Pennsylvania State University, home of the storied Nittany Lions football team and its legendary coach, Joe Paterno, was rocked by allegations that one of Paterno’s former assistants, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with sexually assaulting eight young, disadvantaged boys.
The point of the article I posted earlier today, about former Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Fumo, was abuse of power. This sex abuse scandal is a variation of the same theme. Sandusky’s inappropriate behavior went on for years, probably because no one wanted to challenge a football dynasty.
According to the grand jury report:
• In 1998, Sandusky brought an 11-year-old boy into a Penn State locker room shower and behaved inappropriately. The boy’s mother reported it to Penn State University police. After a lengthy investigation, the Centre County District Attorney decided there would be no criminal charges.
• In 2000, a janitor saw Sandusky in the showers with an 11- to 13-year-old boy pinned against the wall, performing oral sex. He was distraught as he told his fellow janitors and his supervisor what he witnessed. But most of the janitors were new employees, and they were afraid that if they reported what had happened, they would lose their jobs.
• In 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant witnessed Sandusky having anal sex with a 10-year-old boy in the locker room showers. The graduate assistant told Joe Paterno. Paterno told his supervisor, Athletic Director Tim Curley. There were a few meetings, but no official investigation. In the end, all that happened was that Sandusky was told he could no longer bring boys to Penn State. Then, when the grand jury investigated, both Curley and the university’s Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, downplayed the incident.
For more, read reporting in the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Ex-Penn State coach charged with sex crimes
Paterno says all at Penn State were fooled by Sandusky
Star,
I thought that was the definition of a spath: someone who has the desire to do evil but hides it by putting on a facade so that he can get closer to his victim.
None of the spaths I have known are “alike” as far as they present themselves. My ex-spath was easygoing, lovable, and presented himself as unique and a leader. Women didn’t flock to him, he wasn’t good looking but when he targeted a woman, he came across as quite harmless and humble, and also her hero because he would save her. Kind of like superman.
My brother is a spath who lives in a basement, has a high IQ and is well read. Women can’t resist him. He just has to look at them and they quiver. But once he talks, they run away, because they can sense he isn’t normal. Needless to say, most of sexual conquests have been prostitutes…
Deep down it boils down to the fact that they are pathologically envious and they want to use and destroy innocence. Their methodologies can differ but they all love doing evil.
Hens-Mr. Remy is doing great. He does have quite a bit of separation anxiety with me working full time. He is spoiled rotten and is about to get in bed with me. Goodnight ya’ll!
gnite lizzy and remzy
Sky, I’m not sure exactly what your definition of a spath is, but I don’t think every person who is toxic or commits crimes is a spath. This is just my personal opinion after having known a textbook spath. Your definition might be a little wider.
For instance, I think drug addicts do some very immoral things when under the influence. But I don’t think they are all spaths, even if the majority of spaths seem to be addicts. I think people with poor reality testing can do very bad things. There are autistic kids who hit or sexually harm other kids. But I’m not sure they would be spaths. I have a more narrow definition of a spath. The guy I lived with for a year doesn’t fit the description. He did not charm me; he did not lovebomb me, and he never exploited me. He never ever used the pity play on me. He never devalued or discarded me. I also believe that he wanted to get caught. The crimes of his that I knew about specifically, he perpetrated practically in the open, with the parents in the next room. Again, I can get a gut feeling of what he is about and his motivations. But I cannot really put a label on it. Unhealthy and dangerous. But I honestly don’t think he is a spath in the narrowest sense of the word. With the real spath I dated, I could NEVER get a handle on where he was coming from. His games were too bizarre and sinister for my mind to comprehend.
I don’t think that guy was envious in the least. I think he was extremely emotionally immature, ungrounded, and had attractions for kids. He was kind of like one himself. I don’t think he was trying to destroy the kids. I think he was so self-absorbed and narcissistic, it never occurred to him to think about his victims and their feelings. He was just very selfish.
I don’t think my spath was envious either. His motivations seemed to be something I don’t completely understand.
My parents were a different story. They were extremely envious and wanted to destroy me, especially my stepfather. But they were what I would consider as true narcissists, complete with narcissistic envy. You would probably consider them as spaths.
Of course, with all of us and the Ns, Ps, or spaths in our lives, there are red flags that become glaringly obvious in hindsight. I should have realized my spath ex-husband was an ephebophile (translation: attracted to teenagers — past puberty, but not adult) because DUH, I was 18 when we met (he was 29), and looked even younger than my age. Yes, I now know there were more red flags there than at a Chinese Communist parade.
And then during the marriage, a lot of his attractions that I saw were to teenagers — he claimed to be mentoring this one girl who hadn’t yet graduated from high school, and to think of her as his “daughter.” YUCK. Even then it was obvious he was interested in her in a very sexual way. And of course, after I dumped him, lots of people came forward to tell me that ex-spath had used his business conferences to hit on very young women… just like I was when we met. I think part of his devalue/discard process with me was just because I aged out of his attraction zone.
Ex-spath is a political-issue activist. I can’t even really mention which issue because I’m paranoid that he’ll find this site somehow and sue me for defamation. But he is on the board of directors of a national association for college students interested in this issue, called “Students for a Sensible _____ Policy.” I am now positive this is his version of Sandusky’s “charitable” involvement with children — getting to relive his college glory days and meet underage and barely-legal young women.
The s**t icing on this s**t cake? When we met (at a conference around this political issue), I was still a student at Penn State, when Sandusky was still coaching.
And of course he still has his little fan club in those circles, because of that superficial, glib spathy charm. However, a lot of the women are now onto him, including a mutual friend who is the founder of “Mothers Against ______” (not drunk driving, but related to ex-spath’s issue).
I’m finding for a lot of reasons that I really have to limit how much coverage I read about this every day, but I did find this article about surviving trauma (related to the PSU case) very positive:
http://www.centredaily.com/2011/11/12/2983611/steps-can-be-taken-toward-happiness.html
LadySweetG:
That is a good article. Thanks for posting it.
Your X spath sounds like a doozy. Glad you are away from him. How long were you married? Did you have children?
Louise, we were together for 16 years, married 14.
No kids, which is fine with me. It’s weird, though. When we first married, we agreed that neither of us wanted our own kids and we’d just be a good uncle and auntie when my sister had hers.
At Thanksgiving 2001, at his mother’s house, some 20 hours’ drive away from any of my friends or family (spath was too cheap to fly… it always had to be a drive), he told me he was divorcing me because my desire not to have my own children was unfairly depriving him of the chance to have a family. I was absolutely blindsided and stunned, because I thought we WERE a family. In desperation, I told him I might consider adopting (I have medical issues that would make childbirth dangerous). To her credit — she was much nicer than him by far — his own mother thought he was being a s**t.
Of course, he later dropped the issue. Thank goodness. I make a great auntie but am just unsuited to be a parent, even if I could stand it medically. What I now wonder, knowing how frequently and thoroughly he was unfaithful, was which of his girlfriends planted the idea of fatherhood in his head… and whether he might actually BE a father without knowing it. Ugh!
(Also, when my sister did have her first kid in 2002, spath showed exactly zero interest in interacting with his new nephew. Further yuck.)
LadySweetG:
Wow, all very odd things about him. I also don’t have children by choice.
I bet you are right about one of his girlfriends putting it in his head about children and I also wouldn’t be surprised if he has a child with one of them! That happens more often than we know.
So how long after that Thanksgiving debacle did you get divorced?
Another article about Sandusky–interestingly he made call after call when his victim had gone NC, and Mrs. Sandusky called the victim and left a message when the victim had been NC with her husband for 2 years…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2060914/Jerry-Sandusky-Penn-State-sex-abuse-Why-did-Jerry-wife-abuse-victim-weeks-testimony.html
Typical STALKING by the abuser/psychopath and I think maybe even the “enabler” wife—she’s either innocent victim, unknowing, or in denial of the facts… or possibly trauma bonded? Anything is possible.