Ms. Watson:

I am breaking my own word by writing to you. I told your director I would not write anyone at Oregon State Parks except her records officer. I intend to recommit to that word, but there is something I must place on the record.

You are responsible for the conditions volunteers serve under.

When a park supervisor and her manager targeted me, there was no one for me to turn to. As program manager you should have established routes for volunteers to safely report misconduct. You were responsible for my safety inside your institution and the record shows you reversed the offender. You punished the volunteer.

When you learned I had recorded a meeting, it was your responsibility to investigate why. Instead you choose positional authority. When I called you directly after that, and held my hand out to you anyway, I want it on the record: you told me to put my head down. And I did, even though your duty was to stop the ongoing harm.

When the park supervisor sent a man to pressure me while everyone was away, it was your responsibility to discover who the man was and hold the supervisor accountable for targeting a volunteer. When the park manager dismissed me with the flimsiest of excuses, dishonoring a veteran, and using a homeless man's journal as the justification, and I was at my most vulnerable moment, and I again extended my hand to you, it was your job to respond with real care and integrity.

It has been 574 days. Listen to what you did with that responsibility. It may shock your conscience to hear it after so long. You ambushed me. You colonized my interior. You further harmed me after the harm I had just endured. You took a man experiencing dismissal and forced displacement and violated him further. You severed the life he built from scratch with his own two hands. And then you spent a year privately editing a Word document, making dozens of revisions over hours of writing. I mean this with no disrespect: your document is incoherent on its face, but placed next to the record your own hand damns you.

When your deputy director reached for borrowed power, in an impotent attempt to bury your actions, your document traveled with him. To state police, who targeted me all over again, for the same thing, stemming from the same poisonous tree. One of the detectives wrote "unfortunately" he couldn't find anything in the archive. They wanted to harm me. And you witnessed their attempt to do so. In silence. And all of it stems from your responsibility to me.

You harmed me. You are harming me right now. And because of your background, you are the one most capable of seeing the harm. When your name is placed in sequence on Key Individuals, it is clear you are the bridge and the glue between the ugliest acts an institution can commit against someone. I redacted your name when I redacted the local staff, but it was a mistake. I am choosing to return your name to the record. You will stand with those I have classified as dangerous to the public.

Earlier this year, I released you from personal liability. That promise remains. I will take it to my grave. But I will not protect you at the expense of the next volunteer. Until conditions at Oregon State Parks are safe for volunteers, the public must be told why they are not, and who holds the responsibility to make them so.

That person is you, Allison Watson.

I do not require a response, but the door is open. I'm not the kind of man to shut them.

*Robert Samuel White*
rswfire.com
oprdvolunteerabuse.org
autonomyrealms.com