Cold Reality: A Settlement Doesn't Always, Fully Recover Your Reputation
Weak statements of admittance and a failure of a full understanding of the magnitude of harm falsely inflicted leaves victims feeling empty.
“Winning” in court or with another form of ruling authority after your name has been wrongly dragged through the mud can feel like welcomed vindication. “Winning” a financial settlement on top of it can ease more of your pain and be tangible proof that you are not the person you were portrayed to be. That progress however may not feel like it’s enough though to peacefully move forward.
Case in point, this comment of suffering: “A settlement can’t replace my reputation.”
“After more than three years of litigation, Chicago Public Schools lawyers will ask the Board of Education to approve two settlements, totaling about $1.3 million, with former Lincoln Park High School girls and boys varsity basketball head coaches Larry Washington and Pat Gordon,” reports Sarah Macaraeg, writing at the Chicago Tribune.
This article will be partly about the case but much more about the quote above and what could help people again feel whole or much closer to it.
The story is about a scandal that has lasted more than four years. The board is expected to approve the settlements by December, when U.S. District Judge Keri Holleb Hotaling has required the agreements to be finalized, Macaraeg writes.
Now, the dirt: “Along with other former Lincoln Park staffers, Washington and Gordon were abruptly fired from coaching in January 2020. Each filed lawsuits in federal court a year later, claiming that CPS had destroyed their reputations and inflicted emotional distress,” Macaraeg reports.
Here are more of her findings:
CPS conducted a community meeting in 2020 in which a district presentation associated multiple terminated staffers with vague accusations involving sex and retaliation.
CPS also later sent “overtly false and/or misleading” messages to the school community, the arbitrator wrote, (then) ordering CPS to similarly issue an apology or retraction.
Washington is hurt and frustrated.
“They still owe me the apology,” he said. “Settlements can’t replace my reputation.”
He’s correct and he clearly knows what most harmed people haven’t yet learned or aren’t told.
While having a ruling authority side with you verbally and in a written judgment means a lot to most people, as does being awarded money as financial accountability, especially if the amount is large, it doesn’t mean you aren’t still suffering unjustly, aren’t still traumatized, aren’t continuing to suffer because people won’t believe the facts and truth and thus, keep judging you negatively.
It also doesn’t mean that you still don’t have to deal with the content published online that blames-and-judges you for actions that you did not commit and ones that may be out of context, falsely inferring wrongdoing.
It doesn’t mean that there aren’t board documents or court documents falsely, unjustly communicating scandalous points about your character and behavior.
Or that future employment or relationships aren’t at great risk because of what is being said or written.
“Settlements can’t replace my reputation.”
In short, a Lincoln Park parent, Jennifer Lister, had a daughter on the girls’ basketball team and registered her concerns with the Office of the Inspector General, Macaraeg reports.
“It was like nobody was doing any research to validate anything,” Lister said. “A lot of people within the school are doing really bad things.”
However, an OIG investigation disagreed with the district’s findings that the terminations of administrators and coaches occurred in students’ best interests.
“Simply put, it is delayed justice,” Macaraeg reported Gordon as saying, with him adding that his mother died of COVID-19 before his reputation could be restored.
Yet, he can see the positive, as he is happy that the report was released and that a settlement is moving in the right direction.
CPS reinstated Washington as a substitute teacher and Gordon as a security guard, but neither men have coached again. The pain remains raw.
“It was as if they stood on the Sears Tower and screamed this out when it all went down,” Washington said. “Then it’s really anti-climactic at the end. We go out with a whimper,” he said of the quiet release of the inspector general’s findings that former Office of Student Protections Chief Camie Pratt abused her position.
There remains strong differences of opinion and a heated debate about what did or didn’t happen. You can click the link at the top of this article if you want to read the detailed reporting. Where things stand now, the findings are that the coaches were not “guilty” of the perceptions and accusations against them.
Set aside, if you will, the type of situation that this story is about. Of course, children should always be protected and yes, they have been, historically speaking, been victimized in sports by people in positions of trust and-or authority. That does not seem to be the case here and the research and investigation didn’t find evidence of it.
With that established, there has to be painful accountability for false, inflammatory communication and concerted efforts that unjustly harm people and result in them being denied significant parts of their lives that were meaningful to them, badly staining their reputation, peace, mental health, trust in the community and suffering in their professions, the job market, with their finances, etc.
All that seems lost may not be, which could be a small bit of encouragement.
There are ethical, moral paths outside of the courts or boards that people can take and walk to mitigate their losses and pain, regain additional peace of mind and do what can be done (and it’s more than assumed) to access more of what they had taken away from them and denied.
There are professionals who can assist wrongly-harmed people.
As Gordon and Washington know, it takes more sometimes than a quiet statement of admittance of error and a settlement, to make things reasonably right.
Michael Toebe is a specialist for trust, risk, relationship, communications and reputation at Reputation Intelligence - Reputation Quality. He serves individuals and organizations by helping them further build, protect, restore and reconstruct reputation.
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