When I read yesterday for the first time an opinion commentator writing that Penn State doesn't have many other options other than to ask Joe Paterno to resign, and when I read today that this might actually be in the works, my first reaction was, "Well, this sucks." It's sad that Paterno's decades-long career might end because he may have helped cover up a former colleague's sexual abuse of children (which I refuse to refer to as a "sex scandal" - "sex scandals" are between consenting adults, not predators and children).
But then the other half of my Gemini brain immediately swooped in pointing out that sympathy should be reserved for the children here, not grown men who should've known better. Ok, other half, that's true. Sure, Paterno made choices and now he has to deal with the consequences. But I can still make room in my mind and my heart for the thousands of Penn State alums, former players, and of course the families of the people involved, because it's a terrible feeling to realize that the person you've admired for almost 50 years maybe isn't that admirable.
That's nothing compared to the loss of innocence that the children assistant coach Jerry Sandusky is accused of assaulting must have gone through. Sexual assault is always heinous, but especially so in cases like this, or the many Catholic priest abuse cases, where the child victim belongs to a culture that tells him or her that this particular grown-up has special authority. Because what goes through that child's mind is a litany of thoughts like "This person is always right, therefore I must have been the one who did something wrong." Even if the child realizes that abuse has happened, who's going to believe a kid over a minor deity like a Penn State football coach?
The more authority you have, the more responsibility you have not to abuse it.
This week, two of the women who accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment several years ago have "gone public" - one by choice, with an attorney and a press conference, and one against her will. This morning on the radio, there was a discussion of how this expanding harassment issue will affect Cain, and someone brought up Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers. Again, a consensual relationship is NOT the same thing as non-consensual comments or behavior... so Clinton/Flowers isn't at all applicable here.
There are plenty of places on the 'net to discuss what the revelations of these allegations might do to Cain's presidential candidacy, but I relate more to the women involved. I'm not in a position to weigh in on what happened all those years ago. But I can relate to going through something of that nature, doing the hard work of moving on with your life, and then dreading what will happen to your put-back-together life when, at any point decades from now, someone in the press gets ahold of it.
I can also relate to the children in the Penn State case. What's getting lost (or under-reported) here is that this abuse happened over a 15-year period. Y'all know what happened to me, a little over four years ago. The guy in my case also had very close ties to a college athletic program, with a lot of people who idolize and idealize the program. When I'd see those news stories about the great athletic tradition of blah blah blah, all I could think was - you have a rapist in the family. Do you know that? If you do, do you care? Do you believe what I said was true and are you ashamed, or are you sitting up there on your booster-funded pedestal thinking I'm a crazy liar? For 15 years, there have been at least eight children thinking something very close to that every time a Penn State highlight rolls across the ESPN ticker.
This is what's the most awful about abuse, or any crime... even when the perpetrator is caught and (rarely) brought to justice, it seems that the victims, their families, and any number of people who are just caught up in the ripple effects are the ones who truly end up dealing with the consequences in real, life-altering ways. Sexual abuse isn't just a one-time incident where someone in power takes advantage of someone else. It's a decision to permanently alter another person's life for the worse. That's why it's so obscene. The perpetrator might (rarely) end up in jail, but someone else is always going to have to clean up the mess.
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