Like most of the United States, all of us at Lovefraud were horrified by the sordid story of child sexual abuse that emerged from Penn State University last week. Unlike most of the United States, we probably weren’t surprised.
That’s because all of us at Lovefraud have learned a very difficult lesson that millions of other people have not learned. This is the lesson: Evil exists.
For most of us, however, there was a time before the lesson. At that time we didn’t know evil existed—let alone what it looked like or what to do about it. So at that time, we were vulnerable to the sociopaths.
The sociopaths came into our lives, showering us with affection and maybe gifts, asking about our dreams and promising to make them come true. Kind of like the way Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach, treated some of the young boys from his Second Mile organization for disadvantaged youths.
Then, after a period of time, we glimpsed inappropriate or immoral behavior from the sociopath. Perhaps it was directed towards someone else. Perhaps it was directed toward us. In any event, we were shocked.
Did we really see what we thought we saw? Did that person, who we always thought was so wonderful, who had been treating us like gold, really do that? It’s so out of character. It can’t be true.
Kind of like the reaction many people probably had towards allegedly seeing or hearing about Jerry Sandusky abusing young boys.
Complicated issue
Many people at Penn State failed to take appropriate action to stop Sandusky from preying on young boys. All of the following people have been criticized:
- Janitors who knew of an assault
- Mike McQueary, the graduate assistant football coach who witnessed an attack
- The Penn State athletic director and senior vice president, who failed to contact police
- Penn State University President Graham Spanier, himself a family therapist
- The legendary football coach Joe Paterno
But the issue is complicated. I am not making excuses for anyone, but experts say that any decision about what to do in this situation would have been fraught with psychological issues and societal pressures. An excellent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette raised the following points:
- Did the officials who failed to report feel allegiance to a friend? Did they feel allegiance to Penn State football, or to the university?
- What about the phenomenon of “diffusion of responsibility”? Did everyone think reporting was someone else’s responsibility?
- What about the human brain, which is “remarkably adept at believing what it wants to believe—”and not believing what it doesn’t want to believe?
Read Penn State: Why doing the right thing isn’t as easy as it seems, on Post-Gazette.com.
Teachable moment
So how do we correct the problem? How can people be prepared to respond appropriately when they come face to face with evil? We need awareness, education and training:
- Awareness: Evil exists.
- Education: Evil is not always obvious. Sometimes, it masquerades as goodness.
- Training: When we discover evil, what do we do?
Quite frankly, I think many of the people who could have reported the behavior of Jerry Sandusky were shocked into inaction. They saw or learned something unbelievable. They didn’t know what they saw or learned was possible. Then, with no guidance about what to do in such a situation, they decided there was less personal risk in doing nothing, or doing the minimal, or soft peddling what they learned, in case they were wrong.
Make no mistake: Doing the right thing in this situation involved enormous personal risk. It was the individual’s word against that of a scion of Penn State football. It was like going up against the church.
Perhaps, in the end, good will come out of this tragedy. What happened at Penn State has provided a teachable moment on a grand scale.
The child sexual abuse scandal has forever tarnished the legacy of the legendary Joe Paterno and the storied Penn State football team. It is a lesson of what can happen when people fail to do the right thing. The sudden and drastic downfall may be just what is needed to help people faced with similar situations in the future take the personal risk and go to the right authorities.
Doing nothing may be safe in the short term, but perilous in the long term. If Joe Paterno can be ruined by not doing enough, anyone can be ruined.
Great article Donna! Good insight into a difficult situation!
I agree that doing the right thing involves enormous personal risk, and this case is like going up against the church. Personally I don’t know how people could live with themselves knowing what that man was doing and that he had never been held accountable, yes there will people that don’t believe you and that will demonize you for telling the truth, but how could they cover this up? They keep saying that the people “met the minimum required by law to report”. Are you serious?? Don’t we have a moral responsibility to protect our children as a human being?? How did these people sleep at night? It is hard to imagine the devastation and pain that he has caused all those families and I bet there are lots of victims that are too afraid to ever admit what happened to them. People have said that it is the end of innocence for Penn State. I think their innocence died a log time ago and this is the end of denial and cover-up for some people in leadership and a big painful dose of reality for the rest. Even if it is painful, and it often is, reality is better because that is when the healing can begin. God bless all those victims and their families, it will be a long journey to heal from and overcome the abuses they have experienced.
Just like the catholic priests abusing young boys . . . . I am quite sure that this ISN’T the ONLY college in which this is happening. It is probably happening in MANY schools.
I think we should try to institute some legislation that allows whistle blowers to speak up, and prosecute people that don’t!
Or just eliminate one-to-one contact/meetings between grown men
and young boys. Maybe they need to be chaperoned?
Anyway this is extremely disturbing . . . and not going to stop unless concrete steps are implemented.
My college friend’s husband, on Facebook, was publicly asking why these kids didn’t tell their mothers. Really? Did you just victim-blame a bunch of TINY LITTLE KIDS who got raped by an authority figure? Really? I had to stop myself from driving to this guy’s state to punch him in the face. (Luckily it was easy to stop myself, considering I don’t have a car, and thanks to my seizure disorder, I don’t have a driver’s license either.)
I am so over victim-blaming in cases of rape, especially in child rape. I guarantee that these ten-year-old boys were not wearing short skirts and getting drunk in a bar late at night. (By contrast, I talked to someone who used to bartend at a popular bar just across the street from the Penn State campus. Regularly, when this person closed the bar at 2 AM, the last people to leave would be… you guessed it, Joe Paterno and followers.)
I agree this is a teachable moment. I hope that PEOPLE are teachable, because there is still a whole lot of not getting it. It’s hard enough for adult victims to tell on their abusers and be believed, let alone little kids.
This situation has “triggered” me in so many ways on so many levels. It brought back memories of a time I failed to follow through on a child that I knew had been beaten, I told the doctor I worked for in my preceptorship (internship) but didn’t call the police or child protective services. I have felt guilty about this for DECADES, and still do. I should have done more. Paterno should have done more. McQueary should have done more, but we are all human. It is for all the reasons of the World why we don’t want to take the risk of our own situation.
I learned from my own failure….and I hope that others learn from this failure. I remember when Kitty Genovese was murdered over a half hour period of time in which she screamed for help and dozens of people heard her cries and did nothing, not even called the police on the telephone. Her death brought a national outcry like this episode has done, and I hope that the pain suffered by these children, now men, and the shame of an institution in the glare of their failures to protect children against public figures will help protect other children in the future.
The “no adult alone with a youth” is policy for the Boy Scouts, and yet Charles “Jackie” Walls III molested 1,500 kids over a 20 year period, so even that is not enough to protect children. Policies must be ENFORCED.
For this to be teachable, it CAN NOT be forgotten. People need to stay outraged over this. They have to think about red flag moments, that they may have seen or heard something that did not seem quite right, but just put it out of their mind.
We can’t just drop off our kids at camp, practice or even schools without staying involved. We need to see and hear first hand what is going on. If something does not seem quite right, it probably isn’t. Talk to your children about the dangers and then watch for the signs and above all listen to your kids, especially when they AREN’T talking.
Write to your Congressmen and women, let them know you want stricter laws, mandatory background checks and a judicial system that will enforce them.
Milo,
Sandusky purposely picked kids from “troubled backgrounds” who would A) not have involved parents and B) wouldn’t be believed if they did report the abuse.
That is the thing about pedophiles, according to one of THE experts Dr. Anna Salter, the pedophiles are so GUTSY doing molesting almost in public. One guy she mentioned in her book was fondling a kid as he rode in the back seat with the kid and the kid’s parents were in the front seat. Another molester who was a school principal, had a large office and he molested kids in his office with the DOOR OPEN and his secretary outside at a desk, of course out of sight, but how APPARENTLY OPEN was it to have the office door open? Who would have THOUGHT that someone would molest a kid with the office door OPEN.
In retrospective studies of pedophiles who are “first time offenders” using lie detectors the AVERAGE number of molestations before getting caught is between 110 and 300. Yep, you heard me right –one-hundred and ten and three hundred. WOW! Put that is your pipe and smoke it! It makes me sick to even contemplate that….but as unfortunate as it is, by this time next year it will be “Penn state scandal? What was that?”
Here’s a quote for you from a man who abused a 1 year old for over a year!
The 72-year-old owner of a day care center in Missoula, Montana, told police he sexually abused a 1-year-old girl he was looking after because she was ‘promiscuous.’
After he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting the girl for a year and a half, Albert Gaub was sentenced to 15 years in prison and classified as a moderate risk to abuse children again.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2061438/Albert-Gaub-72-convicted-sexually-abusing-toddler-says-did-promiscuous.html#ixzz1diC2kI1R
I’m surprised that Sandusky hasn’t said the boys he molested were not coming on to him.
Oxy:
HA, that man doesn’t even know what the word “promiscuous” means!
Oxy:
What you described about pedophiles being so blatant sounded like my X spath. I’m not going to go into details, but he was extremely blatant with his escapades. It is sickening.
Obviously the one-year old girl was pooping in her diapers intentionally and repeatedly in order to force the man to take off her diaper. That’s what I do when I want to get a man in the sack!!
😛