eve11 | What matters (Reply)

I am absolutely sickened by what has happened. Children raped. On campus. Repeatedly. I hesitate to type it because it's so awful but not to write it out is like downplaying it or denying it happened. So that's it. Young boys, as young as 8 to 10, forced into sexual acts by a sick pedophile who operated with impunity and had the power and prestige to set up an entire charity through which to find his victims. Allegations and observations covered up or smoothed over by an administration that at best, fell victim to a horrific game of "telephone" and at worst, covered over what they knew was happening to save face.

I keep thinking about the victims, how they placed their trust in a mentor and had it ripped away. I keep thinking about the abject lies that people tell themselves so hard until they believe them. Part of me wants Jerry Sandusky to do the world a favor, take some pills and rid the world of himself so we don't have to waste money prosecuting him. There is nothing redeeming about him and I hate him for what he did. I hate the fact that he's still proclaiming innocence and is such a sick fuck that he actually believes it. Apparently, pedophiles like this often believe that they are kids' best friends and are horribly misunderstood and depressed and sad when the truth comes out. Fuck them. Fuck their twisted "nice guy" personas. I hate that others may have believed him. I hate that nobody stepped forward to help those kids. The leadership at PSU betrayed those boys the absolute most, and they betrayed the rest of the people who put any kind of trust in them to do the right thing, when it absolutely mattered more than anything else. I hate that I can't change that. I hate that reading the insults hurled at PSU hurts me, because I know it's not about me.

I've read the grand jury indictment. I've thought a lot about it. I've tried to avoid reading the internet comments that say my alma mater should be razed to the ground over the actions of a few and that all of us who are connected with the university in any way have the obligation to present a gaping open wound on our chests for prurient poking and moral aggrandizing whenever we present a resume or discuss our schooling or talk about our old college friends. At this point, I believe that the beds that were made will now be lain in by those responsible. I still, for some reason, manage to have empathy for those involved, or at least, an understanding possibly of why people failed to act. Which is not to be confused with sympathy or in any way condoning of the decisions that were made. But I am for some reason lacking in Moral Outrage. Maybe I just need to think about it more, and that will come. Sadly, this kind of thing happens way more often than some people would like to believe, in families across the country. Every. Single. Day. People fail to act. Every. Single. Day. If anything can come of this, perhaps it can spark discussions and help to bring the insidious, secretive problem into the light.

Pennsylvania is apparently trying to fast-track a law that mandates that any adult witnessing an assault on a child is required to report it to the police. I think it's a nice idea but it seems like an absolutely unenforceable law that may have far-reaching effects on adults who are also victims of domestic violence; I wonder what the wording will be and what the implications are. I think that the fact that "there's a law!" will not push people to act in the spur of the moment any more than any other reasons they might have. How will it influence their decisions afterward? Will someone have to plead the 5th to avoid incriminating themselves if they didn't act soon enough? I wonder how applicable the exact situation that drove this law is to the more general problem. The power dynamics that can still exist among "adults" muddy these waters, and oh yeah, it's why the mandatory reporting laws for educators and other impartial third parties are there and that suspicions need to be reported to CYS so they can be investigated impartially. Those people need to have training on how to act; it's part of their jobs (And yet they too are fallible). Where will we institute this training for "every adult"? Will the government do better than the father of a grad student? Nobody wants to hear this now. Things went wrong and something must be done about it.

I'm sick of hearing about Joe Paterno. I of course was a fan of the team but I was never in the Cult of Paterno: I had no idea who he was at all when I reported to my dorm in late August, 1995. There are several warring stories underlying what wasn't said about "Victim 2" in the grand jury report; even the "best" of them is bad enough for me to agree that he and anyone else who knew of what happened cannot keep their jobs, and had to go, immediately. There is a lot of speculating and stone-throwing running around right now; what does it do? (That said, I think that when you spend a lifetime setting yourself up on a moral high horse and then abjectly and utterly fail to live up to your own standards when it matters most, you are going to suffer for it whether you were actively complicit or just made a big, huge mistake, there, there's my stone. moving on) Anyway, the details that come out will turn rocks that absolutely need to be turned, and hopefully excise a cancer that harmed so many.

I've never really been part of the "Penn State family" despite being an alum. It's just not something I ever felt extremely strongly about. I did, however, get a top-notch education there for way less than it could have cost, met a lot of fantastic friends, met my boyfriend of currently 14 years, and had a very positive experience over my five years there.

That said, plenty of horrible things have happened at Penn State. Rapes, tragic deaths, riots, murders. In September 1996, about 200 yards away from my dorm room, a woman sat herself in the bushes of the HUB building with a rifle and opened fire on the lawn. Few people reading this will know or remember the name Jillian Robbins. She's serving 30 to 60 in Muncy for the attack. Few people reading this will remember Melanie Spalla. She was shot in the back and killed, and nothing will ever EVER be able to fix that. She was a 21-year-old journalism major, walking along the western fence of the lawn on her way to class on a September morning. She could have been me, if I'd had any predilection for early classes in my sophomore year.

People will likely remember Mike McQueary's name long after they've forgotten (if they ever knew) Brendon Malovrh, who leaped into the bushes that morning and did everything in his power to STOP what he saw happening. He lived in my dorm. From what I know and recall, he was absolutely in shock about what had happened that morning. And we had to go on lockdown because reporters were literally trying to climb through windows to get an "exclusive interview" with him.

Even I remember the incidents, and the faces, and some of the names, but I had to look up the specifics. It was 15 years ago, after all.

Group "solidarity" motions always make me uncomfortable, but I will not villify those for whom they help. If alumni want to raise money for RAINN, it can only help. If students want to pray before a football game, let them pray. I will change the channel if I don't want to watch, if it only makes me think bad things. The truth is, these students did NOTHING WRONG. They believed in the good intentions of a higher institution and it failed them. Nothing new there. The media always wants to make things into "stories", which means that they always simplify things, and the rest of the world shakes their heads and says "here they go again." People want bite-sized chunks but we know the truth. It's ridiculous to talk about "healing" a week after the fact. The hurt that students and alums of the university feel is obviously nothing compared to what the victims endured. And a football game isn't going to make it all better. The announcers, all the talking heads in college football are so freaking far out of their comfort zones talking about this that it would be really funny, if it weren't absolutely horrifying.

(Society is funny; we are told to place our trust in things greater than ourselves--the team, the institution, the government, others--and then are surprised when those things fail. As I get older I see the draw of religion in ways I never did when I was younger. Absolute faith in God is faith something that by definition can never ever fail you. It must be nice, but I think I missed the boat on that one.)

Armchair psychiatrists can wax forever about why people don't report crime when they see it. Here is what is important, here is what you can do about it as an individual: remember this story and think about what you will do if you ever are confronted with such a situation. Not "would have" done. Not "if I were a big strong quarterback" or "if I were a coach" or "if I had a friend who...". Those people made their choices and children suffered for it. And more so, the specifics of their exact situation are not going to be repeated. So, make a contract to do what you would be able to live with. Whether it's answerable to God, or to your family or to the victim or to the reaction if your actions were written up and posted on the world's bulletin board. Or just to yourself and to who you believe you are as a person. All of the above. The answer should be pretty obvious. And then if the situation arises, DO IT.

Everyone says "there needs to be a law" at the same time that everyone thinks "I wouldn't need a law!" Anyone can say what they would have done but it's wasting air; it is meaningless if they don't follow through when the horrific opportunity presents itself to them.

Anyway, this post is probably more for me than anyone else. At the same time I feel like I should write something to show that I'm not ignoring the issue, but I don't want it to seem self-serving. Not sure if I'll put it up under anything except "private". If I do, I'll leave comments open but I can't promise long discussions. It's not because I'm ignoring the issues or don't know about them. I'm as informed as one can be, and as you can imagine, my facebook network (full of PSU alums) has quite exploded over what happened. I've spent a lot of time talking about it online there and in RL, reading articles, thinking about it, and trying to come to terms with it so I can set it aside and move on. If anyone is interested, I think that in terms of the media, Sara Ganim of the Harrisburg Patriot News is (and has been) presenting good information, even if it of course has the usual local-news-report feel to it at times. The initial reports that the P-N ran on the hush-hush grand jury investigation apparently also reached some other victims who came forward to testify, so that is a very good thing.