The Penn State story of the sexual abuse of children has just sickened me -- as it has many others. I have been so upset and angry about these ugly and awful revelations that I've been unable to write about it until now.
Maybe it's because I have two young boys myself, 13 and 8, that my emotions are so strong. In fact, I am both a Dad and a coach.
A grand jury report, containing 40 counts of assault against boys as young as 7, by Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant football coach at Penn State -- number two to football coaching legend Joe Paterno -- has stunned the nation.
By now most of us have heard about the alleged incident in 2002, when a graduate assistant coach walked into the Penn State University locker room and witnessed Sandusky, a big hulking man, raping a 10 year-old boy in the showers. The disgust and almost physical fury that wells up inside of me seriously challenges my non-violent principles, especially if I had been there.
But the young coach who witnessed the violent crime just fled and called his father, who told him to call Paterno, who then informed the university athletic director and a vice-president.
The only consequence was that Sandusky suffered was having to give up his keys to the locker room. Apparently no other actions were taken or follow-up pursued.
It's literally unbelievable.
So why does this happen, and keep happening? A lot of reflection is going on about that now.
One answer is the pie chart that I saw, showing the total annual revenue of Penn State at $116.2 million with the football profits comprising 72.7 of that -- the lion's share.
Big sports at big colleges are big business for both the schools and the surrounding communities. The control and protection of money in so many of our institutions is a leading cause of institutional moral failure -- and this was a colossal moral failure.
Paterno has become a virtual icon for his almost five decades of coaching and for running, as college football programs go, one of the cleanest in the country -- boasting many athlete graduations and virtually no accusations of rules violations. There is already a statue of Paterno on the campus and, before being fired last week, he had showed no signs of retiring at the age of 84. So perhaps the protection of an icon was also involved.
Such massive abuse, going on for so long, and known to so many as it now appears -- from janitors to coaches to university officials to Paterno, the veritable king of the University -- could not have continued with a collective, disciplined, and very evil cultural complicity.
The similarities of both the repeated abuse and the institutional cover-up are painfully reminiscent of the Catholic Church's pedophile scandal. Priests and coaches, violating the most vulnerable and that abuse being covered up by their institution's leaders creates a sense of utter betrayal and loss of trust.
And here is the most evil thing for me: In most cases, the children who are violated already are among the most vulnerable. Sandusky ran a non-profit organization called "Second Mile" which dealt with the most "at risk kids."
That's an amazing phrase, really, "at risk kids." Under the guise of helping them, Sandusky exploited an opportunity to abuse a yet unknown number of children.
Many priests too sought out the children of single mothers, and with the offer of help to the families, then created opportunities to violate their children, bodies and souls. Many of these children don't know much about healthy relationships and some have been abused before by other people in their often broken family systems.
Far too often they often don't have natural protectors, such as fathers with good relationships to their children and the capacity to defend them, who naturally cast a watchful eye at anyone who might be a predator.
Of course, most of these exploited and abused kids come from poor families that lack the capacity to surround their children with such protection. So the predators prey on those who already are the most vulnerable; and then the institutions involved have more interest in protecting the predators and themselves, than innocent children.
The pattern is as predictable as it is evil, and now we see it at a major and respected university and its "exemplary" football program.
That is why Jesus' command to protect the most vulnerable, "the least of these," is so radical and humanizing. In Mathew 25, he allows no excuses, neither personal nor institutional.
"As you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me," Jesus says without qualification. Apply that text to this terrible exploitation at Penn State and it certainly speaks explicitly to the most vulnerable children who have been so horribly abused there.
As it was done to them, it was done to Christ himself, the very Son of God. This famous text is one of the few passages of judgment in the New Testament.
It makes protection of the most vulnerable the highest value and stands as radically countercultural to institutions that would make it the lowest -- protecting all others first. Jesus command would force us to reverse all that and to literally put the most vulnerable first.
Judgment is now needed at Penn State and beyond about how we continue to allow wealth, power, institutional protections, and cultural complicity to aid, abet, and enable the evil abuse of our most vulnerable children.
Could the high visibility of the Penn State case and the notoriety of its famous football program and coach now be used finally face -- and eradicate -- the horrendous cultural sin that just repeats itself over and over again?
Is it finally time to come to terms with this most egregious abuse of power?
Only such sacred intervention will bring about any relief, any redress, any justice, and any redemption for those who have suffered the most.
And if we don't that, we all will be judged by the God who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me."
Lord have mercy.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.
Follow Jim Wallis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jimwallis
Cindy Abel: Jerry Sandusky Cover-Up: How the 'Gay Factor' May Have Played a Role
I am pretty sure the chart you saw was Athletic Department Revenues not overall University Revenues. Back in the 1970's when I was there the annual budget was well over 100 million. In 1977 they had a 190 million dollar shortfall because the PA Legislature was arguing about the amount they'd pay.
Paterno rightly acted as the conduit between the person who witnessed the act (and all of a sudden NOW has decided to say that he stopped it when he should have taken a baseball bat to Sandusky and that would have been that years ago) and the people in the food chain whose job it was to both investigate and notify the proper authorities (and who played the CYA game instead). But their names don't give the same bang for the buck as Paterno's.
Just as we shouldn't lose sight of the victims in this horrendous mess, let's not give a pass to Sandusky's facilitators just because they don't have famous names.
I hope PSU's students, the overwhelming majority of whom found the recent riot a senseless reaction to a football coach's firing, will act in as constructive a manner as possible. Vigils and fundraising for victims are a good start, but they are now forced to continually exceed expectations after being thrust into the consequences of these shocking events.
The students -- thousands of whom each year raise millions of dollars for curing children's cancer -- may well teach us all a lesson in how to help vulnerable and suffering individuals. Unlike those people who turned away from their responsibilities to the victims and the university, this tragedy and the students' response can remind us that compassion, justice, courage, and responsibility are the only means to combat ignorance, apathy, and an all-too-common cruelty.
Campus police, City police, victim's mother, Athletic Director, School Administrators, DA & his staff, Paterno, McQueary, McQueary's dad, janitorial staff.... Are we to believe that these individuals had snippets of the story and DIDN'T TELL ANYONE ELSE.... Not their wives, girlfriends, neighbors, co-workers, NO ONE??? Does that pass the laugh test... For the last few days, the entire country can't stop talking about it... But according to PSU & Paterno, no one REALLY told them.... BULL...
If Paterno DID NOT KNOW about Sandusky and his problem, then he did not want to know... What do that call it in politics - Plausable Deniability...
Penn State has covered this up in some shape, form or fashion since the '90s and today a report I read said as early as '79 that Sandusky has been molesting boys. Not sure but I have said he just didnt wake up in '98 and say I am going to be a pedophile today.
You say -Plusable Deniability- yes that is true, Some may some and this is good way to look at it -Selective Hearing-. I believe yes it could be both, but saying them both you get ----Greed, Money, Power------ that was Penn State's downfall.
I agree that this is a failure by more than just Joe Paterno but in the middle and the end it was Joe Paterno who, I would wager, made the final decisions to cover up the years of allegations.
Sandusky actions angers me beyond words. However, the reaction from the college is what I expect. Keep the image of the school as clean as possible so the future students parents have No issues spending 80,000- 120,000 dollars on their kids education. If a college always ranked at the high end of crime on campus. Wouldn't it be an easy choice not to attend.
Joe Paterno, may have known more than what has been in the media. What that man knew is speculation. Every major college has a figure head of the college. Many head football coaches are the main figure to their school. At a handful of colleges it’s the basketball coach that is the figure. Yet, even if the coach has power in the athletic department, the board of directors carries the bigger stick. Even the President of the school answers to them.
Sandusky is not gay and DSK was trying to flee the country when he was arrested.
And let’s not pretend that this is an isolated incident, a freakish once in a blue moon cover-up of corruption in high places. No, this is something that is happening everyday in institutions and corporations, in local politics and national politics, in the schools and in the medical industry, in Hollywood and in Washington everywhere we turn there are conspiracies to push the truth and justice aside and accommodate criminals and liars.
That’s who we are now that’s what we have become there is no denying it; the pursuit and worship of money has completely dismantled all sense of fair play and justice and it has become endemic in the “land of the free”. Some call it American exceptionalism as if that wasn’t a bad joke; a withering false pride has invaded and conquered the national psyche and so we lie to each other and to ourselves barely recognizing what is happening right in front of our faces.
Excellent assessment on all accounts.
The fact that money TRUMPS morality unfortunately has been reality for far too long BUT the fact that money trumped the SAFETY of CHILDREN in this case is despicable, repulsive and easily unforgivable.
Greed is and always has been an ugly and DANGEROUS trait.
This is America, people! It's all about the MONEY! Individuals don't matter, right and wrong don't matter. Neither the Constitution nor "inalienable rights" matter. The only thing that matters in America is the almighty DOLLAR!
4:53pm
NYC
The fact that a teacher at my high school was also a coach appears to
be the reason he was allowed to harass me my entire senior year after
I made it clear that I was not interested in him sexually. My
complaints at the school fell on deaf ears---I could not even get out of his American Govt. class. My parents lived hundreds of miles away because I chose not to live with them during
their (unsuccessful) attempts to avoid a divorce.
The other kids in class were offended by his insulting remarks about
me but nothing was done because he was valued as a basketball coach.
He gave me an F for every paper I turned in and then flunked me so that I did not graduate with my class but had to make up the course during the summer of 1968.
I still consider myself lucky because I'd rather be harassed than the
girl he impregnated (and then married---and then divorced) in my class. What a creep.
But where was our outrage in 2002 and 2003 in the buildup to war in Iraq. The consequences of that action were not psychological damage of ten young boys, but death of over 4000 Americans, maiming of tens of thousands of Americans, murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and maiming of God knows how many Iraqis. Where is our outrage over the thousands of high-level State Department, CIA, and DoD personnel who knew that lies were being committed, but did nothing. No resignations, no press conferences, nothing. At least McGreary reported what he saw to the chain of command.
Put these issues in perspective. There's nothing admirable about the whole Penn State affair, but it pales in comparison to Iraq and the code of silence on the Wall Street debacle.
4:55pm
NYC
The point is that a telephone call to the police could have stopped the madness at Penn State and spared those little boys.
No phone call could have stopped the war in Iraq.