 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii's new show, What's on Your Mind Hawaii? I'm Tim Apachele, your host. Today is our first show and we will strive to follow Think Tech Hawaii's mission to raise public awareness to fair and thoughtful discussion. When we introduced the concept of this show last week, we talked about conducting interviews in the streets of Honolulu, asking residents and their tourists alike about their opinions of local and national issues. So why are we here in the studio today for the first show? Well, frankly, I felt the topic of today's discussion was important and serious enough that it warranted a quiet setting in a full 29 minutes. Robert Perez, a reporter for the Star Advertiser, has written a series of articles, the first titled, Broken Trust Shattered Lives. A new story detailing a class action suit by 34 male alumni students of Kamehameha schools who were referred to the contracted services of Dr. Robert Brown, chief of psychiatric services at St. Francis Medical Center. In the suit, it is alleged that these young students were sexually assaulted repeatedly during their multiple visits in his office between the years of 1959 to 1981. Specifically, Kamehameha schools is alleged that senior school officials failed in their duty to follow up on student complaints, a sexual assault, further allegations that cases against Dr. Brown were covered up. Facts have yet to be proven and the case will take place in court this June. Admittedly, reading the depositions of former Kamehameha school principals and counselors was difficult at best as they defended why they failed to act on behalf of these young children. Reading the quotations from some of the 34 former students was gut-wrenching and very hard to imagine what these children, who became men, living tortured lives endured during the act of alleged sexual assault and the decades of years after their visits to Dr. Robert Brown. Reading their words of pain and shame, anger, inadequacy, alcohol abuse, drug addiction and for some multiple suicide attempts made it clear they had been living as Dr. Robert Perez perfectly titled Shattered Lives. Our guest today is Mark Gallagher, an attorney who in the past has represented victims of sexual assault. On November 28th in the editorial page of the Star Advertiser, Mr. Gallagher took the bold action to stand up on behalf of these shattered lives and shared what was on his mind. Mark, thank you very much for joining me and particularly over this very rather difficult subject so thank you for taking the time out to join us. Well, Tim, thank you for having me on. It's an honor to be your first guest on the new show, so best of luck with it. I hope it goes as well as your past endeavors have. Yeah, well thank you so much. Well, Mark, let's get to it. Let's take a look at your, what you wrote in the Star Advertiser as far as your editorial. So if you wouldn't mind, you can read it. It'll pop up here on the screen in a second. OK, it'll be here in a minute, so let's just continue on. You actually have a lot of experience in these sort of cases, so can you briefly describe some of your past background cases and what you particularly were involved with? Oh, certainly, I'd be happy to. I think I should first make clear that with respect to these Kamehameh schools cases or case, I don't have any involvement in those matters of represented individuals in the past in cases of childhood sexual abuse against institutions and the perpetrators of the abuse. Right. A lot of the cases have involved religious scouting and educational institutions, including the Roman Catholic Church in the state of Hawaii, the Boy Scouts and some other private schools, nothing against Kamehameha but other private schools. These have been cases that we were able to bring due to a change in the law a few years ago that permitted the filing of cases that otherwise would have been barred by the statute of limitations. I see. OK, well, statute of limitations I want to get to later in our discussion about that because that was one of your points you made in your editorial. So we have the editorial now. Now let's bring that up. Well, the title is Shine a Light on Child Sexual Abuse. Thank you for your excellent reporting on the Kamehameha schools abuse case, Broken Trust, Chatter Lives, Star Advertiser, November 26th. While not involved in that case as an attorney who has represented survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I have seen the benefits to survivors, child safety and institutions in shining a light on these situations. However, it was disheartening to learn that Kamehameha schools and its attorneys are seeking to block the survivors from speaking publicly. The survivors' accounts of abuse have been kept quiet too long for many reasons, including fears of retaliation or not being believed, embarrassment and shame. Many survivors do not find the courage or the opportunity to speak the truth for many years after the abuse. The survivors' accounts are theirs and lessons for us all. Any effort by Kamehameha schools to quiet them is causing further harm to the survivors and demonstrates a tendency toward a pattern of secrecy in which abusers find the cover of darkness to act. OK, well, well written. Thank you. And that's a very bold editorial and I'm glad you did it. That's what caught my eye and that's why we're here in the studio today to talk about this subject. You had mentioned in the editorial about the benefits of shining a light on this particular subject and can you describe a little bit more of what benefits actually come out of these shining a light on institutions? Well, historically, these cases have been in the shadows. These survivors, when they're kids and suffer abuse, are fearful that they won't be believed. They are reluctant to confront the abuser for fear of what may happen to them. Or the families, they're embarrassed by it. And wrongly, they believe that they're somehow responsible. Kids think that whatever happens to them is because of something that they did. They're the center of their own universes. So these cases have remained in the shadows for years because the survivors aren't willing to talk about it then when it happens often and don't have the support structures to do that. And the institutions obviously have motivation to keep things like this out of the public light because it reflects poorly on the institution and what the institution may stand for or hope to achieve. So these cases stay in the shadows. When they stay in the shadows, it provides the perfect environment for an abuser to operate. If an abuser doesn't fear exposure, doesn't fear the glare of publicity and retribution and law enforcement, then that abuser is free to continue going on with what the abuser has been doing. And it develops into a cycle. So in this particular case, and this is disturbing and you brought it up in your editorial, is that, Kamehameha had a case back in 2014, which I don't know was settled one way or the other or wasn't heard in court. I don't know how that was resolved, excuse me. But they use that particular case as a basis to try to gag all 34 former students from speaking out about this particular class action suit. How is that possible or how do they maneuver that to silence these students? Well, I have reviewed some of the pleadings in the case and that would be the basis for my understanding of what happened before. The 2014 case apparently involved many of the same plaintiffs and involved Kamehameha schools and was dismissed on a, I want to call it an administrative technicality, but there was an issue with respect to the medical malpractice aspect of the case involving Dr. Brown, a hoop that needed to be jumped through before the case could proceed. And so the case was dismissed. The plaintiffs were free to refile it. And the refiled case is the case that is currently pending. Apparently, there was an order entered in the earlier case and there may be an order in the current case, a protective order of preventing the plaintiffs and their attorneys from sharing their stories. From the victim standpoint, how important is it to be able to articulate their experience and how to what extent is it damaging that they are now be prevented to do so if that were to go through and put basically a gag order on their ability to speak out? Well, I think it's tremendously damaging. And that's one of my primary motivations in writing the letter to the editor that you saw. The issue with the survivors is that when it happens to them, they're powerless. They're kids. There is an imbalance in power. You have an authority figure who's abusing a child, and that child has no control over what happened, has no power in the relationship. But part of the healing process is for that child as an adult survivor to take back the power in the relationship. And the power that they have is the ability to speak their truth. That's one of the reasons why these cases are so important because it gives the survivors the ability to speak their truth and to confront the abuser and confront the institutions that didn't provide them with the protection that they should have. So it's the survivor's story to tell. It shouldn't be squashed or kept down or out of the light if the survivor has gotten to the point that there is enough strength for them to do it. To speak publicly, I think they should be able to. Are there any, and I know you're not a psychologist, but you have worked with these cases several times, is there psychological harm that can come about for now that are being prevented from talking about it? From my perspective, there is. I've represented probably about 70 survivors over the past four or five years. And when they cannot speak their truth, it puts them back into the place that they were as a child, being victimized. The institution is not taking them seriously. They're not getting the power back that's necessary for their healing, rather. So I think it does do them harm. Are there, you represented a number or a majority of cases against the Honolulu Catholic Archdiocese. What similarities do you see with these type of cases, be it Kamehameha School District or eventually it's going to be St. Francis and the Scouts? What are the common denominators that you see in these type of cases? As far from the institution defense. You mean in terms of how the institution handles its defense? The common things, I think we've seen in evolution over time. Initially, I think you found that a lot of institutions would deny that anything ever happened. There was a brick wall. It didn't happen, and then if it did happen, well, we're not responsible for it. I believe that many institutions now are finding themselves in a position of having to admit that yes, it did happen. And part of that is that you have so many people who have been able to come forward and speak their truth. It's not a situation where there's only one person speaking. It's a group. So it has changed that shift and that a lot of them will say, well... What do you think the motivator for them to change their strategy of complete denial and years of trying to fight this and litigate and deny to an acknowledgement that something did happen? What was the quantum shift that moved it from complete denial to acknowledgement? I think it was the ability to bring claims, not just one person, but many people to bring them. And that was the statute of limitations issue, which we'll address later, had a big part in that because it was not possible for the institution to defend a case by saying, well, you're just one person and you said this happened to you and this teacher or priest or doctor has been here forever and there are no other cases. So we don't believe you. It didn't happen. But once you have in the case of the Kamehameha schools matter, 34 individuals coming forward saying, yes, it happened to me. There's strength in that. And so that I think has caused the shift. Well, it's interesting that we're now looking at institutions to some degree. They're saying, okay, there is an acknowledgement that there's pain has occurred and we're going to try to get through as best we can. And that was basically some of the responses from Kamehameha schools. There wasn't a statement of acknowledgement. I guess what really flourished me though is if you read some of the depositions from the former school principals, particularly Michael Chun, which I'm going to read this, because he was asked a question during deposition as basically why wasn't something done. And Michael Chun's response, and I think it took a lot of people back, was he said, doing nothing is doing something, right? I mean, that's a really jaw-dropping response. And it's not really congruent with the statement from the institution saying, we acknowledge that something has been done and it's been done wrong. And there's some culpability there. So how do these two things reconcile in your mind? Well, in my mind, and I'm hoping that what he meant when he said it was that back then when he was the president and making the decisions, he made a decision to do nothing. And that was, in fact, something. I think it was a harmful thing to do. That is exactly the type of situation where if you have a survivor speaking, telling what happened, if nothing happens, it drops that cover of darkness over the whole issue. So doing nothing is, it is doing something and it's damaging. Right. Hopefully now, if they're admitting that, yes, these things did happen, that they've evolved beyond that. And now if something like that came to them, they would actually do something. Now, in Robert Perez's reporting, that's a star advertiser, he had mentioned that there were a number of documents destroyed. To what degree will that be damaging to the institution's defense, specifically if you don't know what documents were destroyed? Oh, that is problematic without really knowing what the documents were. Any effort to conceal knowledge that they might have against it, I think would be, or about the abuse, would be terribly damaging. But I really don't know what the documents are. Right. None of us do. And yeah, ultimately, that would be. I was surprised to see that, that fact was actually that did occur and there didn't seem to be any denial that documents were destroyed as a result of basically cover-up. But if it is in fact a cover-up, then that would be up to the judge to determine a time of trial, how much of that evidence is going to get in and exactly what conclusions the jury would be permitted to draw, what inferences they may make from the destruction of the documents. Right. I imagine that would be hotly litigated. Yeah, I would imagine. So, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we are going to talk about some of the, what the victims go through. And I know you've had a lot of experience working with your clients in the past, so talk about that. And we'll be right back. This is Tim Appichella. I'm here with Mark Gallagher and this is What's On Your Mind Hawaii. I saw it do it. Hi, this is Tim Appichella. This is What's On Your Mind Hawaii. And I'm here with Mark Gallagher and we're talking about the Kamehameha School District articles that have been recently published in the Star Advertiser. The reporter is Robert Perez, talking about the alleged sexual abuse of students for a multiple of decades at the hands of Dr. Robert Brown at St. Francis Medical Center. Mark, thank you for joining us and welcome back. Thank you. Before the break, we had talked about some specifics of the strategies of institutions and how they defend their cases and how that's changed. Let's talk about those students and children that now are adults and live in very troubled and, as Robert Perez stated, shattered lives. Doing some research and there's a nonprofit by the National Center of Victims of Crimes and they collect a gathering of data and studies and things like that. And they said there's some common themes that you'll see with those who have been abused in their childhood. In the first initial years, sleek deprivation is a real problem and then followed by having personnel problems and behavioral problems in school acting out. And then it's stated that on long-term cases, people have severe anxiety and they have fear and difficulty in informing relationships or maintaining relationships. I guess the question is when you finally get these cases and you're meeting these victims for the first time and they're our survivors, by the way, are you one of the first people they see to talk about this or have they kind of been out there talking about it before and by the time they see you and how you go through what you need to find out from them, has that all been resolved or are you kind of on the forefront of meeting the victims and their issues? More often than not, I think I've been the first person that a survivor has shared their experience with and the meetings can be very emotional. They're very profound. I've found myself sitting across from gentlemen who may be in their 50s who are big, burly, kind of long short type construction guys, very rugged guys who have never shared their experiences and will break down and cry when they go back to that time in their life when they were a kid and they were abused. Difficult emotionally. I was going to say it must be really tough if you're one of the first, on the forefront of them opening up about their experience. I really couldn't imagine being in your office at that time and hearing their stories. That would be very difficult. Have you taken any kind of training that helps you through that for yourself? You're being exposed to kind of their stories of trauma and that must certainly affect you at times. Well, I have relied upon psychologists and other professionals who have been through this in terms of the treatment of some of these individuals to get a bit of a handle on how best to assist the client as they're sharing what is a painful story and to help them as they make the steps towards taking back the power and addressing it and sharing it with other people. I think it's very helpful for them when they can to share it with other people when they're ready. Have you noticed that there may be instances where your client actually gets worse psychologically and makes their testimony difficult or during depositions and things like that? I have found instances where I think the process can be damaging to a client. And in those instances, it's largely become because of how the defendants were conducting themselves. We had spoken a little bit earlier about whether an institution will admit that something happened and get out of that confrontational posture of, hey, you're a liar, it didn't happen. I was going to say during the deposition process on the defendant's side, I can imagine that we'd be fairly traumatic for the survivor. It is. It can be challenging for them to do. I think that that's one of the most difficult parts of any of these cases is for the survivor to be able to sit there in deposition and share with somebody who is an adversary exactly what it was that happened. For the most part, though, while that can be a difficult process, I've found that the survivors when they come out the other end of it really feel better about having shared and having confronted a representative of the institution that they hold responsible for what happened to them. That was one of my questions is if once the action has been resolved, whether or not that is a sense of satisfaction for the survivor. I guess the answer is yes. Yeah. Oh, I think it is. It's a step towards them being able to resolve to the extent they can what it was that happened to them. And I think in large measure, it gives the survivor a feel that the institution has finally accepted responsibility. Through resolving the case, the institution has, by its actions, said something. Something wrong happened to you. We're responsible and we're going to do what we can to make it right. I'm going to switch just a little bit to the institution again because what safeguards have institutions over the years start placing to protect children in these kind of situations? Has there been markable institutional changes that or safeguards? We've seen changes over the years, certainly. They can be something as simple as having a window on a counselor's door at a school so that there's not that isolation. The child isn't isolated from the possibility of somebody looking. There is certainly greater awareness now in most institutions that these problems exist. And they have mechanisms. The ones that are being responsive are developing mechanisms for permitting the children to report things or for other concerned people to report things. Oftentimes, the clues that there's something going on aren't necessarily just the kids, but people, parents or other teachers or other employees, see signs. They see flags, red flags, that there's a potential for a problem. And there are mechanisms for them to report their concerns. I guess I want to explore. This is a topic I'm just not familiar with. And so I guess the question is, what mechanism is it for a child to understand and know they can exercise that may not be directed through their parents? I mean, sometimes relatives get in the way of the truth coming out for whatever reason. And I just wondered if there's mechanisms that children know about. Well, family members can be, especially in cases where the abusers of family member, there can be a real impediment to the child being able to report and having any sort of response. Institutionally, it's through the use of counselors and people that the children can talk to and feel free talking to. That, I think, is the most important thing. The child has to feel like there's somebody, an adult, whom I can go to and I will be listened to. I suppose that's what's so insidious about this particular case, because in this case, Dr. Robert Brown was the counselor that these troubled children would go to and express what's bothering them. And that's what makes this really so insidious. We're wrapping up here pretty quick. I wanted to talk a little bit about the statute of limitations and how that was a monumental shift when that was, in 2012, I believe, the governor signed that when it comes to sexual abuse cases, the statute of limitations would be extended. Can you talk to that a little bit? Yeah, no, I'd be happy to. We are one of a handful of states that has provided some relief to survivors in terms of the statute of limitations, which for your audience is basically a law that says that if cases aren't brought within a certain amount of time, they cannot be brought. And so once that deadline runs, people can't bring claims. So in 2012, the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill that provided two years for individuals who had been abused as children to bring claims in court. And that statute, the window statute, we call it, was actually extended another two years. So we went up to 2016 for a time period for these cases to be filed. This was related directly to the Honolulu archdiocese case. Is that correct? The Honolulu diocese cases were filed under that. These Kamehameha schools cases were filed under that. Unfortunately, that window is closed now. The window closed in April of 2016. Oh, so there was a finite period of the extension. Yeah, it was a window that opened and window shut. Well, don't you think it's a great idea that all statute of limitations would be nullified because of a sexual abuse situation, given the fact that victims have a hard time reporting these things even decades later? Oh, I think it's particularly appropriate in cases like this where kids aren't ready to process this and share it. And when they become 18, they're still not ready. They're young adults and they're not ready to process it and address it. So in these cases in particular, I think it's helpful to have these periods of time, these extensions. And there actually was a bill last legislative session that didn't make it out of committee to extend it a bit further. Who knows what will happen this session? Well, I hope we make progress on this issue. It's important. And Mark, I want to thank you for enlightening us and doing the work that you do. You're doing quite a service. And it's difficult, particularly against some of the power of these institutions. And thank you for joining us today. This is Tim Avachella. This is What's On Your Mind Hawaii. And I'm here with Mark Gallagher. And we'll see you in two weeks. Aloha.