Sent to Mother Jones’s Backtalk on October 14, 2026, in response to Inae Oh’s “The Uncomfortable Truth About Consent Education” (October 13, 2026). Published here as sent.
To the editors,
I keep circles for people impacted by sexual harm, so I share the question Inae Oh raises in her Oct. 13 article, “The Uncomfortable Truth About Consent Education”: Why would these young men want what they’re accused of? But we never hear from them. Instead, she offers a theory that rapists crave violation itself, citing a vile group chat as evidence. We ask why, then answer for them.
A story with room only for predators cannot hold much else. Oh ends by asking whether to ban Greek life. Shut the frat house and the shame finds another address. We give people who cause harm two choices: deny it or be exiled. Nobody tells the truth on those terms.
I’ve sat with people who have caused harm as they explain why. They say things in circle they’ve never said anywhere else because they’re met without judgment. People who have been harmed so often ask why. Yet when the harm is sexual, we rarely make room for an answer. When we do, the healing can be profound.
Hollow Water, an Anishinaabe community in Manitoba, chose to make that room. Its healing circles confronted significant harms, including child sexual abuse. A government-funded study documented 107 people who had caused harm, only two of whom were reported to have reoffended.
Until we risk that kind of listening, we’re not seeking the uncomfortable truth. We’re passing sentence.
Wilfred Henry
Founder, In Search of Peace Fund
Lovingston, Virginia
Note. The Hollow Water figures are from Couture et al., A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Hollow Water’s Community Holistic Circle Healing Process (Solicitor General Canada, 2001): 107 participants over ten years, two reoffences recorded in the federal offender system, against a 13 percent rate cited for the justice system. The report itself notes the limits of that count.