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Dottie Sandusky's Comments May Negatively Impact Child Abuse Victims
By Jennifer Miller
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, issued a statement regarding Dottie Sandusky's comments. "We hope more rational relatives of Sandusky will persuade Mrs. Sandusky to stop making public statements that will not help her husband and will only further hurt others. "Mrs. Sandusky apparently believes she's right and everyone else is wrong – dozens of victims, police, prosecutors, judges, journalists and current and former Penn State officials. We feel sorry for her. But we feel even sorrier for the young men who are in pain because they were sexually assaulted by Jerry Sandusky and who must feel more pain today because of Mrs. Sandusky's insensitive statements. "Claiming that suffering child sex abuse victims are motivated by money is like saying adult rape victims 'asked for it.' Both are outdated, self-serving myths that only deepen already deep wounds of crime victims." -- The wife of convicted child sexual abuser Jerry Sandusky and a documentary filmmaker described Sandusky's victims as liars on national television Wednesday. Those types of comments can negatively impact child abuse victims who have already come forward and victims suffering in silence, according to Kristina Taylor-Porter, executive director of the Centre County Child Advocacy Center. "It creates a bad environment, an uncomfortable environment, for a child to come forward in," Taylor-Porter says. During an interview with the Today Show, Dottie Sandusky said she did not believe testimony given by her husband's victims during trial. John Ziegler said all of the victims must be liars because Sandusky is innocent. A jury disagreed, and a judge sentenced Sandusky to 30 to 60 years in state prison for 45 counts of abuse. Taylor-Porter did not respond specifically to comments made by Dottie Sandusky and Ziegler, but instead spoke to StateCollege.com in general terms when it comes to people not believing a victim of sexual abuse. "It really goes back to the culture of child sexual abuse where the perpetrator starts to groom the child and tells the child no one will ever believe them if they were to say something," Taylor-Porter says. "Seeing this said publicly, that victims are not being believed, will force victims to see this idea reinforced." Additionally, when victims who have so far remained silent see other victims labeled as liars in the media, they may be less likely to come forward for help and less likely to pursue justice in court, Taylor-Porter says. "If a victim was at the verge of coming forward about their abuse and then they were to hear these things they might not come forward," she says. "They might think, 'nobody will believe me, look at this, they're not believing those victims.' It just reinforces the idea the perpetrator puts in the victim's mind." Taylor-Porter also raised issues with a recent ESPN report in which Mike McQueary, a key witness in the Sandusky case, is said to be a victim of child abuse. The report attributes the detail to anonymous sources. Taylor-Porter says ESPN's report was "tasteless" and failed to protect a potential victim's rights. "It really wasn't protecting somebody that could potentially be a victim. It wasn't protecting their confidentiality. They did it without consent of the victim. It's such a sensitive topic to talk about and to talk about it with little regard to the victim could be very damaging to that person," she says. "When a victim is going through a healing process and they have their abuse being brought to light without being the person that brings it to light, I think it makes it scary for someone to come forward about it." Additionally, outing a person's abuse through a national news story could make victims less likely to come forward, Taylor-Porter says. "If they wanted to go to the media about it that's one thing, but that might silence the child as well from wanting to come forward about the abuse. They might think, 'if I do it might end up in the newspaper, on TV, across the nation," she says. "I think it discourages children and adults who were abused as children from coming forward." Taylor-Porter says 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are victims of sexual abuse. The Centre County Child Advocacy Center at 129 Medical Park Lane in Bellefonte, opened last month. It offers a child-friendly, streamlined approach to interviewing children who have made allegations of abuse or children who have witnessed other crimes. The intent is to create an investigative system that minimizes trauma for the child.
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