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.
darwinsmom,
I don’t really know which buttons the spath pushed on me to begin with. He said he would fix my car. It’s possible he had sabotaged it to begin with. Throughout the 25 year relationshit, he hit me with charm, pity and rage, so I can’t say there was anyone thing he did to keep me there. It was psyops, 24/7. I never would have imagined that someone could have such a meaningless life that they would invest all of their time and energy into “capturing” me. Heck, it would have been less work to actually kidnap me and stick me in a dungeon! But I guess it wouldn’t have been as much “FUN” for him. 😛
The part of me that thought I could rescue him no matter what, is what he envied and sought to destroy. That’s what he meant by arrogant. He was pointing out that I was sticking it out, staying loyal, and committed to him NO MATTER HOW HORRIBLE MY LIFE WAS AND HOW BAD HE TREATED ME. Continuing to think I could fix it, was delusional and arrogant. I just didn’t know when to quit.
Meanwhile he took every pleasure in sabotaging my life, my health, my finances. And I never gave up trying, thinking it’s got to get better. I didn’t know when to fold’em.
But I did have an ace up my sleeve, I guess: my faith in God. I was leaning on Him quite a bit and in the end, even more so. Spath never knew the extent of that faith, because I didn’t talk about it. I’m not the kind of person who generally goes on about my faith, luckily, because if he had known, he would have targeted that too. I wonder if I could have held on to it under a spath attack.
What he liked destroying most was my stability and peace with my environment. You could say I felt in control of my life, not by controlling it, but staying centered in a variating environment. And I had a peace that I was able to let people be whomever they are. That and my feelings of femininity.
At first he told me he needed a woman who would tell him when enough was enough. I answered that as an adult he needed to learn for himself when enough was enough. I wasn’t his mother nor his babysitter. But after a year he was accusing me of wanting to control him whenever I made self boundary demands, regarding timings, when he would do this or that, and eventually who the hell was this woman he was calling ‘baby’ and ‘angel’ over facebook. I never had much money, but I could live well with what I had. Actually when I was with him, I had the highest income I’d ever had. But I ended up worrying the most about money when I was with him, than at the time I once took a year unpaid leave from work and lived on 200 euros a month for food and entertainment. He was so unreliable in his timings that I couldn’t plan anything anymore. I had always considered myself flexible, but I turned into a paralized rigid being when with him. I became envious and angry, because he went out and had fun all the time, bedammed about the costs or having to get out of bed in the morning, while I was stuck working my ass off for school until 12-1am and had no money left to treat myself on anything.
He tried to attack my faith in myself initially (two times in public), but my response was such that I warded it off without making a scene and he ended up looking like the bad guy. When it was attacked directly, he could not get to that part. The only way to ‘put me down’ was to make me insecure about my environment.
Darwinsmom,
when you say insecure about your environment, do you mean because he set you up to be mugged? What an ass.
My spath set up one of his ex-gf’s that way. An intruder with a pizza cutter broke in and chased them around the apartment.
I wonder if all spaths attempt to make people insecure about their environment. I wonder if we can call that a red flag?
Fear mongering is a red flag, but specifically about the environment might be a more specific red flag.
that is one of those things, yes. But also in his constant impredictability about timed plans and terrorrizing my sleep. And when I slept, I slept with one eye open. A couple of times he brought total strangers in the apartment, while I was ‘sleeping’ with just one door in between us. One time he caused an incident because of a phone he ‘found’. He wanted to give it back, but get a finder’s fee for it. Turned out he was trying to get money from some east Euopean criminal guys and the phone was of one of their escort girls. This was on some Friday morning at 7.30 while I was driving to work and was to drop him off at my parents to do the laundry, help out with some paint job (for which he got paid) and get some lessons in Dutch by my mother. It nearly got to a fight, and one of them even approached my driver’s door. 40 minutes later I had to appear totally normal in front of my pupils.
I had no overview anymore to what people would do, what might happen, who would be in the house when I was there or not there (it’s one of the reasons I did not go on my tourleading training weekends anymore… I didn’t dare to leave him alone), what might happen to my stuff.
Just making my world unsafe and chaotic… night and day. It was a total nightmare of stress. Now, I don’t understand how I ever came to try for so long. The reason was that because I was able to keep a cool head in chaos and life endangering situations by myself (previous robberies, a hurricane, a rafting incident with a woman who had breathed water and coughed up blood in the middle of the jungle, tourist with an apendicitis in Mexico, tourist totalling a rental car in the middle of nowhere in Ireland), I somehow thought I was strong enough to find some trick to gain control over it when I was thrown into his chaos day in and day out. The difference is that with a once a year event, you get time to debrief and unwind again, to work through the emotions that were pushed aside with the adrenaline rush and keeping my head cool. But he didn’t give me that time to unwind. I thought at some point that the long distance once in a while would help with that. But then I’d get emergency calls from him for some sort of disaster event, etc…
I used to think I was rather chaotic compared to others, and also able to handle it. But once he was present I learned what true chaos is.
Louise, as I understand it, the MAJORITY OF ABUSED CHILDREN DO NOT BECOME ABUSERS….however some abusers were abused as children.
20Years, thank you for a most enlightening post. Thank you for sharing.
VictimCindy, thank you as well for sharing.
There are a lot of things about this that do need to be examined with CALM HEADS…and not “witch hunts” either.
It has been fairly frequently seen that there are FALSE sexual or Touching reports made, as well as VALID ones in divorce hearings.
I don’t think any poster here would find it unbelievable to hear it said that psychopaths SMEAR others for their own purposes.
Some good reads here guys. Thanks!
More information comes out from McQueary
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/us/pennsylvania-sandusky-case/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Just when you thought more dirt couldn’t come out of this Penn State thing, or one more rat crawl out of the wood work…here it is!
http://www.businessinsider.com/sandusky-lawyer-2011-11
Sandusky’s lawyer is accused of knocking up a 17 year old when he was 49. I guess Pedophiles need to stick together, huh?
Oh absolutely, I think pedophiles stick together!! My ex’s favorite author was Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). I didn’t think much of it when he told me but later I learned that “Dodgson’s friendships with young girls and psychological readings of his work ”“ especially his photographs of nude or semi-nude girls ”“ have all led to speculation that he was a pedophile.” My ex took several pornographic photos of an 8 year old girl and he molested her in one of the photos.
Hosanna,
Yea, it is frustrating, and they do seem to “stick together”—the minister in my tiny country congregation was arrested recently for pedophile stalking of what he thought was a 14 year old girl. Turned out to be a 40 year old male deputy though!~ He was SOOOOO understanding of the Trojan Horse psychopath’s being arrested for pedophilia….and so harsh toward me for “accusing him” unjustly—makes sense now though. What makes me really upset is the church trying to “hush up” the arrest though. Protect the home team, no matter what! Now tell me, is that what Jesus would do? Nah, me thinks not! When He saw people abusing the Temple, he made a whip out of ropes and DROVE THEM OUT, He didn’t try to hide it! When his apostles tried to get the “pesky kids” out of the way of the Master, he said “Anyone who offends one of these little ones would be better off with a millstone tied around his neck and cast into the sea.” (Paraphrased) So I don’t think Jesus would have been so “understanding” about Jerry Sandusky’s “problems” or the reputation of the team, I think the whole nasty group of them would be better off with the millstone around their necks than facing a just God.
@....... Ox Drover
I agree with what you say about a church trying to minimize or cover this up. I am a Christian, I have been working in ministry and on church staff for years. My experience with the psychopath pedophile pastor and how many in the church looked the other way and/or condemned me for exposing him has challenged my thoughts about church to the very core!! At the end of the day I realized that there are some really sick churches out there and sometimes it is hard to tell until there is an issue like this. There are also healthy churches that don’t think twice about doing the right thing! Yes, the bible is full of warnings about false Christians! From now on I am asking up front how the leadership handles issues like this.
And Oxy, what do you mean by “Trojan Horse” Psychopath? Does that refer to their methods or is it something else? I’m not familiar with that term.