What the reckoning around Cesar Chavez reveals and what survivors have been trying to tell us all along
A Difficult Question
Here’s a question worth pondering: What do we do when someone we have long honored as a hero is accused of harming others? What is our initial response?
For years, Cesar Chavez has been upheld as a defender of the vulnerable and a champion of human dignity. Now, allegations have surfaced that complicate that narrative. Many people are questioning whether his name should remain on schools, streets, and public memorials. In a somewhat rare instance of swift and decisive action, his name has already been removed from some Catholic dioceses and organizations that once honored him.
Given how quickly the Church has responded in this case, it raises the question, why does this level of urgency appear so selectively? One could charitably hope that this reflects lessons learned from the past. If that is true, then it only underscores a deeper frustration. Imagine what could be done if the same resolve were applied to other cases such as the continued presence of artwork by Marko Rupnik. Where there is a will, there is a way. The Church itself is demonstrating that.
Strangely and sadly, that same will does not seem to be applied consistently. But I digress.
Elsewhere, the response to Cesar Chavez’s behavior has been far less focused on truth and justice, and some people seem more concerned with protecting his legacy. Instead of taking the findings of the investigation seriously, they are instead questioning victims, scrutinizing their timing, and shifting attention away from the claims.
This brings us back to the heart of the matter: are we truly committed to truth, even when it disrupts our narratives and challenges our heroes? As Jennifer Roback Morse asks: are we committed to truth or to tribe?
Survivors Have Lived This Before
Abuse survivors have seen this same cycle before when allegations surface about a respected figure. The public response almost always follows a familiar pattern:
• Initial disbelief
• Defensive comparisons to “all the good they did”
• Subtle (or not-so-subtle) suspicion toward the accuser (why did he/she wait so long to come forward?)
This choosing of tribe over truth is deeply personal for survivors as we have watched, time and time again, as tribes become more concerned about protecting reputations more fiercely than defending truth and the vulnerable. For tribes, it can be mighty humbling to admit, “I was wrong about this person I admired.” Pride is not easily broken.
When cases like Cesar Chavez’s come to light, we hear the same questions aimed at victims:
• “Why didn’t they say something sooner?”
“Why can’t they just move on?”
“Why is this even important?”
• “Are we really going to tear down everything the accused accomplished?”
What those questions often really mean is “This truth is inconvenient and it’s embarrassing and humbling. Are we sure we want to face it?”
Understanding Grooming: Why Abuse Is Rarely Obvious
If we are going to have an honest conversation about cases such as this one concerning Cesar Chavez, we must talk about the grooming process. Because of grooming, abuse (especially by respected figures in positions of authority) is rarely obvious right off the bat.
The actual abuse doesn’t usually begin right away. Predators take time and care to groom their prey. It’s a process and can involve individuals or whole groups of people. Grooming often begins with attention, affirmation, and trust. A person in authority positions themselves as safe, kind, even protective. Boundaries are slowly broken down.
Predators are master manipulators and do things to make the victim feel confused and fearful and even special and dependent on them. The sexual touching part doesn’t begin right away. The predator proceeds slowly and carefully, learning about their victim’s strengths and weaknesses, manipulating and brainwashing them. He or she waits for the right moment to strike and begins with subtle advances such as a touch to the hand or shoulder. When the sexual part begins, once that line is crossed, the victim is not standing outside the situation looking in with clarity. They are standing inside it, and their perception has been shaped by the very person harming them. Add to this the weight of the abuser’s reputation if they are admired, respected, even revered. Predators groom anyone close to their victim and even entire communities. This only deepens the confusion victims suffer.
Abuse so often hides in plain sight, not because it is invisible, but because it is misunderstood. If we truly want to understand abuse, we need to understand grooming first.
Why Victims Wait
Another question rises quickly in situations like this is “Why did they wait so long to come forward?” The question might sound reasonable, but it also carries the dangerous assumption that truth is always immediate, clear, and easy to speak. As a survivor, I can tell you from experience that choosing to speak is an excruciatingly hard part of the entire experience. It is agony.
There are many reasons why victims delay disclosure of abuse:
• Fear of not being believed, especially when the accused is widely admired
• Shame and misplaced self-blame, common effects of trauma
• Psychological survival, including compartmentalization and delayed processing
• Power dynamics, where the abuser holds influence or authority
• A desire to protect one’s own life from further upheaval
Also, due to grooming, many survivors do not fully understand what happened to them until years later. For some, it seems easier to suppress what happened. We know, however, that it always comes out in other ways. Until someone can accept what a happened to them and face it head on, it will only continue to rear its ugly head in other unhealthy ways.
Trauma does not operate neatly on a timeline. It disrupts memory, distorts perception, and often delays clarity. So, when someone comes forward decades later, the question is not: “Why now?” The real question is: “What finally made it possible for them to speak?”
Yes, false accusations do happen. There is such thing as investigations and due process everything that entails. However, we cannot assume that coming forward is a sign of opportunism. It is often a sign that, at long last, the cost of silence has become greater than the cost of telling the truth.
The Dangerous Instinct to Protect the Narrative
When faced with uncomfortable allegations, there is a powerful instinct to preserve what we think we know. We want our heroes to remain heroes, and we want our interpretation of their story to stay intact, so we reach for qualifiers:
• “But look at all the good he did…”
• “We can’t erase history…”
• “This seems hard to believe…”
Yet, the truth does not exist to protect certain narratives. When we prioritize a legacy over the possibility of real harm, we send a message (unintentional or not) that some people are too important to question and some reputations are too valuable to risk. Therefore, victims are too inconvenient to fully hear.
What Justice Actually Demands
Justice should not be a mob reaction, nor should it be an impulsive erasure or rooted in outrage alone. However, justice does require honesty. It sometimes requires us to hold two realities at once: That a person may have done good, and that they may also have caused profound harm. These truths are not mutually exclusive. When harm is credible, it must not be minimized in order to preserve the good.
Reconsidering public honors is not about rewriting history. It is about deciding what we, as a society, choose to elevate. A name on a building is not neutral. Rather, it is a statement of honor. If honor is to mean anything at all, it must be rooted in integrity.
What the Catholic Church and All Institutions Must Confront
The Catholic Church knows this terrain. The abuse crisis revealed the devastating reality of harm as well as the catastrophic consequences of institutional self-protection.
Files were hidden, allegations were minimized, and victims were doubted and silenced. Predators were let off with a slap on the wrist and possibly relocated. In many cases, the desire to preserve the Church’s reputation outweighed the urgency of confronting the truth.
This is not just a failure of policy, it is a failure of moral clarity. If we are to learn anything from both past failures and present controversies, it must be that, regardless if the person/situation in question is in the church, public life, or anywhere else, the truth cannot be subordinate to reputation.
A Test of Integrity
Over the years, we’ve seen quite a bit of cancel culture. We tear down flawed figures because it seems like the right thing to do or because some part of their life when against our own agenda. Therefore, there is a tendency to dismiss conversations such as the one concerning Cesar Chavez as reactionary. This isn’t always true.
This isn’t about tearing down every flawed figure. This is not about perfection. It is about accountability., about whether we are willing to take allegations seriously even when they disrupt our preferred narratives, and about whether we can ask difficult questions without immediately rushing to defend what is familiar. Ultimately, it is about whether we are willing to center the wounded instead of the powerful by choosing truth over tribe.
A Word to Survivors
If you are a survivor watching this unfold, I want to assure you that you are not imagining the weight of this moment. When you see people defend the accused, question the timing, or minimize the possibility of harm, it can bring back memories of not being believed, of being dismissed, and of being asked to stay quiet for the sake of something “greater.”
Survivors are not an inconvenience. They are not a threat to truth. Survivors are a witness to it. Your voice matters, no matter how long it took to find it.
The Final Question: What Will We Choose to Honor?
We need to ask ourselves if we are willing to confront the complexity of situations such as this one rather than clinging to simplicity.
Are we willing to listen instead of dismiss?
Are we willing to choose truth over tribe even when it costs us something?
In the end, the question is not simply what happened in the past. The real question is what we will do with it now. That answer will define how we discuss our history and also our integrity.
