Creating conspiracies 

The Ottawa Citizen 

Editorial 

26 February 26, 2009

Most institutions, from national governments and multilateral corporations on down to the smallest church or police force, share an instinct to retreat into silence at the first sign of trouble.

 That instinct is dangerous. When doors slam, people start wondering what's going on behind those doors. As the Cornwall sex-abuse scandal shows, that can cause great and unnecessary pain.    

A group of concerned citizens recently testified at the Cornwall inquiry that many local institutions preferred to deal with abuse complaints as internal or private matters. That's understandable, but it had the effect of making rumours of cover-ups all the more believable.

Much is being made of the actions of former police officer Perry Dunlop, who is either a hero or a conspiracy theorist, depending on whom you ask. But whatever he is, Mr. Dunlop existed in a context -- the context of a community, a diocese, a police force, that was not inclined to be open and transparent about abuse allegations.

It takes courage to acknowledge and deal with criticism, deserved or undeserved, head-on. That approach has the advantage of disarming the critics.

Leaders who can say, as Barack Obama did recently, "I screwed up," are more trustworthy than those who insist they're infallible. Authoritarian regimes often find that they are their own worst enemies. As China has discovered, in the Internet age, it's nearly impossible to keep anything quiet. Attempts to silence critics only magnify the original offence.

The sad story of the Cornwall sex-abuse scandal is not yet over. One lesson, though, is already clear: Everything looks less scary in the daylight.