How Penn State and the Catholic Church Covered up Sexual Abuse and What We Can Do to Stop It, The Forbes, November 7, 2011

How Penn State and the Catholic Church Covered up Sexual Abuse and What We Can Do to Stop It

The Forbes
November 7, 2011

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/11/07/how-penn-state-and-the-catholic-church-covered-up-sexual-abuse-and-what-we-can-do-to-stop-it/

The recent sexual abuse scandal at Penn State is similar to the abuse scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church in recent years. Does a culture of secrecy and deference to authority make sexual abuse more likely?

In the case of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who has been accused of sexually abusing at least eight boys over a fifteen year period, we see what looks disturbingly like a cover-up by school officials in the sports program there. Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, vice president for finance and business, have both been accused of covering up the abuse.

Institutions always lean toward self-preservation. When a member of an institution has done something wrong, the instinct of other members within that institution is to sweep it under the proverbial rug as quickly as possible. When the institution is at risk, every member feels at risk. And when the institution in question is opaque and hierarchical, that risk only becomes greater.

So we see sexual abuse scandals in both the Penn State case and the Catholic Church that are frighteningly similar.

The scandals that have wracked the Catholic Church in recent decades, and especially in recent years, are too many to name. But the same pattern of institutional self-preservation exists. The same power asymmetry between the abuser and the abused exists, and the same opacity of information exists.

Where the abuse has been the most appalling we often see a culture rooted in total trust of authority – in Ireland and Mexico and South America especially, and in poor immigrant communities in the United States. Abusive priests from more affluent parishes are moved to poorer churches in immigrant, and often Hispanic, communities.

That similar abuse should take place at an institution of higher learning may at first seem surprising. But consider the culture surrounding sports: intense competition, deference to authority, hyper-masculinity, and loyalty to a higher cause – the team, the win, the sport. Add to that the secrecy surrounding coach Paterno’s program and you can see how a serious problem could emerge.

Frank Fitzpatrick writes:

If Curley and Schultz did lie, as is alleged, in an apparent effort to cover up Sandusky’s behavior, the attempted cover-up makes perfect sense. They were reacting in much the same way most other Penn State athletic officials have long dealt with the outside world.

They withdrew into the comfortable cocoon Paterno wrapped around his program.

For reasons both logical and illogical, the coach has long been obsessed about sheltering his Nittany Lions team, as if it were a wartime army.

Practices are closed to the media. Assistant coaches are off-limits. Reporters have virtually no access to players. Information – think of Paterno’s long-secret salary – is locked away.

In the Catholic Church, perhaps the worst of the sexual scandal reported outside of the Irish fiasco took place within the secretive, almost cult-like, Legion of Christ. At its epicenter was the Legion’s founder, the now-disgraced Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado. The secrecy and the cult-like power that Degollado held over his followers made sexual abuse that much more likely to occur and made his victims and witnesses to his crimes that much less likely to come forward.

But a sports team is not a cult, and Penn State is not some extreme religious order tucked away in a far-off country, protected by a powerful Pope. The head of the program, legendary coach Joe Paterno, isn’t even a suspect. So how should Penn State and other sports teams and college programs respond?

It’s never easy, but a good rule of thumb is transparency – the very thing Paterno fought tirelessly against. The more transparency an organization has between members and leadership and between the organization and the outside world, the more likely abuse will come to light more quickly. This doesn’t mean posting your playbook online, but it does mean access by media to players and staff, and transparent salaries.

The other more difficult change is cultural. Sports teams, coaches, and athletes are all glorified in our current sports culture. If you win, you’re untouchable. Colleges put more resources into sports than into any other department, and schools rake in glory and money for their efforts – just like the Catholic Church benefited in souls and riches from the Legion of Christ.

This is a thorny problem, however. How do you change the culture of sports without hurting sports programs at the same time – without making sports less magnetic? For that matter, how do you change the sports culture to begin with?

Paying college athletes is one way to make college sports in particular less about powerful coaches and the interests of top schools and more about the individual players who currently serve as glorified indentured servants.

Placing less of a premium on superstar coaches and their superstar pay scales would also help take some of the luster from these programs, and make the sports about sports again, and less about celebrity.

In other words, we have to make a trade-off: we have to make sports more like other businesses – demystify and de-glamorize the experience to some degree, in order to make it more fair, more transparent, and ultimately safer.

Whether or not that’s a trade worth making – and I think it is – it’s obviously not a trade that many people within the sports experience are going to want to make, fans included.

At a bare minimum, though, if all teams, coaches, and players were held to a universal standard of ethics and transparency scandals like this would be much less likely to occur in the future, and scandals that did occur would be much less likely to go unreported for so long.

Penn State, and college sports more broadly, have a lot of self-examination to do in the coming months. It will be interesting to see what changes, if any, are made.