Are We Penn State
Then it took a week and a half before the graduate assistant was asked to tell his story to Curley and Gary Schultz, who oversaw the Penn State University police department. And then, the grand jury charges, the incident was buried and Sandusky was more or less allowed to maintain his office (though he was supposedly restricted from bringing any children into the building).
This is from one of Joe Posnanski’s’s recent blog entries on the Penn State contretemps. Joe Posnanski, in case you don’t know the name, is a “sportswriter,” but really he’s a writer straight ahead, a very good one who can probably make you care about whatever sport he’s addressing even if you thought you couldn’t. He also has a fun podcast, The Sports Poscast, on which Parks & Rec‘s Michael “Ken Tremendous” Schur frequently guests, but Posnanski hasn’t done many episodes lately because he went to State College, PA to write a book about Joe Paterno. Several times over the last few days, I wondered in passing how he would handle that, how he was doing, whether he was sitting on the edge of the bed and just kind of staring into his lap. I wondered how I would handle that, in his position, having to incorporate ongoing history into a planned biography.
I’ve also wondered how I would have handled the situation that confronted Mike McQueary. As John Scalzi put it in his full-stop excellent piece on the imbroglio, “But here’s the thing: that part of me? The part that understands these actions? That part of me is a fucking coward.” Sugar-free exactitude, that. I would love to tell you that, coming upon a grownup raping a child, in the act, I would grab the nearest heavy object and brandish it and yell at the grownup to get away, and stuff the child into some clothing and drive him to the nearest police precinct. I would love to tell you that; we would all love to tell ourselves that. Everyone’s cape flutters attractively in the breeze of the subjunctive.
What probably would happen instead is that I would back out of the room in horror. Flee, in fact, on tiptoe, to somewhere small and dark, to process the upside-down wrong thing I’d seen. I would murmur out loud over and over again, “Oh my God, holy shit, oh my God, holy shit, what do I do, what do I do, get a grip Sarah D.” and then I think I would force myself to go back to the shower and ask to speak to Sandusky privately, or dial 9-1-1 and then do it, or run to a sightline and spy while quietly dialing…I think I would do that, or something like that. It is not impossible that I would call my dad, though, I have to tell you, primarily because my dad is preternaturally unflappable and has put the brakes on myriad Sarah “NOT WITH A BANG BUT WITH THIS AIRPORT FLAT TIRE”-type tailspins of far less felonious and revolting origin. So, I get that part of it, that the first, visceral instinct is very possibly to go to a parent and say, I don’t want this information and I don’t know what to do with it, it’s too vile and huge, tell me what to do and I’ll go do that and then get extremely drunk.
Understand: getting it is not approving of it or excusing it. The fact that I suspect that, in the same situation, I would freeze in place instead of springing into action does not forgive McQueary for doing the same. (Nor is it me fishing for contradictions, by the way. “Oh, you’d never.” Well, I really hope you’re right and I really hope we never have to find out, and we’re just talking here.) And I get why he vapor-locked and called the old man because the old man has seen some shit and he knows some shit, but the next thing I would do…okay, it’s actually a list. The very next thing I would do is two belts of bourbon in quick succession, followed by the smoking of 76 cigarettes, and then I would go to a police station and walk up to the front desk and say, can I talk to a detective please like right now.
McQueary didn’t do that. Nobody did that. This is the one of the things I can’t get past. Let’s roll that Posnanski phrasing again:
Sandusky was more or less allowed to maintain his office (though he was supposedly restricted from bringing any children into the building).
In other words, you don’t have to rape kids at home…but you can’t stay here. We know you do it, but if we don’t see you do it, we won’t have to deal with it, and you can continue your reign of shame in your squalid little basement torture chamber, on your own property, where we can pretend it isn’t happening, and this is where it crosses the line, for me, between “acting cowardly, misguided, and selfish, but ultimately human” and “being a bad person.” I think, in that situation, I would do the wrong thing first, or do something right but in the wrong order, or do it too slowly — but I would do something, something, two minutes later, twenty minutes later, I would do something. From what I can tell from the grand-jury document, nobody at Penn State did anything. Not two minutes later, not twenty minutes later, not two years later.
I can’t get past that, I just can’t. Nobody calls the cops, even with an anonymous tip. (I suppose somebody may have. Reams of information surely exist that the public hasn’t seen. That said, if anyone even tried to curb Sandusky’s…activities, you’d think we’d have heard about it by now.) Nobody notifies the state agency for child services. Nobody noses around or drops hints at the charity. Nobody takes Sandusky aside and tells him to get help or else. Nobody does anything. …Wait: one detective “advises” Sandusky to stop taking showers with kids. “ADVISES.” And: “stop TAKING SHOWERS with kids.” Just stop showering with them? Doing weird shit in the wrestling room at a high school isn’t showering, so that’s fine, no need to report that? Grown men just don’t lie around gazing into the eyes of middle-schoolers on wrestling mats, people! Call a cop! Call a teacher! Call the fucking Green Hornet, whatever! You can’t not know this is deeply wrong, and you can’t just shrug, “…Gross,” and go home to the wife and the dog!
And this is the other thing I can’t get past: people knew. People had to know. A lot of people had to know. (Not all, please note. Not even most. Just a lot.) The number of people in the grand-jury presentment alone who had witnessed Sandusky, if not outright raping a child, being noticeably inappropriate or memorably WTF with a child? Sizable number. That suggests to me that the actual number of people who saw something off or weird and then went home and prayed they hadn’t, told themselves they’d misinterpreted the situation, and made sure never to look at Sandusky for more than four seconds in a row again after that so that they wouldn’t see anything else and have to report it, that number probably is much higher. I think people saw, and heard rumors, and knew, and deliberately tried not to know or see; I think when a predator is that prolific, and blatant, the information is out there. I think many more people knew much more than what’s in the grand-jury statement, and I think these people assumed or hoped that somebody else would report him, or that he’d just stop, which is not generally on the menu for sexual predators. And which they also knew. And I think Sandusky understood, correctly as it turns out for many years, that nobody would step in his way, and it emboldened him. I can’t prove it, that this is something that much of the community agreed not to know officially, and I haven’t done a good job articulating what I mean. But I can’t shake that feeling, that if just a couple of sophomores in the dorm late on a Tuesday night had started sanduskytoucheskids.tumblr.com and given it a push, things might have turned out differently. Or just as horribly, but over with faster.
And I understand that you can’t roll into the cop shop with “I heard from my friend who’s friends with the Second Mile security guard that X,” or “I saw him holding hands with a kid at the mall and it seemed kind of Y.” But this went on for over a decade, that we know about. And this is not tax fraud. Children getting raped. I just…I can’t get past it, that sense that people had information that could have put a stop to it, and they didn’t use it because it would have been awkward. Or, even worse: they had they information, and they thought to themselves, “Well, everyone knows Sandusky is a bad toucher, so if you get crossed up with that it’s your own fault,” and they slept soundly. How did we get here, as a society?
You know what, who cares how we got here or how long we’ve overstayed. Let’s just leave while we still can, yeah? Let’s vow to do better by each other so we don’t have to come back to this place, ever. Let’s all of us, heroes and flawed creatures, Batmen and gutless wonders, my sisters in Melodramatic Daddy’s Girl Local No. 315, try to remember that not doing the perfect thing immediately is not an excuse to then do nothing permanently. Nobody knows what to do, basically, or how to do it; so stipulated. We don’t live in a script and it’s always complicated, but we can’t give up on ourselves for that, because it means giving up on each other, and look what happens. “It’s a hassle to save you, and you’re just not worth it” is not something a so-called First World society should say to children, because they’re never going to get past that.
Tags: Fire Joe Morgan RIP Gary Schultz Jerry Sandusky Joe Paterno Joe Posnanski John Scalzi Michael Schur Mike McQueary news Tim Curley
This is going to sound very sad, but a thing for me is reconciling the fictional JoePa that I had in my mind and the real JoePa. Because fictional JoePa would have chased Sandusky around the football field in his BMW before dragging him down to the police station and turning him in as soon as McQueary reported what he saw to fictional JoePa. Fictional JoePa wouldn’t have just been content with reporting it to Curley and then doing nothing. Fictional JoePa would have marched straight up to Spanier and been like “Do something now. Or I will.” And maybe waved his bmw key menacingly. Fictional JoePa would have done something.
Ugh. My heart is ashamed. At Paterno, Curley, and the rest of the university.
I walked by that Lion statue every day when I was working at PSU.
I’m glad I don’t have to see that statue anymore.
Excellent piece, Sars. Every time this story comes up on the radio, all I can do is stand in the kitchen and say, “Oh, it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s so very, truly, awfully bad.” It just blows my mind to think all the points of failure in this chain of events. My husband and I were talking the other night, and he, ever the unruffled person that he is, was cautious about roasting McQueary until more information came out. He reminded me that when I was a grad student, I wouldn’t have had the same perspective on authority figures that I do now. But I don’t think it matters. Yeah, I would have freaked out and frozen and probably vomited somewhere, but I still would have called the police. Because that’s what you do when you witness a rape. (I haven’t read the grand jury report yet, but I’m guessing that’s going to fill in some of the blanks of who knew what and when.)
What sickens me is how everyone seemed willing to turn a blind eye because it was a child. If McQueary had seen Sandusky holding down a protesting, adult woman and raping her in the showers, would he have acted differently? Because it was a kid who’d been manipulated into not screaming and fighting back, did that make it…okay? Not as bad? I recently saw that there is a book coming out soon called Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children, and this horror show seems to be in line with the author’s argument that children’s rights are often overlooked, even in “advanced” societies like this one.
There are just so many stunning points of failure in the system here. McQueary didn’t do much, McQueary Senior didn’t do much (“Tell your coach”? What kind of advice is that?), Paterno didn’t do much, the pieces of crap who took Sandusky’s keys and told him not to bring kids to the locker room anymore…it’s hard to imagine that this many adults knew this guy was abusing kids and tried to to sidestep any responsibility for that knowledge. I am horrified and sickened for that poor child that McQueary turned his back on…but I also think about the children who came after that for years. I have two little girls, and I have to say, if someone laid a hand on either of them, and I found out that this many people had known about it for years and shrugged it off…I don’t even know how to finish that thought.
I hate to bemoan the decline of society and whatever, but when people feel it’s necessary to make it a law that someone has to call the police when they see an adult raping a child…it’s not a good sign for the future. I’m going to sit over here in my corner of the handbasket and hold onto my kids as tightly as I can.
“Not doing the perfect thing immediately is not an excuse to then do nothing permanently” – perfect perfect perfect. This merits printing out and sticking on a wall.
Barry Switzer said it best: “Everyone on that staff had to have known, the ones that had been around a long time.” (http://bit.ly/sePz7p)
Yeah… people knew. The coaching staff at Penn State was a relatively small, insular community. I’ve worked in places like that. If you’re at all hooked into the managerial grapevine, you know the gossip that is in any way relevant to that person’s professional standing. You know who’s been arrested on DUI or domestic violence charges; whose house got foreclosed on; who was canned due to financial improprieties; who has a nasty habit of hiring young blondes, seducing them, and then “managing” them out the door with poor performance reviews; and who can be trusted to cover things up, stab people in the back, or (more rarely) do the right thing. And if your business is educating young people, you know who has a long history of acting suspiciously like a kiddie fiddler.
The long-time coaching staff and senior administrators may not all themselves have had direct evidence of what Sandusky was, but they knew. They knew that he was a predator whose preferred prey was little boys, and they let him keep right on destroying lives because it was too much trouble and too embarrassing to stop him. And now that they’ve been called on it, they’re all, “Oh, who could imagine that such a fine, fine man would do such a thing?” Bullshit.
McQueary’s initial lapse in failing to call the cops when he walked in on Sandusky is understandable, though not admirable. What deserves no understanding or forgiveness is the conspiracy of silence to sweep Sandusky’s conduct under the rug. It is despicable.
I am Penn Stater and from a Penn State family – I grew up with Penn State football and Coach Paterno as heroes. Maybe people who did not go to Penn State don’t understand how above reproach Sandusky, Curley, Spanier and Paterno were held – that they could do wrong was unthinkable.
Mike McQuery could have just closed the door and kept his mouth shut, as I am sure others must have, because ‘it was JERRY SANDUSKY fer cryin’ out loud’. (Hard as it is to believe, two weeks ago he was a highly respected and beloved Penn State icon.) Mike McQuery’s response was less than perfect, I agree, but while we all like to think we would have rushed in and rescued that child, backing away in shock is, in reality, what most people do in a situation like this. He did speak up to those in power who, it seems, he trusted to do the right thing and support him, a nobody grad assistant, against a PENN STATE ICON. They did not. I can understand if Mike McQuery thought that if they didn’t believe him – people who knew him – why would anyone else, including the police?
I have no doubt that the story Mike McQuery told the Grand Jury was the same one he told Paterno, Curley and Schultz. Regardless of whether he should have done more, it seems that he is the only one who did something. Because he could not count on his heroes – as I am sure they were, just as they were mine – should not be a reason to vilify him.
There is certainly enough blame to go around but as for McQueary – yeah, he was grad student. A 28 year old grad student. Who apparently once broke up a knife fight on campus. It doesn’t start & stop with him but it (most likely) would have been one step closer to stopping if he had done something. There seem to be new reports coming out where he says he made sure it(the witnessed incident) stopped but that seems to conflict w/ the grand jury testimony. I’d like for it to be true. Regardless, as Sars puts it above – hopefully this results in all of us doing better. My heart just can’t take much more.
Also, Sandusky either has one of the dumbest criminal defense attorneys alive or else just refuses to stay at home and shut the hell up: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57324690/sandusky-claims-innocence-but-admits-to-showers/.
Christ on a bike.
@Sarah D. Bunting — The interview was super-creepy, and I give credit to Costas for having minimal reaction when Sandusky was stumbling through his “I enjoy young people” answer.
To quote Nell Scovell’s Twitter feed: “Sandusky admits to ‘horsing around’ with kids. Horses should be offended.”
I guess we know what kind of guy takes Sandusky’s case as his attorney: http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/11/14/111511-news-sandusky-lawyer-teen-web/ (h/t Keckler)
Apparently old men should use more caution when showering with young boys. That’s the message from Sandusky last night. Horrifying.
The whole thing seems to be getting more and more convoluted. McQueary is saying there’s more to the story, Sandusky’s attorney says they have identified the victim (“the kid” in his words) from the shower incident and that person will say it didn’t happen, and who the hell knows what comes out next?
Last night’s interview was hideous to watch, but Costas did a damn fine job.
This is why I come here. Perfectly captured, Sars. And all of the comments, with thoughtful perspectives to share. This is the best site on the whole internets. Yes, I’m calling it, in all my infinite authority to do so. You guys are amazing.
I think Sars’ distinction between getting it and excusing it is really important. The thing is, I do understand, as in I get, not excuse or sympathize with, how it might have happened. McQueary was probably in shock, he may have actually doubted what he saw. I’ve seen something not even close to on the same scale, not abuse-related at all, but something that is NOT DONE in public, and not even accepted as a good idea generally, and I kept staring to see that it was really happening, because even watching it happen, I didn’t believe it. I talked to other people afterward, “You saw that too, right?” because I actually thought, though I was right there, that it’s not possibly what was happening. This thing, it was not serious, there were no consequences for anyone else, but even then, I had to keep checking with myself, saying, “No, you really saw that. You did not make that up.” And so all of that is to say that I can see where a person would hardly believe what they saw, would maybe think they’d gone crazy, but when you KNOW, somewhere inside, that you really did see it, you remind yourself over and over again. To make it real, and to react according to the gravity of what has happened. Because for all of the getting it that a person can do, when nothing happens, when there are no consequences, and then you start to hear rumors and stories, things that corroborate what you’ve witnessed firsthand, and still, you are silent? That is when even the getting it ends, for me.
Not sure this even made sense, but it was all jumbled up in my brain, and I wanted to try to put it out there.
I didn’t realize we didn’t see the whole interview last night on Rock Center. Quite a damning transcript, here: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/jerry-sandusky-i-seeking-young-person-sexual-helped-article-1.977730
Disclaimers about my own perspective: I am an adult, but was abused as a child, and so have quite strong feelings on the topic, even by Not Evil Person standards. In part, this means that I judge people who *don’t* react appropriately to this kind of thing really quite harshly, because I’m aware of the scale of pain they’re facilitating.
However. In all honesty, I don’t actually think that a response like, “I’m going to call my dad and freak out at him,” is actually that wrong.
I mean, having read a number of your columns where you talk about him, I figure your dad for a decent person, which means that he’s likely to help you calm down and then call the cops.
There’s nothing wrong with having a breakdown at the horror and wrongness of the situation you’ve suddenly found, nor being traumatised by it – encountering it as a witness is still going to be a matter of genuine emotional trauma, and that’s hard to deal with for everyone. There’s nothing wrong with immediately calling for help, but then, shored up by the emotional support you’ve just called upon, you deal with the situation.
If I walked in on a scene like that, well… past experience suggests that, these days, I would grab the nearest thing that could serve as a weapon and attempt to beat the perpetrator within about 1/8th of an inch of his life, but I have issues in this area, as referred to above. However, once I’d done that, grabbed the victim, and run what seemed to me to be sufficiently far away, odds are the *next* thing I would do would be to call my best friend and have a panic attack over the phone at her. Whereupon it’s distinctly possible that I’d then sit down and cry while she called the cops for me.
There’s no shame in getting someone to help you do the right thing, so long as you do the right thing.
Hmm:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/16/us/pennsylvania-sandusky-case/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Of course, McQueary could be full of it. Or it’s possible that the grand jury findings were written in a specific way (i.e., to set up the factual basis for indicting the Penn State officials who failed to report properly) and didn’t actually get into every single fact and action of every person involved (e.g. other stuff McQueary might have done besides call his dad who told him to tell JoePa, which he did and then JoePa etc.).
I feel sort of dumb, because I do this every single time I hear something, I immediately come to SOME sort of judgment, and every single time, there are more facts. Not that they necessarily always change the way I come out about something, but why am I unable to remember that there are always more facts than what I initially hear? And that sometimes they might just be exceedingly relevant?
That said, this story starts to get a little more system-threatening if McQueary did go to police and the police…did whatever with it. Okay, then we’re not talking about individual people’s failure of nerve–we’re talking about breakdowns in the systemic security of our society. Fine, all well and good that we would all call the police (even subjunctively)–but if he did (or went to them later or SOMETHING involving them at some point, because not doing that is what we were all faulting him for)? And they didn’t stop it? Well, oh shit, right? Because then who do you call?
In the email obtained by The Morning Call, McQueary wrote that he “did have discussions with police and with the official at the university in charge of police” following the alleged incident involving Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant coach, and a boy.
To your point that “the grand jury findings were written in a specific way” — right. On the one hand, if McQueary isn’t the one addressed, for lack of a better word, by the presentment, that could explain why it doesn’t include his going to the police.
On the other hand, McQueary doesn’t say that he “went to” the police. He says he had discussions with them. He doesn’t say when this occurred or how long after the incident, and it’s in the context of another email he sent to classmates, I believe, saying that he’s getting “hammered” for his handling of the situation. And given that the grand jury WAS addressing the guy who headed up the university cops, if McQueary’s current claim is information they had, I’m not sure why it isn’t in there. I’m not an attorney, so what do I know, but that’s probative information, no? “We did report this to state authorities. They did nothing. Indict them, not me.”
Based on how the police “dealt with” (because they…didn’t) Sandusky in the late ’90s, it’s entirely plausible that McQueary did approach them, did say what he’d seen, did give them a detailed accounting, and they once again declined to follow up in any real way. But it’s also entirely possible that he’s spinning the shit right now. Or that it’s a little of both.
Thanks for linking to that transcript. How… disturbing. I saw clips of the interview on The Daily Show, and it was the height of WTFery. Bob Costas held it together really well, considering the “I CANNOT BELIEVE I AM HEARING THIS WHAT IS HAPPENING” look on his face.
Slightly off topic, but I’d still like to get some opinions:
What do you do when you witness parents treating their children awfully — shouting at their kids for merely acting like kids, threatening their kids with (physical) punishments when they get home, or hitting their kids in public?
The yelling at the kids . . . eh, that sucks, but if it’s not verbally abusive, I’m reluctantly willing to chalk it up to the parent having a bad day and taking it out on the child. But the threat of, or actual, physical punishment? I want to say something to the parent, or protect the kid, or get an authority involved, however I
a)think it’s kind of none of my business
b)am not necessarily physically in a place where I can contact an authority (say, on the subway), and don’t know the people involved in order to report them, and
c)worry my chiding the parents will result in the parent punishing the kid more severely
I’m sure I’m not the only one to have experienced this kind of situation. What do the rest of you do when this happens?
@Georgia — I think alerting a policeman (or security guard, or someone who has authority over whatever space you’re in) is probably best. In situations where that’s not possible, I’ve gone with “Is everything OK here?” in the friendliest, most nonaccusatory way possible, like you’re just noticing the noise and you’re not calling out the abuser.
Of course, the last time I tried “Is everything OK here?”, it was when I saw a male-female couple having a screaming fight on the street that seemed like it was heading towards getting physical, and the woman cursed ME out for “putting my fucking nose where it didn’t fucking belong” and their fight was resolved by the couple coming to the mutual agreement that I was a nosy bitch. So I don’t know how effective it is, but it’s the best thing I’ve thought of, and I would have felt bad just watching it unfold without saying anything.
And I guess if there is some kind of identifier (like a license plate or a kid in a school uniform) that would allow you to ID the person, you can report it to the appropriate authorities. Most jurisdictions have some kind of hot line. I think I would have to witness something pretty definitive to make that call, though. There was this other awful couple that lived across the street from me who would have screaming fights all the time, and they had a kid in the house. Their next-door-neighbors called the police all the time for their fights, so the authorities must have been somewhat aware of the girl’s situation. I think? The family was eventually evicted. Anyway, I always felt like I should have done something more for her and I wish I knew what that was. I never saw them do anything to harm the girl, but it must have been a toxic environment and I felt terrible about being a bystander. But she was too small (3 or 4) for me to try to make neighborly friends with her.
It pains me to link to Dr. Phil, but this is what popped up when I Googled “What to do when you witness abuse” and it’s not bad:
http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/239
I just saw this comment on FB, regarding the culpability of Paterno et al.: “It’s the same sort of thing like if someone has a heart attack on the street, you see a crowd of people doing nothing, or if there’s an assault on a street in a city, a lot of people will just pass by. It’s not their problem.” [NB: this was from a Penn State alum who has, thus far, been clinging fiercely to the idea that there is ONE bad actor here, and it’s Sandusky.]
No, no it’s not the same sort of thing, because when we talk about Paterno & Co. failing to act, we’re not actually just talking about the incident McQueary witnessed. We’re talking about a pattern of behavior that was incredibly inappropriate (at best), wasn’t a secret, and continued for YEARS. People passing by an assault on the street is one thing; the same group of people watching one assailant lie in wait for victims and assault them on the street over and over again for a decade is another thing altogether.
Then there’s this, which…has a few valid points (if you can get past the overwrought writing), but is ultimately pretty disingenuous in its description of the way the big bad media has wronged Paterno. Point = missed. http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2011-11-10/news/joe-paterno-scandal/
Apparently the police have no record of McQueary talking to them in 2002: http://deadspin.com/5860292/
Georgia & Potato – Growing up, I was abused by my mother in every way. The vast majority of the time this took place in the privacy of our home, but on a handful of occasions things occurred in front of others – family members (visiting from out of town, say), and on one rare and thus highly memorable occasion on a street in front of who knows how many people. She was kicking me, slapping me and shoving me, cussing me out. I vividly remember the feeling of people walking by, looking right at me in my humiliation, and continuing on their way. Slo-mo.
Despite having actual eye witnesses (and being a painfully depressed and in general just a sad and lonely child – IOW obviously troubled) not one single adult – my other parent, a friend’s parent, any other family member, a teacher, or a stranger – ever stuck their neck or hand out for me. Naturally, I deduced I was not worth helping; that the consensus was that I was deeply, obviously flawed and deserved what was happening to me. That lent itself heavily to the overwhelming feelings of shame and inherent worthlessness that I still, to this day and after much good therapy, find struggle with.
But I have found myself in the face of less blatant abusiveness on the part of an irrational parent in public, and also have wondered what to do, if anything. I am handicapped to an extent; a screaming, cussing parent makes me feel all hyperventilate-y and literally nauseated and panicked. I feel I can’t trust my own assessment of and possible (over?) reaction to what is before me – which is doing battle, of course, with my burning desire never ever EVER to be one of those people who witnesses a child’s abuse and for whatever reason turns and walks away.
That has been what has wrecked me most of all in this Sandusky mess – knowing that at least two children SAW SOMEONE SEE, and then saw those people turn around and leave. My heart sinks at the thought. It’s devastating, and it makes me intensely angry at McQueary and that janitor.
So, here’s my advice for when you see a child being abused – in conjunction with somehow stopping it and/or reporting the parent (if possible). If nothing else, if you can and it is safe to do so, tell that child point blank: You don’t deserve this, what’s happening to you right now, and I really wish I could help you. No one ever said that to me, and man, how good it would have been for me to hear it.
As an aside to the trauma survivors here (or anyone interested, for that matter): I highly recommend Dr. Judith Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery. It is amazing – transformative, really. Buy it, read it, and go get help (if you haven’t already).
Thanks, Sars.
“Everyone’s cape flutters attractively in the breeze of the subjunctive.”
Best sentence ever.
If anything good comes of this, it’s that maybe we’ll be quicker to do the right thing when our moment comes.
@Sars–17 seconds. It took 17 seconds for him to come up with an answer and it wasn’t a flat-out no.
I know a reporter who spoke with former and current members of the football team the Monday after news broke and they said Sandusky’s proclivities were an open joke. Sadly, this is something that could be considered a joke by the so-called “cream of the crop” of young athletes in America.
But as a Penn State alum, who wrote an email to Spanier asking him to accept resignations from McQueary, Paterno, Schultz, and Curley the day the story broke and later wrote to the board of trustees asking them to fire these men, I’m feeling defensive of PSU alums and supporters. Yes, there are people who are ostriching trying to defend these and any of the people who knew and did nothing. But the vast majority of us are appalled. Angry. Disbelieving in a “we know this happened but we can’t conceive of how” not a “it didn’t happen” way.
I want the cancer cut out (and the five aren’t enough, there are clearly people in the PSU police dept who worked for Schultz who were complicit in allowing this to continue and there have to be others in administration of both athletics and the university who knew and did nothing). And I want university wide regulations, training, education around abuse to take place and a no-tolerance policy put into place.
I want Sandusky tried and put away for the rest of his life.
But I don’t want this to stain every Penn Stater for all time.
Crap on a cracker, things really are rotten at Second Mile: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/sports/ncaafootball/internet-posting-helped-sandusky-investigators.html. When you’re a tax-exempt charity, you don’t just misplace your travel and expense records from a few years back. Does. Not. Happen.
Makes me wonder just how big the coverup is and how many pedophiles were actually involved. The implications make me feel sick. Maybe it’s just Sandusky hiding use of charity funds to buy gifts he used in the grooming process with his victims; or maybe not. Ugh.
@Bo, what you’re saying doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me very, very sad. And the “open secret” nature of what was going on is exactly why I’m starting to wonder if those rumors of pimping little boys out are more than just crazy rumors started by attention-hungry shock jocks and Internet tabloids. The people who find this idea so implausible as to be absurd all say, “But how would you do this? How do you go up to someone and say, ‘Hey, check it out, if you’re into little boys, then I’m your hookup’?” That’s the thing, though – you don’t have to. When you’re such an obvious pedophile that your own football team can see it, people who share your interests are going to figure it out. Yes, I can absolutely imagine Sandusky “sharing” the kids he preyed on or taking pornographic photos of them and passing them around online.
Does anyone know if any computers at Sandusky’s home, Penn State, or Second Mile have been seized yet? If not, I wonder why the hell that hasn’t happened.
I need to go bleach my brain now. And I hope the IRS investigates Second Mile relentlessly.
Now with allegations fired at an assistant Syracuse University basketball coach at, we have possibly the opposite side of this awful coin: potentially false allegations from “victims” seeking something other than justice. In that case, however, authorities were involved once accusations were cast, and the school did its own investigation even when the police decided not to act further. The rumours, etc., present in the Sandusky case were not present. The only corroborating witness (or other “victim”) was a family member. If untrue, this type of accusation only undermines the actual victims of abuse.
I agree 100 percent with this. I also think in the end human nature is so much about self-preservation that there are a lot fewer “heroes” in the world than we would like to imagine.
A few weeks ago, I saw some people arguing in my neighbor’s driveway – for HOURS they fought, two men and a woman, until finally it escalated to one of the men physically trying to drag the woman out of a car, then, from what I could see, hitting her a couple of times.
I called the cops, but not out of some noble desire to do the right thing. I called the cops because I was sure he was going to murder her right there in the driveway and then come for me and my daughter because we were witnesses. Because even some stranger getting dragged around by her husband is all about ME. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when the group left before the police got there, and I didn’t have to worry that they would find me out as the “rat.” And while I don’t regret doing it, I can’t even say I would do it again out of fear that is was the wrong thing – nobody in that situation was going to thank me for calling the cops, nothing was likely to come of it but more abuse for the woman, and maybe danger for me. It’s sooo easy to convince yourself that minding your own business is the best thing. It’s impossible not to worry about the lives you’ll blow apart by calling the cops, calling CPS, whatever, and what if you’re wrong in what you saw?
This situation is obviously very different – it involves children and horrible, horrible acts, perpetrated over an extended period of time in which somebody should have done something. I don’t think there’s any excuse for what and how it happened, and I too want to believe I definitely would have done things differently. But I can also see how people convince themselves that just looking straight ahead and minding their own business is all they owe the world.
This piece resonated with me so much. I’m getting a lot out of these comments as well.
My question is about this: “I understand that you can’t roll into the cop shop with ‘I heard from my friend who’s friends with the Second Mile security guard that X,’ or ‘I saw him holding hands with a kid at the mall and it seemed kind of Y.'” So what can those people do? Because in this situation, there were more of those people than any other, I would imagine.
Really, my question is: what do I do when I’m “those people” in a similar situation?
I wish there was a perfect answer to the when/how do we intervene scenarios. I would say learn your non-emergency number for the police department. In a medium size city (columbus, oh) I have called them for panhandling (woman w/ baby in stroller at exit ramp, temp. 20F), debris in the road, and a domestic situation that spilled onto the sidewalk (1am & child involved). I’ve never once felt like I was bothering someone when it didn’t qualify as an emergency yet I felt like I needed to do something. I realize it doesn’t address the parent threatening child in the Target aisle but I’ve found it to be helpful.
I know this is an old thread at this point, but here’s a story that anyone following this case should read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/22/penn-state-scandal-jerry-sandusky-victim-mother_n_1108979.html. It’s not just Penn State engaging in ass-covering. It’s every adult in a position of authority, all the way down the line. McQueary is a damn hero compared to some of these other bastards.
http://www.billjamesonline.com/the_trial_of_penn_state/
1. You have to be a member of Bill James Online to read it. I believe that costs $3 a calendar quarter, so you may find that worthwhile anyway.
2. I frequently disagree with James’s assessments of legal/criminal matters — but usually it’s because he’s forcing me to examine WHY I believe, or want to believe, a certain narrative (or its neatness, usually). “Popular Crime” was a great read, but also challenging, for that reason.