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.
Ox Drover
Hosanna the “Trojan Horse Psychopath” was a man my son sent to infiltrate our family like a “Trojan Horse” To appear to be something good, when in fact, it harbored death. The man was sent to kill me and probably other members of our family.
skylar
Hosanna,
trojan horses are another spath behavior which shows that they DO like to stick together and cooperate in their schemes.
My own spath sent a trojan to marry my sister. She is still married to him and doesn’t believe that he is after her money, despite the fact that he makes about 80 grand a year and they still can’t make ends meet. So they have been dipping into her nest egg (from before marriage) and now it’s almost gone. It doesn’t really matter too much because she is a spath too.
Hosanna
OK, the whole Trojan Horse thing is new level of creepy!
skylar
Hosanna,
you have no idea HOW creepy.
nobody who doesn’t know what spaths are would believe it. But once you know, it just follows – spathalogically.
one/joy_step_at_a_time
what i find heartening about this situation (http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/us/pennsylvania-sandusky-case/index.html?hpt=hp_t1) is the child quoted as saying he needed to know how to google ‘sex weirdos’. He KNEW there was a resource that listed pedophiles. Even though he couldn’t bring the information out immediately and tell his mother – he knew there was a resource, and that sparked his telling. When I read of the ‘kids help lines’ and the marketing of information about suicide prevention that Post Secret is doing I know that these resources ARE making a difference; they are saving lives.
Louise
The mother said that, at that point, she asked the school officials to call the police. “They said I needed to think about the ramifications of what would happen if I did that,” she said.
This is what the people at the child’s (who was molested) school at the time told the mother of the child. Everyone was trying to protect the predator. They didn’t want to get involved.
Ox Drover
Here is a quote from that article linked above that makes my BLOOD BOIL!
“The case has been slow to unfold in the public domain, at least in part because Penn State is exempt from Pennsylvania’s open records law, making it difficult to get information about who knew what and when regarding the sex-abuse claims.
Penn State and three other schools that receive state funds don’t fall under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law, according to Terry Mutchler, the executive director of the state’s Office of Open Records.”
Why are those records not PUBLIC INFORMATION under the “freedom of information” law? The better to COVER UP WITH?
Here’s a couple more links
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/justice/pennsylvania-coach-abuse-timeline/index.html?hpt=ju_t2
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/17/us/pennsylvania-sandusky-case/index.html
Ox Drover
Here is a link to where a disabled child was starved to death over a LONG PERIOD OF TIME, and her mother and her nurse and two other women have been charged.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062935/Ohio-mom-charged-death-14-year-old-daughter-weighed-28-POUNDS.html
I am hoping the nurse and the mother get LONG PRISON TERMS, but don’t know what or why or any details about the other two women being charged for failing to report the abuse. Hope we can follow up on this case. I do think there are cases where people should be prosecuted for failing to report, but without starting a witch hunt.
Ox Drover
The Citidel also has a problem that has come out recently where they “did not do enough” even though it was reported to them.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/us/south-carolina-reville-profile/index.html?hpt=ju_c2
Emi
Oy! Have been reading more about this case by googling it. It is absolutely unreal. I’m sure Joe Paterno is a very good guy…BUT he is one of the good ol’ boys whose only life has been football. He never thinks outside his box. These poor little kids. So innocent, and so betrayed. Sandusky is ** truly ** a Monster. This is another case I’m sure our entire nation will be tuned into. I am waiting to see how this all plays out. I hope it isn’t true as some are saying that these kids will either back out, that they didn’t verify what others thought happened, or that there won’t be enough of them to make for a good prosecution. I hope this is all bunk.