messenger. But in the throes of mind
altering trauma, it is difficult to reach more deeply into one's soul to find
the personal and spiritual resources to be able to face more suffering.
This is why I believe that being such a whistleblower messenger is a spiritual
journey, one that reaches deep into your soul and which is unique and
individual to each person. This story of personal struggle and triumph may be
the final testament to the true value of the whistleblower to our society.
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