White Collar Week, Ep. 17: #TruthHeals: Systemic Abuse & Institutional Reform with Vanessa Osage

Today on the podcast, we have Vanessa Osage, one of the bravest and most intrepid people I have ever met. Vanessa had dedicated her life to breaking down the barriers of stigma and shame, and helping others to find a new order of loving accountability and restorative justice. We are calling this episode "Truth Heals: Systemic Abuse & Institutional Reform." In it, Vanessa tells her story of reporting sexual abuse at one of our country's elite boarding schools: retribution, coverup, engaging and then abandoning the legal system, attention in some of the nation's most respected newspapers and media, starting a non-profit to serve others going through these kinds of issues, and writing her incredible memoir, "Can't Stop the Sunrise: Adventures in Healing, Confronting Corruption, & the Journey to Institutional Reform."

Joining us as co-host is Chloe Coppola, an advocate with us at Progressive Prison Ministries, who shares the story of her sexual abuse and institutional response while she was a student at her own prep school.

Two courageous women telling their stories in intimate and powerful ways. So coming up, Truth Heals on White Collar Week. I hope you will join us.

- Jeff

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Welcome to White Collar Week with Jeff Grant, a podcast serving the white collar justice community. It’s the isolation that destroys us. The solution is in community.

If you are interested in this podcast, then you are probably already a member of the white collar justice community – even if you don’t quite know it yet. Our community is certainly made up of people being prosecuted, or who have already been prosecuted, for white collar crimes. But it is also made up of the spouses, children and families of those prosecuted for white collar crimes – these are the first victims of white collar crime. And the community also consists of the other victims, both direct and indirect, and those in the wider white collar ecosystem like friends, colleagues, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, law enforcement, academics, researchers. Investigators, mitigation experts, corrections officers, reentry professionals, mental health care professionals, drug and alcohol counselors, – and ministers, chaplains and advocates for criminal and social justice reform. The list goes on and on…

Our mission is to introduce you to other members of the white collar justice community, to hear their very personal stories, and hopefully gain a broader perspective of what this is really all about. Maybe this will inspire some deeper thoughts and introspection? Maybe it will inspire some empathy and compassion for people you might otherwise resent or dismiss? And maybe it will help lift us all out of our own isolation and into community, so we can learn to live again in the sunshine of the spirit.

Blessings, לשלום

Jeff

Rev. Jeff Grant, J.D., M.Div. (he, him, his)
Co-founder, Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc., Greenwich CT & Nationwide
Co-host, The Criminal Justice Insider Podcast
Host, White Collar Week
Mailing: P.O. Box 1, Woodbury, CT 06798
Website: prisonist.org
Email: jgrant@prisonist.org
Office: 203-405-6249
Donations (501c3): bit.ly/donate35T9kMZ

Not a prison coach, not a prison consultant.