"What if it had been a 10-year old girl in the Penn State locker room that Friday night in 2002?"That is the question that Daniel Mendelsohn asks in an Op-Ed article in the New York Times. Mendelsohn is an author and professor at Bard College whom I have long admired both for his fiction and his critical essays in the New York Review of Books.
Mendelsohn's writes:
"Does anyone believe that if a burly graduate student had walked in on a 58-year-old man raping a naked little girl in the shower, he would have left without calling the police and without trying to rescue the girl?"According to Mendelsohn, it's the underlying homophobia rampant in the sports world that leaves such a question "stubbornly undiscussed." When coaching assistant, Mike McQueary, came upon a senior coach raping a 10 year old boy in the locker room shower, he "left immediately," as he later described it, with his "brain racing" over the quick, tough decisions he had to make.
"[T]he mind recoils at the grotesque failure to intervene more forcefully. How could a grown man have left the scene without taking the child with him?"
And the decision he made was to go home and talk to his Dad about it. The next day he told the head coach. It went up the university chain of authority: Head of the Athletic Department, University President. At some point, Sandusky, the retired assistant coach who still had gym privileges, was barred from future use of the gym. In others words: "Just don't do it here."
None of them called the police.
Of course, as Mendelsohn says, the difference is in the gender of the child.Here's the way I see the underlying (non)thinking:
(1) To report a sexual assault on a little girl is to report a rapist.Or at least that's the emotional connection underlying the denial and cover-up. In fact, pedophilia is a separate phenomenon from homosexuality. The attraction in pedophiles is to a prepubescent child, more often girls than boys. That is what professional investigators have told us; but, at the emotional level, the mind recoils and we hear "male-male sex."
(2) To report a sexual assault on a little boy is to accuse this senior coach of having sex with another male.
There's a subtle, but all-telling, shift in where the concern lies -- from the little girl in #1 to the senior coach's reputation in #2.
But does that make it less serious, less heinous, for a boy to be raped? Apparently the hierarchy in the athletic department and the university administration thought so. A previous charge against this same coach years before had been dismissed as "horsing around."
It's a terrible thing that happened, and the university failed miserably in handling it. But the very fame of the coach and the football team brings it into the spotlight of frank discussion that is long overdue.
Ralph
The mother of "Victim One," who testified for the grand jury, has now spoken out publicly in an interview with a free-lance journalist. Assuming her story to be truthful, this is a harrowing indictment, not of Penn State, but of the middle and high school officials to whom she made complaints.
ReplyDeleteJerry Sandusky, the accused, founded a charity group to benefit underprivileged boys, called Second Mile. It largely used his connections with the vaunted Penn State football empire to inspire and to promote athletics among these boys.
There were summer camps, after school programs. And Sandusky could get them into college games, use of the gym, etc. He also was a big presence in the middle school, and then the high school, who cooperated with his program. He was a familiar presence in and around the school.
When the boy, who was in this program, began to exhibit disturbed behavior. His mother became suspicious when he asked her "how to look up sex wierdos." He was 10 or 11 at the time. She later found out that Sandusky would come and take him out of class, and the school allowed it, without having the mother's permission or knowledge. She tried to talk to the school counselor about her suspicions, but was brushed off.
Later, and now in a different high school and a star football player, her son went through an emotional breakdown and told her about Sandusky. He was having nightmares, and was emotionally distraut. Again she had a confrontation with school authorities. By now her son had told the counselor that "something inappropriate had happened with Sandusky." He was sitting there in the principle's office, shaking and terrified. The mother insisted they call the police. They told her to go home and think about it.
Eventually she did notify the child protective agency; Sandusky was barred from the school pending investigation. The high school football coach told the team who was responsible for reporting Sandusky -- and now the furor was turned on the boy. He was ostracized and received threats.
The mother took him out of school. And now she is talking openly. So it's not just Penn State that has put the reputation of the football empire and its coaches ahead of the welfare of children.
If you want to read more, the link is:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/22/penn-state-scandal-jerry-sandusky-victim-mother_n_1108979.html