By Mike Kelly
Daily Record
November 13, 2011
http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/kelly/kelly_111311.html?page=all
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| Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press |
That question leaps from almost every page of the grand jury report of the Penn State sex abuse story. It hovers in the background of almost every statement by former coach Joe Paterno and other university officials who kept silent. It sits on a perch like a disfigured gargoyle keeping watch over this whole mess.
Didn't anyone at Penn State know how to dial 911 when they heard a coach was allegedly raping a 10-year-old boy in the Penn State football locker room shower? For crying out loud, why not?
Back here in North Jersey Joe Capozzi knows the answer to that question. He is 42 now, an actor and writer living in Manhattan. But when he was growing up in Ridgefield, he was sexually abused by a Roman Catholic priest for almost a decade.
He feels others in his Catholic parish suspected what was happening to him, including other priests. But no one spoke up. No one came forward to talk to him. No one blew the whistle. No one even bothered to ask a few questions.
Silence was a hallmark of Capozzi's abuse, the power source that allowed it to continue. But silence was also a handcuff – an emotional prison that tortured Capozzi and allowed the priest-abuser to go about his life as if nothing were wrong.
The abuse ended when Capozzi spoke up. He has since written a play about his experience. But what of the consequences? Why weren't the police summoned?
Disturbing truth
Here, Capozzi has been forced to confront a disturbing truth of how the crime of sex abuse warps people's moral compass.
"People don't want to bring in the outside world," said Capozzi. "They want to handle it in-house. They are more worried about their positions than about the victims."
And so we come to Penn State.
If ever there was a football program that bragged about its moral compass, this was it. With Coach Joe Paterno in charge for the past four decades, Penn State managed to win regularly, while also maintaining high graduation rates for players and avoiding the sordid financial and drug scandals that plagued so many other notable college football programs.
Penn State football was a powerhouse – on the field and off.
So we thought.
High regard for the Church
The painful truth is that many had the same high regard for America's Roman Catholic Church. The church was a moral powerhouse, staffed by many good priests and nuns who dedicated themselves to a higher calling. And yet, we now know a moral cancer had taken hold of the Church. A 2004 study, commissioned by U.S. Catholic bishops and carried out by researchers at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, found that 10,667 Catholics had accused 4,392 priests of sexual abuse
from 1950 to 2002.
If you don't think those numbers are all that large, consider the repercussions if we learned that 10,667 Army recruits had been sexually abused by 4,392 Army officers during a 42-year period. And in case anyone wonders about the extent of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, the numbers are from official Catholic files and reflect only reports of victims who came forward. Experts agree that most victims never come forward. The true number of Catholic victims may be significantly higher.
Police were never called
Even more astounding than the numbers, however, is the fact that police were almost never summoned to investigate. Sex abuse is a crime – just like murder and robbery. But the church kept the crime reports in-house, under wraps. No cops. No bad publicity. And for heavens sake – no journalists. The news of so many Catholics accusing so many priests was considered top secret – out of sight, out of mind. Whistleblowers were told they were destroying the Church's holy mission if they spoke up.
We now know the result of this dishonesty. The church's moral integrity – a valued hallmark even among non-Catholics — has been shredded. Mass attendance has dropped. Even honorable priests are no longer trusted. Bishops, who once held press conferences in Washington, D.C., to discuss their insightful views on economics and nuclear weapons, now hold press conferences about the latest grand jury report on why they covered up the sex abuse scandal.
The church is the largest non-government provider of free health care to poor people in America. But it has now paid more than $2 billion in legal bills and settlements for sex abuse claims. Imagine how many poor folks could be helped with $2 billion.
But don't blame the victims for taking a few bucks. Blame Catholic officials who covered up. Blame their sycophants who support them.
Silence was a drug
There would be no financial or moral disaster in the Catholic church if priests and bishops had spoken up earlier and called in the cops. But, as in the case of Joe Capozzi of Ridgefield, silence was a drug and a prison.
And so it was at Penn State.
On a March night in 2002, one of Paterno's protégés, Mike McQueary, a former Penn State quarterback who was then a 28-year-old graduate assistant to the football team, stopped by the locker room to drop off recruiting tapes and a pair of new sneakers.
According to the Centre County, Pa., grand jury report released last week, McQueary heard "rhythmic slapping sounds" and "believed the sounds to be those of sexual activity." McQueary looked into the shower room and says he saw a naked former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, having anal sex with a naked 10-year-old boy.
Imagine that scene — the naked ex-coach, the naked boy, the former quarterback. Eyeball-to-eyeball.
Now imagine this: McQueary did not step forward to intervene. Even more incredible, he did not say anything – not even, "What's going on here?"
"What happened in that shower was a murder of that child's soul and the destruction of his innocence," said Gregory Gianforcaro, an attorney who has represented some 150 sex-abuse victims in New Jersey and elsewhere.
A crime in progress
Gianforcaro is correct. McQueary witnessed a crime in progress – the murder of a child's innocence. The grand jury report says McQueary "left immediately, distraught."
But McQueary wasn't distraught enough to call the cops. He called his father, who was not bothered enough to call police either. Daddy instructed his son to talk to Paterno the next morning. But Paterno was not bothered enough to call police.
Paterno waited a day, then phoned Penn State's athletic director, who waited another week and a half before summoning McQueary to a meeting with him and a university vice president – who listened again to the shower rape tale, but never called the cops.
Do you see the pattern? No one cared enough about the victim to call the cops.
This wasn't just a cover up.
This was moral cowardice.
Penn State is no longer the home of the "Nittany Lions."
It's the home of chickens.
Contact: kellym@northjersey.com
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