Photo illustration by The Globe and Mail/Getty/ Fabrice Coffrini/ AFP via Getty Images/The Globe and Mail
Last month, Bill Gates took a stab at apologizing for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who trafficked girls and women for the rich and famous. During a meeting with the philanthropic foundation he co-founded with his ex-wife, Melinda French, Gates said he “did nothing illicit” while engaging in two extramarital affairs.
But, he added: “It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein. I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake I made.”
Mistake? Other people? Sorry Bill, that’s not a real apology, but damage control that’s arriving too little, too late. Most importantly, you failed to name the fact that your relationship with a known sex offender gave him credibility and power at the expense of the victims who didn’t have a voice.
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Gates joins an ever-expanding list of rich and powerful people who want the public to believe they are earnestly contrite for associating with Epstein. Noam Chomsky’s wife, Valeria, called her husband’s relationship with him “careless.” Deepak Chopra acknowledged his “poor judgement.” Dr. Peter Attia, the longevity influencer, expressed “regret” for his embarrassing and tasteless e-mails. It’s as if they are just as surprised as anyone else to learn about who Jeffrey Epstein really was. Are we to believe that these high-profile intellectuals didn’t know how to use Google?
The thing is, saying you’re sorry – either using that word or skirting around it with similar phrases, like Gates’ oddly indirect “I apologize” – can mean close to nothing unless bundled with more pointed words and concrete actions. As Canadians, we understand this on a deeper level, since we are famous for saying “sorry,” not necessarily when we really mean it, but as a knee-jerk reaction to avoid conflict.
“‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t cut it if it’s followed by a qualifier, such as ‘I’m sorry if you are hurt’ or ‘I’m sorry you are so sensitive’ or ‘I’m sorry you didn’t understand what I meant,’” said Susan Shapiro, author of The Forgiveness Tour, a book about people who have been wronged who never received the apology they deserved.
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The book was born out of her own struggle coming to terms with the personal harm she endured after her addiction therapist broke her trust by taking on Shapiro’s protegee – a woman she loved like a daughter – as a client and then lying about it. Months later, Shapiro did eventually get a satisfying apology. Her therapist said he was “sorry” to hurt her, that he “screwed up” and that he would not see the protege again.
But what makes an apology like that work? Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, in her book On Repentance and Repair, offers a useful framework drawn from Maimonides, a Sephardic rabbi from the Middle Ages, widely seen as the authority on Jewish law and ethics. It includes a five-part approach, starting with naming and owning the harm, beginning to change, offering restitution, apologizing, and making different choices in the future. Notice that the words “I’m sorry” come only after work has already been done on the part of the perpetrator.
One problem with a weak apology is that it places too much of the onus on resolving what happened on the harmed party. Assuming victims will be perpetually magnanimous without the perpetrators doing any of the real work of repairing the damage they inflicted, says Ruttenberg, remains part of the “forgiveness heavy culture” in the United States.
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“The U.S loves forgiveness,” she observed, tracing the phenomenon’s roots to the end of the Civil War, when some Northern preachers advocated for forgiveness of Southerners. The apology without the work, explained Ruttenberg, was a way of maintaining the status quo – in this case, white supremacy.
In her book, Ruttenberg cites a study that examined the startling number of times that family members of an unarmed Black person killed by law enforcement were asked by the media if they forgave their loved one’s killers – almost always without the killer’s apology.
For those implicated in the Epstein files, the seeming disinterest in making a more holistic apology like Maimonides set out may stem from the fear that saying you’re sorry for real leads to being found guilty – either legally or in the court of public opinion. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, says Renu Bakshi, a Vancouver-based crisis manager.
“Public apologies don’t automatically equal guilt,” she said. “Sometimes they’re about acknowledging harm while facts are unclear, evolving or still under legal review. I believe there are ways to apologize without putting yourself in a litigious position.”
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In fact, Baskshi makes a business case for apologies, explaining that a person can recover their reputation faster if they are the first to report their crisis and apologize for wrongdoing.
“We’ve known for a long time that these Epstein files may be released, and I can’t think of one person offhand who pre-emptively made a comment,” said Bakshi.
Bakshi cites Michael McCain, previously the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, as setting the standard for corporate apologies in 2008 when the Canadian company experienced a listeria outbreak that resulted in 23 deaths. McCain, said Bakshi, apologized unequivocally, took responsibility and immediately implemented actions to protect the public at the expense of his company’s bottom line.
But the fact that a good apology can restore a perpetrator’s reputation or brand is just a happy side effect. The real benefit of a genuine apology from our leaders and the institutions they represent is that it repairs the public’s trust. And until we get that, empty words that the world’s cultural and business elite keep throwing around in order to brush over past bad behaviour remain little more than noise.
Leah Eichler, a self-proclaimed word nerd, writes regularly about our evolving use of language.
