This series explores how to deal with destructive people within your Coven or Pagan group. There is a class of people who are driven to tear down things which others have built, usually by making unfair and unreasonable attacks on those in leadership positions. I've called these people "trolls", making use of the very powerful and very old European image of forces which are destructive and chaotic - yet easily outwitted, if you know a little about their habits.
Previous installments of this series have given hints and techniques for identifying trolls, warning signs to watch for and ways to recognize the sort of person who is going to thrive on causing you trouble. The basic technique in dealing with trolls is to simply get rid of them. Trolls who ask for membership in your Coven should be firmly turned away. A troll who stays disguised long enough to become a Coven member should be told to leave once unmasked. Handling trolls can be uncomplicated, if done early enough, because in a Coven, the Coven Leaders have the unquestioned authority to take action.
But trolls can find their way into larger Pagan organizations, where the authority is more diffuse, and where there are procedures and red tape. Trolls also delight in throwing hand grenades into conversations in a magazine's letters-to-the-editor column, or on Internet newsgroups or e-mail lists, where it may be impossible to easily get rid of them. There is also the question of how to handle trolls on a Tradition-wide basis, or within the large and growing Pagan community as a whole; what's to prevent a troll from simply going down the street and mucking up the Coven next door?
This installment will talk about dealing with trolls in Pagan organizations. The next one will have a discussion of online trolls and some suggestions for community networking. Even if you're not a member of a large Pagan organization, some of the information here might be useful, for it describes principles which can be applied to other situations as well. Any data about how a troll is likely to act - or about how to effectively react to a troll - can wind up being valuable elsewhere.
An Organizational Procedure
The following bits of advice are based on real-life cases, examples taken from observing actual Pagan organizations trying to deal with trolls - and, usually, failing. Be warned; these things really do happen.
By far the most important and useful way to deal with trolls is to insure the organization's members understand the issues and know what to look for. Have workshops and discussions on trollspotting and trollhandling. Perhaps run an annual refresher course on the subject. You want the organization's members to recognize trolls and trollish scams. If and when a troll gets in and starts operating, you want the critter to be recognized. But, education, while necessary, is not enough. You also need ways to handle the things.
Before you join or start up any Pagan organization larger than a single Coven, be certain there's a procedure for handling ethics violations. Sooner or later, a troll will target someone in your Pagan organization. You will need a way to deal with it. If you don't have a procedure, you're really asking for trouble. In one national organization, a troll managed to get elected to high office; as one of the troll's first official actions, the organization's rules for handling ethics complaints were repealed. The organization was utterly destroyed and dissolved within six months. You must have rules and procedures for ejecting people for defamation of character, for unethical activities inconsistent with the goals of the organization, and for violation of the organization's rules. The organization must be willing to exercise those provisions, and to actually eject people who really need it.
Any system for handling complaints must include safeguards, because trolls are very good at manipulating rules. In addition to having procedures which allow you to kick a troll out, you also needs shields to prevent trolls for abusing those very procedures. Trolls have two common ways of manipulating the complaint process. The first way is to foul up the process when a complaint is filed against them. The second is to abuse the process by filing a complaint themselves, against someone they wish to target. Any process for dealing with complaints against an organization's members has to take both of these possibilities into account.
In most cases, a complaint will be filed by someone who feels he or she has been harmed by the person named in the complaint. Emotions are bound to run high, and trolls will do their best to play on those emotions, regardless of which side of the matter they're on. This is why any procedure must have strict rules, carefully followed, and enforced almost mechanically: strict procedures are harder to manipulate. So make sure your complaint process takes all this into account. Here is an example of a complaint process which should work pretty well; adapt it to your organization's needs:
1) Filing. A member of the organization may file a written ethics complaint against another member. The complaint must state what specific actions are being complained about, and must provide details (what exactly happened, where, when, who was present, and so on). The complaint must also include a brief explanation of why the particular action should be of concern to the organization.
2) Preliminary hearing. The complaint is given a preliminary hearing by the organization's governing board. The board needs to determine whether the complained-about action really does represent a violation of the organization's ethics rules, and whether the accuser has provided or can provide reasonable evidence or testimony showing events to have actually occurred as described. If the complaint does not describe unethical actions, or if the accusations appear to be unsupportable, the complaint is dismissed. Otherwise:
3) Presentation and response. A small panel (three or four people) is appointed to process the complaint. This panel is charged with delivering a copy of the complaint to the person accused, and then obtaining a written response from that person, within a firm and set time frame. Thirty days is a good maximum period to give the panel to do its work. During this time, other written testimony or documentation can also be provided to the panel by either party, subject to the Rules of Evidence (which are discussed below).
4) Delivery. If the person accused refuses to submit a reply within the allotted time, the complaint is declared "proven by default". Otherwise, at the end of that time, all of the written evidence is distributed to the organization's governing board. The board is given a specified period - two weeks is probably sufficient - to read and become familiar with the evidence.
5) Consideration and resolution. At the next regularly-scheduled meeting of the organization's governing board, the complaint is considered in detail. Both sides may present witnesses and additional testimony, subject again to the Rules of Evidence. If the accused refuses to participate, the complaint is declared "proven by default". Otherwise, the board takes a vote (according to whatever voting procedures the organization uses) to determine whether the complaint has been proven.
Rules of Evidence
Trolls love to distract complaint procedures by bringing in all kinds of irrelevant details or imagined slights from months - or years - before. Don't let this happen. The panel processing the complaint should accept all written testimony presented to it, but should declare irrelevant anything which doesn't directly apply to the matters dealt with in the complaint. Any testimony deemed irrelevant should afterwards be made available to the governing board, to insure nothing was withheld improperly. When oral testimony is presented to the governing board, there should be a chairperson who is empowered to rule evidence to be improper or inadmissible. There are five important areas to watch for:
* Focus. Both written and oral testimony must pertain to the actual matters dealt with in the complaint. Don't allow unrelated bitching to distract you from the matter at hand.
* Verification. Hearsay and unnamed sources are disallowed. In general, limit a person's testimony to things which that person actually saw or participated in. It's okay for a witness to describe things he or she was told; but be sure to find out who did the telling, and verify it with the person named. Trolls love to invent tales like, "Well, someone told me Zelda did this and that; no, I can't say who told me about it, because I promised to keep their name in confidence." If a witness is unwilling to provide the source of testimony, then the testimony itself should be disallowed.
* Specificity. Insist on examples and specifics. If a witness says, "Edgar was mean and hurtful," demand specific examples of Edgar being mean and hurtful - if it's relevant to the complaint. If not, ignore it. If there are no details to be had, such statements are meaningless and inadmissible.
* Manipulation. Whether accusing someone else, or defending themselves, trolls appeal almost exclusively to emotion, and will do everything they can to get you angry at the other party. Disallow attempts at emotional manipulation. Concentrate on what really happened.
* Attacks. When accused of wrongdoing, trolls will frequently respond with an counterassault upon their accusers, charging senseless malice or spite or jealousy. Trolls have even been known to use the existence of the complaint itself as evidence of malice against them! Don't fall for this sort of ploy. Simple name-calling is also disallowed; trolls like to defend themselves by insisting the accusers are just being petty or "mean-spirited," or characterizing the other party with violent and ugly labels. Pagan trolls love to invent charges of "One-True-Wayism", and to compare others to Inquisitors. Ignore that nonsense.
All of these ploys are used to hide the fact that the person using them really has nothing tangible or reasonable to say. They are all simple manipulation. If either the accuser or the person accused insists on violating these rules repeatedly, it should weigh heavily against them in a determination of the believability of their position.
Commentary on Procedure
This commentary is numbered in parallel to the steps in the procedure above.
1) Filing. Ethics complaints are always a bit problematic. They are often very subtle things; they seldom involve obvious or direct violation of an organization's rules or procedures. Ethics can also be individual, and an act which one person considers to be unethical may be seen as reasonable by someone else. Things which one organization might consider unethical might not be seen as unethical by some other organization. In the heat of the moment, someone may feel wronged, but may really need just to calm down. There even are occasional misunderstandings which get blown out of proportion. On the other hand, genuine unethical acts should not be tolerated, particularly not by a spiritual or religious organization. All this is why a complaint must describe specific actions in detail, and why an explanation must be provided for why the organization should consider the complaint at all. The organization's constitution and bylaws should list some general guidelines and examples of actions it will not tolerate, and it should also make plain that the guidelines and examples are not exhaustive.
2) Preliminary hearing. The complaint must be about actions, not motivations. Trolls will accuse other people of doing something which is really pretty reasonable, but for ugly or sinister motives, and then they'll expect others to be upset about those bad motives. But if an act is not unethical in and of itself, then it's not unethical. And unless a person can prove infallible psychic powers, any intimation of someone else's state of mind (i.e., motive) is irrelevant. As examples: One troll complained about being kicked out of a Coven, alleging all manner of petty or ugly motivations on the part of the Coven Leaders. Another troll bitterly complained about not having been given some of a tradition's written material, and claimed this was done merely because the Coven Leaders disliked her. Yet Coven Leaders are, in fact, empowered (even required!) to make exactly these sorts of decisions. Ejecting someone from a Coven is not an ethics offense, and neither is handing out or refusing to distribute a Tradition's private material. Trolls have viciously criticized other people for the way they said "good morning," or for the kind of birthday parties they throw. If the act specified in a complaint is not, in itself, a violation of the organization's ethics guidelines, then the complaint should be dismissed as being frivolous. Don't try to crawl into anyone's head to determine motive, and don't let an alleged motive be the basis for an ethics violation.
3) Presentation and response. Make sure there is more than one person involved in handling and processing ethics complaints. If this responsibility falls upon one person alone, that person will be targeted for a troll's manipulative schemes. Picture this scenario: Zelda realizes Edgar has been spreading false rumors and otherwise engaging in generally destructive behavior. So Zelda files a complaint, and Fred is the person appointed to do the paperwork and such. Edgar immediately cozies up to Fred, and insists Zelda's charges are founded merely on petty personal disagreements. In order to protect poor Edgar, Fred loses the paperwork and manages to stall the process in every way he can. Meanwhile, Edgar continues his behind-the-scenes attack on Zelda. More than one Pagan organization has been torn apart under circumstances like this. Once they've taken sides, people processing complaints have been known to edit, distort, withhold, or solicit evidence in order to prove or disprove the claims of one side or the other.
Some of these dangers can be lessened by having a small group of people - three or four, beyond that it gets clumsy - who are jointly responsible for making sure the complaint process proceeds properly. They can each serve as reality checks for the others. The responsibilities of this small panel must be carefully defined and limited. They should have particular dates by which complaints and responses must be filed, and they must operate in the open with no hidden agendas or secret investigations. If given too free a hand, they will be too easily distracted from their duties. If the panel does not perform its duties properly and in a timely manner, there should be stiff consequences for the panel members, such as immediate and automatic revocation of organizational membership.
4) Delivery. Someone accused of an ethics violation should not be allowed to stall the process merely by refusing to cooperate. Trolls are good at coming up with reasons why they can't attend meetings, or don't have time to respond. Don't let this slow things down. Organizations have been known to grind to a halt under this kind of manipulation. Now, if a complaint is filed by a troll, the target may want to refuse, on principle, to grace it with a response; but if the processing panel keeps things calm and steady, there's no need for such a drastic reaction. Of course, someone can choose to resign from the organization rather than respond to a complaint, in which case the matter would be dropped. But if a response is simply not forthcoming - even if excuses are made - the governing board should assume the worst, and unceremoniously revoke the membership of the person named in the complaint. (There may be exceptions to this, but they'd have to be pretty extreme - such as if the person is in a coma.)
5) Consideration and resolution. Detailed consideration of the complaint should take place at a regularly-scheduled meeting. This makes it harder to manipulate the process by holding special sessions in which one party or the other is excluded. It eliminates excuses about either party not knowing when or where the meeting was going to take place, or not having sufficient warning. It avoids the atmosphere of panic and emergency which will always accompany special sessions and emergency meetings. You want the whole process to be carried out very matter-of-factly, which makes it harder for a troll to play on the emotions of the participants.
In determining whether the complaint has been proven, rely on the believability of the evidence and the credibility of the sources. Remember: you're not going to be incarcerating anyone, or depriving anyone of life, limb, or property. At most, the organization will be able to restrict someone's membership benefits, or curtail someone's membership in the organization. This is not the end of the world, so don't be afraid to exercise these options if the complaint seems to be reasonably proven.
Frequently, a complaint of this type will come down to the word of one person (or small group) against that of another. Ask yourself: whose story seems to hold together best? Who gains by lying? The stories trolls tell will frequently seem to be missing something, or to not quite make sense. Actions will be alleged all out of proportion to the supposed provocation. One dispute revolved around the claim of Person "A" that Person "B" had provided an Initiation of a specific type several years before. "B" denied having done so. "A" insisted "B" was just mad about an argument they'd had involving literary preferences. Who's telling the truth here? It's not clear why anyone would believe "A's" story; "B" has nothing to lose either way, whereas "A's" version is classic trollish misdirection into motive rather than action, and a classic trollish tale where the supposed motivation has no reasonable relationship to the alleged actions, or to the real issues.
Generally, an organization will want to have both more and less severe consequences depending on the nature and seriousness of the unethical actions, beginning with a restriction of privileges, up to and including revocation of membership. If a complaint is considered to have been proven, it may be desirable to have a second vote to determine the seriousness of the response. But trolls have been known to foul up this process as well, so be certain there is a minimum level of consequence in the case of a "guilty" verdict. Even if found guilty, a troll can sometimes walk away with no consequences whatever, merely by preventing a final vote. So the default action should be ejection from the organization; votes should provide lesser levels of sanction (but never should reduce the sanction to zero). That way, there is no incentive for a troll to interfere with or to postpone this vote.
Finally, after all is said and done, the governing board should examine any evidence which the processing panel had ruled to be irrelevant. If anything improper is found in the panel's rulings, the board's decision can be reconsidered. This holds true in general as well; if more information on the matter later becomes available, the decision can be rescinded. That's the nice thing about not depriving anyone of life or limb; any errors made can actually be corrected. So don't be afraid to proceed, and don't hesitate to take the actions which seem to be necessary and appropriate.
Trollish Strategies
When a troll files an ethics complaint, it's usually baseless, unsupported by evidence, irrelevant to the organization and its purposes, or centered around the imagined motives of the complaint's target. That's why the suggested procedure includes a way of considering the appropriateness of a complaint before the process itself gets started, so frivolous complaints can be dismissed (and, from then on, the person who filed such a complaint should be watched for further signs of trollhood). In considering any complaint, carefully distinguish between non-issues and genuine ethics violations. Trolls are very good at making other people's most innocent actions or decisions seem scandalous and sinister. Examine behavior, not alleged motives. If an alleged act itself is not an ethics violation, then it's not a valid complaint.
But in general, trolls are not really very likely to file ethics complaints, because if you demand evidence, it is usually difficult to prove someone committed an unethical act if they didn't really commit one.
Trolls, however, do have imaginative ways of defending themselves from ethics charges made against them. The two most common methods are to countercharge simple malice on the part of the accuser, or to play with the rules for processing ethics complaints.
When a complaint is filed against a troll, the troll's initial reaction will probably be to insist the complaint was filed just because the accuser is "mean." In most cases, an ethics charge against a troll will be made by a person the troll has been targeting with rumors and innuendo, someone the troll has been attacking for several months already. Thus, the troll will have no shortage of examples of the accuser doing or saying things the troll objected to, even things the troll had to make up. Almost invariably, the troll will insist the complaint was made because of some silly personal disagreement, and will try to present the whole thing as a manifestation of the accuser's malice and pettiness. Don't be distracted by this detour into motivation. The real issue is the alleged unethical actions on the part of the person accused. Unethical acts are still unethical, even if the accuser is supposed to be making an accusation for the wrong reasons.
Be sure to stick to the timetables and procedures which are established for dealing with complaints. Carefully-constructed procedures and an atmosphere of impartiality will go a long way toward protecting everyone. Don't allow a troll to call special sessions, postpone meetings, instigate investigations into the motives of the other party, or interfere with other business of the organization while the complaint is being processed. In one case, a troll responded to a complaint by making a violent series of threats and demands, and submitting voluminous innuendoes and slanders against the accuser. Such violent and angry reactions and attempts to derail the process should set off alarm bells indicating the presence of a particularly nasty troll; the processing panel should insist all the more on following the established procedures.
(This is one sort of case, by the way, in which testimony which is irrelevant to the complaint itself should actually be considered - though not in the way the troll intends. Threats, demands, slander, and name-calling should be taken as evidence of further unethical actions on the part of the person making them. After all, such things are usually considered unethical, no? Indeed, a reaction like this is itself a rather blatant ethics violation, and it provides its own ironclad proof. Anyone so abusing the testimony process should immediately be ejected from the organization without appeal.)
Sometimes, a well-meaning person will insist it'd be too cruel to eject someone. Shouldn't we just forgive and forget? Shouldn't we move past this petty bickering and get on to What We're Really Here For? Indeed we should; but we needn't allow trolls to damage us while we do it. The whole point is to treat everyone in ways appropriate to who and what they are. Though it may be cruel to refuse to tolerate the presence of a rabid mongoose in your house - particularly in the middle of winter - letting it stay would be even more damaging to yourself and to your loved ones. The Rede's injunction to "Harm None" includes you. If you allow a troll to remain within your organization, unchecked, you'll have to devote increasing amounts of time to cleaning up after the darn thing, which will most certainly interfere with What We're Really Here For.
Copyright (c) 2002 David Petterson
May be recirculated as long as this information is included
