The Institution Always Knows: A Silent Complicity and the Burdened Body

Monday, April 14, 2025

There is a secret every institution carries.
They know who the predators are.
They always know.

Sometimes it’s formal — a complaint filed, a pattern noticed.
Sometimes it’s informal — whispers, tension in the room, the way women freeze when a certain man enters.
But it’s known.
And still, he stays.
Because “there’s not enough proof.”
Because “he hasn’t been convicted.”
Because to act would mean to admit complicity.

So the institution protects itself — not the girls.
And what does it do instead?
It warns them.
From the very first day, it says: “If something happens, let us know.”

This is not protection.
This is outsourced accountability.
This is the performance of care, while maintaining the structure of risk.

To be clear: the system is not broken.
It is designed to let known predators remain — as long as their violence is unprovable.

Meanwhile, who is hired?
Young women.
Teenagers, sometimes.
Eighteen. Nineteen.
They are brought into a space where danger is already documented, already felt, but never named.
And when one of them gets followed home, when another is cornered, the institution flinches — but does nothing.

There is no safety in this system.
Only delayed reaction.
Only rationalization.
Only the cold silence of “not enough evidence.”

And so the real protection comes from elsewhere.
From those who see.
From those who stay close, not out of paranoia, but presence.
From those who recognize the shift in posture, the sudden withdrawal, the way a conversation becomes off.

Protection is not policy.
It is frequency work.
It is the one who sits next to the girl being circled by predators, who closes the circle, silently, gracefully, without turning it into drama.

To protect is to sense before the evidence.
To act before the report.
To trust the body’s knowledge.

And to say, finally:
If you know he’s dangerous, you don’t need more proof.
You need to remove him.
You need to stop hiring girls into a lion’s den.
You need to stop lying.
You need to stop pretending this is complicated.
It is not.

The real complexity lies in presence.
In refusal.
In holding space for those who still believe in protection without performance.

Until then, the system remains what it has always been:
A complicity machine.
A denial factory.
A stage for repeat offenses — with perfect legal grammar.