Torture May Indeed Be in "America's Soul"

By Daniel J. Webster

"Let me make very clear the position of my government and our country. We do not condone torture," said President Bush, sitting in a high-back wing chair near the fireplace in the White House during an Oval Office photo-op, June 22.

"The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being," he asserted. That type of protest about torture being un-American at its core could be a case of societal denial.

It is nothing new for Rosalind Wiseman. She's heard similar words of excuse. When the photos of humiliation and torture from Abu Ghraib prison were published, she was not surprised.

Wiseman has seen photos of torture and heard the stories of teen sexual abuse - not in any military context, but in suburban American high schools. She's consulted school and community leaders in places where violence and silence have produced ugly scenes among "good kids" who just "got out of hand."

"You hear the same script," says the author of Queen Bee & Wannabes , the book that inspired the hit movie, Mean Girls , which opened nationwide last April.

"Parents and officials all say the same thing. 'These are good kids. There were just some bad apples. This just went too far,'" she says, shaking her head in resignation.

"We learn this behavior when we are young," she says. "We have a culture in this country that teaches silence in the face of bullying. And we learn it in school," Wiseman says.

The American culture of teen violence and bullying prompted the 35-year-old author to help found the Empower program. It is an anti-violence, awareness-raising campaign to open the eyes of young women and men to the power players in their lives. Wiseman lectures across the nation and leads workshops to help teens see the source of the violence young people live with.

"When you take young people in the military and send them into places [like Abu Ghraib] they are already susceptible to group-think. They learned it back in school," she says.

In May 2003, female high school students were videotaped torturing fellow students at Glenbrook North High School in Glenview, Ill., near Chicago. Their male counterparts were heard on the tape screaming, "Kill! Kill!" This incident saw human excrement, paint, garbage and more being dumped on the fighting girls. Injuries resulted in trips to the hospital. The girl's group was called the Powder Puffs.

Last year Wiseman attended a town meeting in the Chicago area and heard a female student defend her school.

"We are not bad kids," Wiseman quoted the girl. "We are Merit scholars, championship debate team members." And, Wiseman recalled, one local politician defended the "friendliness and warmth" of the community.

In August, 2003 a Long Island, N.Y., high school football program was investigated after younger players were sexually assaulted by older boys. It was part of an "initiation" that might have gone unnoticed had not some of the victims required hospital treatment.

And just this month, Newsweek magazine reported on a hazing case at the prestigious Groton prep school in New England. A former student's allegations have resulted in a five-year investigation of sexual abuse of younger students by upper class students.

The script she has heard from U.S. officials about the Iraqi prisoner abuse is, for her, strikingly familiar. Wiseman contends that unless Americans acknowledge the violence in the culture, the denial of it will only continue to bring about more "Abu Ghraibs."

"If we refuse to accept ourselves, our children, our communities, and our country for the good, bad, and the ugly, our legacy of bullying will continue," says Wiseman.

"If we cling to a self-image and national identity that is solely based on the belief in our honor and unquestionable rightness, we will be blind to our capacity to be cruel. Our very drive to deny the possibility of wrongdoing creates the opportunity for the wrongdoing to occur."

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The Rev. Daniel J. Webster is director of communications for the Episcopal Diocese of Utah. A media veteran and peace activist in the church, he writes a regular column for "A Globe of Witnesses." Dan may be reached by email at dwebster@episcopal-ut.org.