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	Reputation before Honor Fails Again By Dianne Williamson Worcester Telegram & Gazette November 13, 2011 http://www.telegram.com/article/20111113/COLUMN01/111139814 Hours before Joe Paterno was fired Wednesday as head football coach at Penn State University, he held an emotional meeting with his team. The iconic coach broke down in tears and stunned his players, who said they had never seen him in such a state. Asked later what was the main message of his talk, one of the players answered, "Beat Nebraska." Beat Nebraska? That, in a nutshell, is the priority and the problem. So much for "Success with Honor," the motto of Penn State's athletics program. Some years ago, whenever pastors and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church were confronted with evidence that a priest had molested a child, the priest was simply transferred to a different parish. When officials at Penn State were confronted with evidence that assistant coach Jerry Sandusky had raped a child in the football building, they took away his keys to the locker room. The similarities are both staggering and mind boggling. Two powerful and arrogant institutions were more concerned with protecting their reputation than protecting children. In both cases, otherwise intelligent men who clearly should have known better looked the other way while children were being molested. Only when you read the 23-page grand jury report does the full horror of what happened at Penn State sink in, just as depositions provided by diocesan officials in the 1950s — in Worcester and around the globe — provide a sickening account of buck-passing and cowardice. Let's be clear. Witnesses who testified before the grand jury didn't suspect that now-retired coach Sandusky was molesting kids, or see an ambiguous encounter of tickling or back rubbing. In 2002, Assistant Coach Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant, says he saw a naked boy about 10 years old with his hands against the wall of a shower, being raped from behind by a naked Sandusky. So he told his father, and then went to Paterno's house and told him. Paterno passed the information to athletic director Tim Curley, who told his boss, who told his boss, and so on. No one went to police. No one did anything. Now, Paterno claims that he was never told the specific nature of the sexual act, but admits that he was at least told that Sandusky was "fondling" a young boy. Even if that were true, which seems unlikely, wouldn't it be enough for Paterno to call the police? Or at least follow up to ensure that more innocent kids weren't "fondled" by the retired coach? Sandusky could have written a primer for NAMBLA. If the charges against him are true, he's a classic sexual predator who preyed on vulnerable and troubled boys within easy reach, thanks to an organization he founded himself. He used The Second Mile to select his victims, whom he then groomed and showered with gifts and special privileges. What all-American boy could resist the attentions of a big-time college football coach? "You just can't tell Jerry no," one of the alleged victims would tell his mother, years after he was abused. Of course not. That was up to the adults. It's too easy to decry child sexual abuse and condemn a culture that allowed children to be molested, whether it be a football program or a religious institution. What's harder is to learn from it, and remember the lessons learned over and over. In 2009, a Worcester teacher investigated for assaulting a young girl at Abby Kelley Foster school was given a positive job recommendation and sent on his way to teach somewhere else. He was later convicted and imprisoned. When a retired city fire captain was charged two years ago with child rape, supporters vouched for his character and his history as a Marine. The man pleaded guilty last year to indecent assault and battery on a child. As the Penn State scandal has shown, once again, child molesters aren't typically strangers who lurk in bushes. Yet, despite everything we know about child abuse, we still react with denial and disbelief when otherwise respectable adults are charged with such crimes. Not him, goes the typical response — he's a good guy. He's a teacher. He's a cop. He's a coach. He's a fill-in-the-blank. Sandusky is charged with molesting eight boys over 15 years, but who knows how many more children were victimized because grown-ups feigned ignorance, turned away and covered it up. It turns out that Penn State didn't "Beat Nebraska," but winning or losing means nothing when so many grown-ups dropped the ball. It's sad that the 84-year-old Paterno has ended his career under such a cloud, but any sympathy we're tempted to feel is tempered by the knowledge that he could have done more to protect children, yet didn't. It's that simple, and that terrible. Contact: dwilliamson@telegram.com
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