Content note: This episode discusses sexual violence, disclosure of abuse, breaches of trust in therapeutic and educational spaces, and institutional betrayal.

When someone tells you they’ve been harmed, what do you actually say?

In the Season 2 opener of Human After All, Tanisha Christie, LCSW responds to recent reporting about sexual violence and breaches of trust in therapeutic and educational spaces. Without speaking to any specific case, she turns toward a moment many of us will face: when someone we love chooses to tell us.

Most people don’t tell a professional first. They tell a friend, sibling, family member, or coworker. Drawing on Tarana Burke’s reminder that empathy interrupts shame, Tanisha offers a grounded way to show up: thank them for telling you, let them know it wasn’t their fault, ask what they need, and stay. You don’t have to decide what’s true to offer empathy.

She also names what can harm even when it comes from love: “why” questions that land as blame, defending the person being named, and taking over. Because harm like this takes control away, our role is to help people get it back by letting them lead, keeping their story theirs, and checking in long after the first conversation.

Tanisha speaks to trial-by-comment-section culture and the survivors watching to decide whether it’s safe to tell. She closes with psychologist Jennifer Freyd’s concept of institutional betrayal: what happens when the systems people depend on fail to protect them or close ranks when someone speaks up.

To anyone affected by sexual harm, we hope you find care, dignity, healing, and justice in whatever form those take for you.

Support resources:

- RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-4673, available 24 hours a day

- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988