Oak Hill’s Response
We are aware of Oak Hill Montessori Community School’s response to our site and email.
We are, of course, disappointed. But hardly surprised.
Shirley Volk, Emily Bowar, and the school board have been gaslighting us from the beginning. Now, apparently, it is your turn. Our site provides evidence of our claims. We have provided you with expert definitions of abuse, voice recordings of conversations with Ms. Volk and others, and the entire email chain of conversations between us, Ms. Volk, Ms. Bowar, the school board, and the schools authorizer, as well as other families with children at Oak Hill.
To dismiss claims, supported by evidence, as “misinformation,” is disingenuous, at best. Ms. Volk wants you to believe this is all made up. That it never happened. That even if it did, it isn’t abuse, and that even if it is, it is all in the past, and we should all just move on. I would ask what information, supported by evidence on this page, she believes is “misinformation,” specifically, and what evidence she has that the information is false.
Once again, we have provided you with evidence that these events occurred. That abuse occurred. That our daughter was a victim of this abuse.
It is all on this site, for you to read, and hear, for yourselves.
We have asked you for nothing, except your time, your patience, and your empathy. Oak Hill is asking you to ignore reality. To dismiss abuse with absolutely no basis to do so.
We point you back to the quote from Judith Lewis Herman found at the bottom of our home page:
“It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides. It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing.
He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain.
The victim demands action, engagement and remembering...
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened, the victim lies, the victim exaggerates, the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.
The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”
Thank you all, again, for your support. We continue to encourage you to read the information, and listen to the conversations. Then, make up your own minds. That’s all we have ever asked of you.
