Resources & Reading
curatedBooks
The Licensing Racket
An examination of how professional licensing systems — including medical boards — often fail to protect the public and instead protect practitioners. Essential reading for understanding why accountability is so rare.
Learn more →The Wrong Side
A sociological examination of how institutions handle — and consistently mishandle — sexual misconduct allegations. Bedera draws on extensive research into campus assault cases to expose systemic patterns.
Learn more →Safeguarding: Reflecting on Child Abuse, Theology and Care
Explores institutional betrayal through a theological and caregiving lens — relevant to understanding how trust is weaponized in both religious and medical contexts.
Learn more →Notes on a Silencing
A memoir about surviving sexual assault at boarding school and the institutional silence that followed. A powerful account of betrayal by trusted authorities and the long road toward speaking out.
Learn more →I Have the Right To
The story of a survivor who came forward publicly and fought against a school system that failed her. An account of extraordinary courage in the face of institutional indifference.
Learn more →Podcasts
Believed
A deeply reported investigation into how Larry Nassar's victims were silenced — and how systemic failures at Michigan State and USA Gymnastics enabled his abuse for decades.
Listen →The Retrievals
Investigates how Yale's fertility clinic dismissed women's pain for years — a study in institutional betrayal within medical settings and how patients are disbelieved by the very professionals meant to protect them.
Listen →Organizations & Websites
RAINN
The nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, with a dedicated section on sexual abuse by medical professionals. Includes a 24/7 hotline and online chat.
Visit RAINN →SNAP Network
Survivor Network of those Abused by Priests — a model for survivor community-building and institutional advocacy. Their letter-writing campaigns and AG resources are a blueprint for this work.
Visit SNAP →Advocates & Voices to Follow
Marissa Hoeschetter
Survivor-advocate who publicly fought against Columbia OB-GYN Robert Hadden. Her campaign and testimony were instrumental in his federal conviction and a model of survivor leadership.
Read her story →Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Law professor who studies how lawmakers should balance the need for expertise in regulating the professions with the problems that can arise from self-regulation.
Learn more →William Heisel
Health journalist whose reporting on medical board failures across multiple states exposed how often physician perpetrators are protected by the very institutions meant to police them.
Find his work →