Seeing some form of justice

Updates on three stories I reported last year

Change is not often a straight line. The zigzag of progress can be hard to follow, and it’s easy to give in to feelings of helplessness and despair.

We’re all exhausted. It’s 2024 but the political climate feels like 2016. My friends who write political stories tell me that no one wants to click on them like they did before. I tell them I get it — I don’t want to click on them, either. In 2016, it felt like we were learning something. Now every news story feels like a tired rerun. The Temu version of 2016.

Women have fewer rights than we did eight years ago. LGBTQ rights are under assault, too. The crisis in Gaza is killing children by the thousands and our political leaders seem to lack any sense of urgency or moral compass. It’s easy to refuse to participate; to surrender.

Last year, Rebecca Solnit wrote this about climate change doomers: 

They’re surrendering in advance and inspiring others to do the same. If you announce that the outcome has already been decided and we’ve already lost, you strip away the motivation to participate – and of course if we do nothing we settle for the worst outcome. It often seems that people are searching harder for evidence we’re defeated than that we can win. Warnings are a valuable thing, given with the sense that there’s something we can do to prevent the anticipated outcome; prophesies assume the future is settled and there’s nothing we can do. But the defeatists often describe a present they assert are locking in the worst outcomes.

I think a lot about this position. It’s a refusal to back down and give into despair. 

This week, I spoke with Iowa state Sen. Janet Petersen, who helped get legislation passed that will help abuse survivors. This is no small feat for a Democrat in a Republican-led state legislature. 

Each small win is a moment of dismantling the power and systems that grind us down. And each step toward justice, although not enough, never enough to repair what we’ve lost, sets groundwork for meaningful change.

Here are updates on three stories I reported last year. They aren’t feel-good stories. Progress rarely is. But each of them shows that our fights are not in vain and that our stories matter, even when it feels like no one is listening.

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This week, Iowa’s governor signed into law a bill that would change the statute of limitations on the Boy Scout sexual abuse settlement. This change doesn’t reform the statute of limitations for all abuse survivors, but it does allow former Boy Scouts in Iowa who were abused to access more of the settlement money.

Last September, I wrote about the settlement in that case and how the statute of limitations laws on child sex abuse cases hurt survivors. When I spoke with survivors, it was clear that judgments like this weren’t about the money for them, but about being able to tell their stories and about accountability for the systems that enabled their abuse.

Petersen noted that it seemed at first that the bill had an unlikely future, as it hadn’t been assigned to a committee after it had been sent to the House from the Senate. But she credits survivors and journalists holding lawmakers accountable for pushing the bill through and getting it signed into law.

My story on the Boy Scouts settlement and how statute of limitations laws impact abuse survivors wasn’t my most popular, but it was one of the ones that meant most to me. In a world that can feel very bleak, it helps me to believe that my work can help push the conversation forward.

Despite a $2.46 Billion Settlement, Many Boy Scout Abuse Victims Won’t See Justice

In February, Dr. Lynn Lindaman was convicted of sexually abusing a child. Lindaman was an athletic trainer who Sherri Moler says sexually abused her in 1975, when she was just 13. When Moler discovered in 2020 that Lindaman was practicing medicine, she began a campaign to have his medical license revoked. Her fight highlighted the many incomprehensible ways that medical boards are complicit in abuse. As I wrote last year:

Medical boards often investigate reports of abuse, find them credible, and still allow doctors to practice. And their only consequence is receiving counseling, educational classes, and/or being chaperoned.

For example, the Journal of Internal Medicine study noted that in 2016, a “nationwide investigation of thousands of medical board orders for physicians who were disciplined for sexually abusing patients or other sex-related offenses since 1999 found that more than one-half of these physicians were still licensed to practice. Little information exists on the effectiveness of possible safeguards, such as counseling of sexually abusive physicians, to prevent recidivism and possible harm to future patients.”

For years, Moler showed up to every meeting of the Iowa Board of Medicine, demanding accountability. But the board did nothing. In 2023, Lindaman was arrested on two counts of sexually abusing a minor. These charges were different from the charges in Moler’s case, where he’d been found guilty in 1976, but received a deferred judgment. This means that after he served probation, the court sealed public documentation of the case. Deferred judgments are given when an offender has no prior record and the crime isn’t a forcible felony. But the second set of charges and a new victim meant that Lindamen could no longer escape consequences.

In February, he was found guilty of second-degree sexual abuse. This week he pled guilty to enhanced charges stemming from his conviction in 1976. On April 26, Lindaman is scheduled to be sentenced and is likely to move for a new trial. 

Medical Licensing Loopholes Can Put Patients at Risk

When No One Listens

Last March, I interviewed Janet Protasiewicz, who was running for a seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. Prostasiewicz won. In her term as a state Supreme Court justice, Protasiewicz has faced pushback from Republican lawmakers who have threatened to impeach her. Now they’re walking back those threats after bipartisan backlash.

But Protasiewicz continues to do her job, and does it well, even as men (and Republicans) yell at her.

The Most Important Election of 2023 Is Taking Place in Wisconsin

Recently, someone unsubscribed from my newsletter because they said it was too “depressing.” Which, it’s your money, you don’t have to justify why you subscribe or don’t. But I do think it’s important to understand the function of this work, isn’t to look away from dark things, but bring them to light. This doesn’t always change things in any meaningful way. But sometimes, when we are lucky, we can see the needle move.