“Little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that destroy your world”. The institution of justice in the face of epistemic injustice

Abstract

This article interrogates the possibility that justice, understood as an institution, can be transformed by recognizing epistemic injustices related to sexual abuse as structural injustices. To this end, I will analyze Judge Rosemary Aquilina’s decision to invite more than 150 survivors of sexual abuse to testify in the Larry Nassar trial. I argue that this act of listening to and accompanying survivors during the hearings recognizes the value of narrating the experience of sexual abuse, and shows the harm of epistemic injustice due to biases that interfere with the credibility of victims and power structures that silence testimony. In a second moment, I analyze the hearings where there is a collective participation of survivors as a space of accompaniment that empowers them as epistemic subjects and moral agents.