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.
Dear victimcindy
I am sorry for the pain you must carry, to know that your children were abused by your spouse and emotionally abandoned by you. I hear your pain, your challenge. And I believe you. I believe most people are in that area of the bell shaped curve have NO response, no conscience. There was a choice, to investigate. Most did not, Joe Paterno knew this man’s secret and his response was to protect his program by banning him from bringing children on campus and not banning the man who brought the children. Yes, we are all learning the domination that bleeds Penn colors.
I think you misunderstand some Peoples anger at Joe. He’s claiming victim status in a world he created. It was his culture of God Status that prevented victims from being heard. Perhaps the same God Status that kept you from hearing your children.
And though most people live in that world of self containment, I did not. I am and have always been a sleeping lion, and as I told my husband before, I am her only advocate/her only true support. It’s my job until she leaves home to caretake her. It was PRIMAL in me perhaps to put my offspring as my priority while she was growing up. This was my personality as a child as well. I am very passive but roar when my child is threatened.
So my question to you is, how do we break the spell and get people to take appropriate responsibility when a child TELLS as they have been taught to Tell? What would it have taken for you to believe your children. That takes some very painful interspection. I am sorry for your pain but disagree that everyone would have responded as you did. Such an excuse is what people use to explain why they don’t choose to act, when in reality, they don’t choose b/c they don’t want the responsibility or the painful consequences. Sadly, the pain of avoidance only gets worse when the inevitable consequence emerges.
Dear VictimCindy,
I am so sorry for your experience with you ex-husband. I can only imagine what you are feeling. It is very clear that this has hit very close to home with you.
My agreement or disagreement with your summarization of Joe Paterno is not important.
I can only hope that you find peace in your heart about your tragedy.
I pray for healing for you and your children.
Louise
I am not naive. Of course abused children grow up to abuse but again… TO ABUSE IS A CHOICE. To commit a crime is a CHOICE. To excuse crimes b/c of victimhood is to suggest there was no other life path choice and that’s simply not true. Mature people take responsbility for their behaviors including getting help for the bad ones.
Alcoholics abuse, but it’s a CHOICE. People get robbed. How many rob others?
And to me, the WORST consequence is the suicide of the victim but maybe the worst consequence is that people see pedophiles as VICTIMS. Since they have control and choice, I do not. I see pedophiles as perpetrators whose behaviors are UNEXCUSED b/c victimization is not an excuse for making a choice to harm an innocent.
But I was responding to your post. I could not possibly have responded to what you were thinking. My crystal ball is broken.
VictimCindy,
I’m very sorry what you and your children have lived through with your ex-husband. All of us understand the feeling of being taken in by a spath. I kicked mine out of the house the morning I discovered he had stolen my cards (while we had nothing, except living on credit, which I wished to limit, and I had just taken out a personal loan), but took him back in the next day, because I wanted to give him a chance and was too addicted to him. I had my bags packed and was ready to leave myself, after I had witnessed him attacking another man with a belt for no reason at all. I was stupid enough to be fair and tell him before I left, and ended up buying his crocodile tears. I turned my back on him and never agreed to his reasoning the one time I saw him being utterly mean to his father with glee in his eyes. Three times a part of me utterly recognized he was a mean bastard. Three times another part of me could not believe it.
I don’t know what I would have done if I had seen or heard more serious accusations from others. I hang on to a rope of doubt since day one.
On the other hand, many people (often strangers at least to me) told me ‘that guy is a bad man, you deserve someone better,’ and I neutrally asked them ‘why do you say that? What do you know of him?’ (meanwhile thinking: now I’ll finaly know whether he is a good or bad man). They never gave me an answer. I even had people with a lot of long term knowledge about him who even told me in private “You can trust him!”, and only when it ended they told me the truth, telling me I was much too in love to ever have believed them. But NOT ONE ever even tried to tell me the truth. I was not only not given much of a choice by the spath, but neither by the people who knew ugly truths about him. And a part of me believes that if I had known at least half of the back-story, I would have chosen to run and never look back. I don’t blame them for not telling me. There were enough red flags for me to see to know I should not have stayed with him, not ever even getting involved with him, without any data from other sources. But it does upset me when people assume I would never have believed them if they had told me. I never got a chance to believe them.
Milo,
Yeah!! I saw that interview. creepy.
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/22825103/vp/45295668#45295668
First off, he says he started 2nd mile because “I’m a frustrated playground director, I guess.” and then he laughs.
“I really enjoy, the personal contact. I get a lot of personal contact in my life.” 😛 Did you notice the fly on the right side of his head? Yep, he even attracts flies…I’m not kidding, check out the video when he makes the above statements. There’s a fly on his head.
I think I saw another video where he says that the kids sometimes don’t like what he does to them, but in the end they realize it’s for their own good!! WTF? Now I can’t find that link. If anyone remembers, please post it for me. I think it’s the one that shows him in the pool.
VictimCindy,
here at LF, we learn about spaths A LOT. Then we learn about ourselves and how we came to be taken in by spaths. Why did they target US? What did they see in us? HOW did they know just how to deceive us?
We don’t blame ourselves because it isn’t our fault that they are evil. We don’t own their guilt. BUT we take responsibility. We learn what our “hooks” were and we aim to fix them. The truth is, most of the time our STRENGTHS were our weaknesses. (Isn’t that the way it always is?) We leaned too heavily on our strengths and became imbalanced. That was the hook. That is what they targeted.
You said that you are not an enabler. But everytime you look for ways to “understand” the mindset of JoePa and his minions, you become an enabler. That is the mistake we all made here on LF. We tried to understand and RELATE to why our spaths did what they did.
Yeah, I can give you all kinds of reasons: genetic, upbringing, cultural, narcissistic injuries, infantile etc…. I’m actually pretty good at understanding the mind of the spaths. But you know what the spath would tell you if you asked him and there were no consequences for answering? He would say, “Because I can.” that’s spath speak for “Because you let me.”
Yeah Cindy, we always let them. Just like you let your husband because the idea of what he had done was unthinkable to you. You let your emotion cloud your judgement and now you are doing it again.
I’m not condemning you for it, Cindy. You are human and judging by what you have said, you are probably a very very good person. One that I would consider myself honored and lucky to know. Your innocence and naivety speak volumes on behalf of your good nature. But that is your strength and you are letting it become your weakness. Just because YOU have a beautiful and clean heart, DO NOT assume that everyone who appears to be the same, IS THE SAME. Spath MIRROR us.
I don’t need to repeat what Katy said. She nailed it. The Penn State Elite retired him the first time they became aware of the situation, then they banned him from the lockerrooms, the second time. THEY WERE TRYING TO PROTECT THEMSELVES from this scandal. They didn’t give a rat’s ass about the kids being raped. NIMBY. (not-in-my-back-yard).
Dear Cindy, I applaud you for trying to educate people about spaths. Please realize that many of us spath-victims educate ourselves and then end up with spath #2 and later #3 and #4. It’s because we have not understood OURSELVES. What is it about US that lets the spaths KNOW they can f*** us? Most of the time, it’s our goodness. The spaths know that we project just like they do. We want to believe everyone has a good heart because we do. And even though we KNOW that evil exists, we look for evidence of goodness. Heck, half the time we make up the evidence so we don’t have to know the truth.
Skylar – meaning: protection through knowledge.
sky: “The truth is, most of the time our STRENGTHS were our weaknesses. (Isn’t that the way it always is?) We leaned too heavily on our strengths and became imbalanced. That was the hook. That is what they targeted.”
That is sooooooo true!
delete
darwinsmom,
I can tell that you are a strong person despite the obstacles you have encountered. It’s so hard to be a strong person but when you perceive yourself that way, it’s even harder to change.
Leaning too heavily on our strengths creates an imbalance and that creates a limp. I wish Kim Fredericks was around, she can explain the limp very well. Look up Vulcan for more info.
Leaning on a strength means having too much faith in our ability – aka narcissism, aka arrogance. spath said I was arrogant. Just to f**k with him, I mentioned it to the cashier at the movie theater, right in front of him. She said, “not if you really are as good as you think you are.”
LOL.
yeah, I am as good as I think I am, but it wasn’t enough. Humility is the key ingredient to fighting the spaths. Because it tells you when to hold them and when to fold them. a good gambler (and we all gamble) knows when to quit.
I do that the strengths we rely on
a) might be a way in for people to butter themselves up to you if you’re vain about it and gain trust with you in this way (actually my spath didn’t got his way in this way, he pushed compassion buttons and the attraction was tremendous).
b) it may give you an illusion of safety that you can handle any situation (this was my mistake, and I’ve been humbled into realizing that there are situations where being strong or good at something just doesn’t matter. Situations that put me in a panic zone do exist, and they are beyond my ability. They are situations and persons with a big billboard screaming STAY OUT – DANGER)
c) it may make you believe that the strengths will compensate the weaknesses. (this was my mistake too. My weakness will remain a weakness, but I can use aids so they do not make me dysfunctional)
I am training myself on the STAY OUT billboards, but I also recognize that I should never believe that I can recognize them all at first glance. I’m quite sure I don’t.
I do agree that a touch of humility is a key ingredient. And it works both ways. I’ve noticed that those type of persons who would have praised me in the past while they don’t know me, are now coming down on me at first glance. And I recognize that neither the first impression praise or the negative have much to do with me. I had started to regard praise as superficial about a year before I met the spath. It might be the reason why he didn’t push those buttons. But nowadays, I sometimes think it feels like I’m being in elementary school when men like that oaf 2 weeks ago start to tell me I have the face of a social worker, and must not be so into showing off my assets. When ‘peers’ in elementary school ignored me I always wondered what I was doing wrong. As an adolescent I rebelled against this and started to emphasise my being different from my peers as an asset. I embraced it. But then I wanted the ‘peers’ still present in my mind to recognize that and admit they had been mistaken. I was still proving myself to them, just in a reverse way. I did get over that for the most part, but a part of that child wound of feeling rejected still festered. And for years this being strong still was related to overcoming the wound.
So, when that guy commented to me in that way, it is as if I’m tested back into those years. But this time I knew he was
a) wrong
b) he was a stranger I did not choose to associate with, I was not interested in whatsoever, not even for a conversation, so what would I care really about his opinions about me based on a first impression. And even if he had praised me, I would still have the same conclusion.
And when it comes to friends: they support me, and I support them, but if I think about it, we’re not praising each other, or breaking each other down. We think well of each other of course, or we wouldn’t be friends. But we’re not lip servicing it. Instead we are emotional: happy for them if they have something good going in their lives, worried and sad if it’s not going well. We might praise each other’s produce: I like that song/painting you made. But imagine true friends giving you praise/or put you down like a spath and that’s when I realize it’s both off the real issues, and superficial.