My first out-of-college job was at a place where there was over 60 years of systemic abuse of the kids there. The kids had various degrees of disabilities and were unable to defend themselves and when they tried to tell their parents, the program was able to use their disabilities against them and discount what they said.
This was 1998 and kids were being thrown into the wall, restrained on the floor while naked, being fed outdated food, dragged by their ankles (resulting in rug burns) and pulled around by their hair. I did my research and found out this had been going on for decades—and nobody knew just how long. The earliest I could figure out was 60 years. I documented and then reported to the program director. I was ignored then fired.
I went to the state governing board, the ACLU, Child protection, different agencies—none of them believed me even with my documentations and I was written off as a disgruntled ex-employee. I lost my job, one of the sons of the people working there worked the hospital and sent fraudulent credit collection reports on me and messed up my credit—it took 4 years to clean that up because they wanted me to prove I didn’t owe the fictional money. It was horrible—
The redeeming grace here is—the kids I protected and worked hard to help finally became old enough to fight the system themselves and ONE employee had been listening to me all along. HE eventually became the program director, issued me an apology 8 years later, asked me to come back, and almost all the kids I worked with sought me out one way or another to say “Hi.” Yep—THAT was a hornet’s nest for sure.