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.
Insightful article, Donna. My best friend and her husband are Penn State grads as well as many, many others in my community. This horrific event has rocked them to the core. They have their individual identities tied in with Penn State. It is who they are LITERALLY. I always used to joke with them and aks them if Penn State makes all freshmen drink laced cool aid to get them “Hooked” into such feverish loyalty to the school and football team. They truly live in a Penn State bubble and the loyalty runs very deep.
This is really where the danger lies with these institutions. They are elevated to such a superior status in the minds of students past and present. I have teacher friends who defend Joe Paterno and say he did what he was supposed to do.(They went to Penn State and/or their children go to Penn State) They have an extremely difficult time accepting that maybe Joe Paterno isn’t the squaeky clean “God” they all think he is and that Penn State is just as human and faulty as everything else in life.
I used to find their blind loyalty funny until this whole sexual abuse tragedy unfolded. Now I just find it disturbing.
On another note, I was once in the same postiion as Joe Paterno. I was contacted by a friend who had let me know that a mutual friend’s son had been sexually inappropriate with her daughter. My friend did not want to call CPS for fear of making a big deal out of nothing. She thought that since they were both very young that no one would do anything. She also wanted to protect her daughter from having to testify publically about anything. I told her that if she didn’t report it, I was going to. The perpatrator’s mother is a raging alcoholic (and I think a Spath) and the boy is a complete behavioral problem. He would mutilate frogs, pee in people’s basements and was an all out disrespectful kid. The boy’s mother blamed everything on his ADHD.
In the end, my friend couldn’t bring herself to call CPS, so I did annonymously. My “friend” ratted me out to the boy’s mother.
Since then my (former) friend still hangs out with the mother and has her daughter hang out on playdates with the boy who victimized her daughter. So much for protecting your child. I am cast as the villian now and they act as if nothing ever happened. I’ve been told by another mutual friend that I butted my nose into something that was none of my business. Bottom line, people don’t like conflict and want to avoid, hide, and deny it at all costs.
Oh…and guess where the boy’s parents went to college…You guessed it!!!
Funny thing about all this is, I can sleep very sound at night. I know I did the right thing.
Laws are for POST abuse. They don’t prevent abuse. Preventing abuse takes personal committment by PEOPLE to be a person who holds other accountable. VERY few people with that kind of backbone. (see my bell shaped curve, where NO action or care is the middle norm.)
My sister ASKED my pedophile father for her abuse. At first I thought this unusual but it’s actually extremely common. Children are GROOMED. My sister was young and unaware of what she was asking for. SHe was merely STARVING most of the time and she knew she would get fed if she let him touch her naked. I know other children who were SO unwanted and unloved, that the idea of being touched and told they were special seemed like LOVE to them. My friend’s daughter LIKED the pleasure. It felt good.
To tell is to give up FOOD, goodies, LOVE, pleasure. Tell me ya’ll… how good are YOU at giving up eating, pleasure, and love???? And WE know they are horrid spaths. The kids don’t have ANY emotional protection from such knowledge.
The emotional fallout of the above pedophile RAPES, and they were RAPES, came later.
I think we ask too much to EXPECT children to do that which we KNOW is extremely difficult for us. Yes, we should continue to educate children that it’s important for them to tell AND we should educate the public that it’s ADMIRABLE to step on and say NO when they see abuse. (that’s they way domestic violence went down, by telling men that a MAN does not beat women and a MAN does not stand by while another man beats a woman.)
Sisterhood
I hope the daughter knows the reason mom is no longer friends with you. She may even protect her mom at this time, but later down the road, the idea that SOMEONE was willing to stand up for wrong will make ALL the difference in the world to her, might be the thing that stands between her and suicide.
GOODNESS is NEVER wasted.
It’s almost like a cult.
sisterhood:
You hit the nail on the head with “Bottom line, people don’t like conflict and want to avoid, hide, and deny it at all costs. People just don’t want to get involved.
Sisterhood, Good for you! It is sad, but (shaking head here) the “I don’t want to get involved” is what makes people do NOTHING in the face of EVIL…evil couldn’t exist without those people doing nothing.
Oxy:
Exactly! People turning their heads is what perpetuates evil. As long as these predators don’t get caught, they just keep on doing it.
THE HANGMAN
By Maurice Ogden
Into our town the hangman came,
smelling of gold and blood and flame.
He paced our bricks with a different air,
and built his frame on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
only as wide as the door was wide
with a frame as tall, or a little more,
than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal? What the crime?
The hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were with dread,
we passed those eyes of buckshot lead.
Till one cried, “Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?”
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
“He who serves me best,” said he
“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”
And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another’s grief
at the hangman’s hand, was our relief.
And the gallows frame on the courthouse lawn
by tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way and no one spoke
out of respect for his hangman’s cloak.
The next day’s sun looked mildly down
on roof and street in our quiet town;
and stark and black in the morning air
the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
And the hangman stood at his usual stand
with the yellow hemp in his busy hand.
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
and his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, “Hangman, have you not done,
yesterday with the alien one?”
Then we fell silent and stood amazed.
“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us,
“Do you think I’ve gone to all this fuss,
To hang one man? That’s the thing I do.
To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”
Above our silence a voice cried “Shame!”
and into our midst the hangman came;
to that mans place, “Do you hold,” said he,
“With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?”
He laid his hand on that one’s arm
and we shrank back in quick alarm.
We gave him way, and no one spoke,
out of fear of the hangman’s cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
the hangman’s scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
the gallows-tree had taken root.
Now as wide, or a little more
than the steps that led to the courthouse door.
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
half way up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took, we had all heard tell,
was a usurer…, an infidel.
And “What” said the hangman, “Have you to do
with the gallows-bound…, and he a Jew?”
And we cried out, “Is this one he
who has served you well and faithfully?”
The hangman smiled, “It’s a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows beam.”
The fourth man’s dark accusing song
had scratched our comfort hard and long.
“And what concern,” he gave us back,
“Have you … for the doomed and black?”
The fifth, the sixth, and we cried again,
“Hangman, hangman, is this the man?”
“It’s a trick”, said he, “that we hangman know
for easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”
And so we ceased and asked now more
as the hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night
the gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
until they covered the square from side to side.
And the monster cross beam looking down,
cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the hangman came
and called through the empty streets…my name.
I looked at the gallows soaring tall
and thought … there’s no one left at all
for hanging … and so he called to me
to help take down the gallows-tree.
And I went out with right good hope
to the hangman’s tree and the hangman’s rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
to the courthouse square…through the silent town.
Supple and stretched in his busy hand,
was the yellow twist of hempen strand.
He whistled his tune as he tried the trap
and it sprang down with a ready snap.
Then with a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.
“You tricked me Hangman.” I shouted then,
“That your scaffold was built for other men,
and I’m no henchman of yours.” I cried.
“You lied to me Hangman, foully lied.”
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,
“Lied to you…tricked you?” He said “Not I…
for I answered straight and told you true.
The scaffold was raised for none but you.”
“For who has served more faithfully?
With your coward’s hope.” said He,
“And where are the others that might have stood
side by your side, in the common good?”
“Dead!” I answered, and amiably
“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me.
“First the alien … then the Jew.
I did no more than you let me do.”
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
none before stood so alone as I.
The Hangman then strapped me…with no voice there
to cry “Stay!” … for me in the empty square.
THE BOTTOM LINE: “…I did no more than you let me do.”
Hosanna, OMG what an amazing poem.
It tells the story of humanity and the spath: because I can = because you let me.
That poem is a classic example of what happened in WWII Nazi Germany, and what happens the world over, and at Penn State….