Faculty Book Talk: The Complicity of Silence

Originally aired August 28, 2024

rofessor Amos Guiora discusses his recently published book, The Complicity of Silence: Confronting Ecosystems of Child Sexual Abuse in Schools. Guiora, whose research focuses on bystanders and enablers of sexual abuse and who launched the Bystander Initiative at the College of Law in 2022, will be joined by a panel of legal experts on institutional complicity in sexual abuse. In November 1997, twelve-year-old Jeremy Bell was killed at the hands of Edgar W. Friedrichs, a serial pedophile, teacher, and later principal, who taught for decades at Pennsylvania and West Virginia schools despite extensive complaints submitted to school administrators. In The Complicity of Silence: Confronting Ecosystems of Child Sexual Abuse in Schools, Guiora carefully analyzes the case with the assistance and extraordinary documentation of Dan Barber, the private investigator who solved it. As an expert in the power systems that allow the worst criminal behavior to fester unobstructed, Guiora uses the specific facts of the Bell case to demonstrate how a network of enablers and bystanders “passing the trash” allowed a proven predator to remain free and access children at several schools from 1975 to 2001, while advocating for the broader policy changes and social safeguards that are necessary to prevent such disasters from occurring in the future. Watch the recording.