Sex abuse victim, 81, starts anew | Turkeys and Trophies

Express-Times
May 29, 2016

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/05/_turkeys_and_trophies_14.html

Robert Corby Sr., 81, has discovered a love of learning late in life at NCC.

TROPHIES

Robert Corby Sr. is making up for lost time — and for the theft of childhood innocence many years ago. Corby, 81, of Bethlehem, is attending Northampton Community College after getting over the fear of taking classes and thinking he wouldn't be accepted. Before that, though, he took another leap — seeking therapy to deal with the memories of sexual abuse by a priest at Sts. Simon and Jude Catholic Church in West Bethlehem in 1947, when he was an altar boy. He said his life was changed by the Boston Globe's investigation into the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. One of his regrets was never going to college, something is he now fulfilling through NCC's offer of free tuition for those 65 and over; he's indulging his love of philosophy and world geography. "I have opportunities to speak up for victims of sexual abuse," he says. "If I can even help one other victim to know I can understand their pain and suffering, I consider that a success."

An Easton couple, Colette Boudreaux and John Andreadis, are hoping to give Freddy Award participants and other young performers a venue to continue to express their love of musical theater. They recently founded the American Monarch Theatre Company, hoping to support productions that fill a niche between community theater and professional shows. Andreadis, 25, won a Freddy as a Freedom High School student, and has helped direct productions for Nazareth Area and Northern Lehigh high schools. Boudreaux, 32, is an opera singer and actor who commutes to New York from Easton. The new theater will be holding workshops this summer, and is open to performers as well as non-performers who like to contribute to theater. For more information, go to americanmonarchtheatre.org.

TURKEYS

What was Ed Rendell thinking? The former Pennsylvania governor, commenting on Donald Trump's views on women, said Trump would probably lose votes because "there are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women. People take that stuff personally."  Rendell quickly backpedaled and apologized, calling his remark  "dumb, stupid and insensitive." Yet his mea culpa included the obligatory "sorry if I offended anyone." If Rendell thought he was sticking up for women against misogyny in political discourse, he did the opposite, dipping his own toe in those sordid waters. That's ugly, guv.

How far will an institution of higher learning go to protect its football program? Officials at Baylor University are reeling from revelations of an independent investigation showing the university suppressed women's accusations of sexual harassment and assault by football players, and administrators discouraged them from coming forward. In one case, a woman faced retaliation for reporting an alleged assault by a player. The university demoted president Kenneth Starr, best known as the special prosecutor against President Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky case, and suspended head football coach Art Briles as a first step toward firing him. The NCAA showed how it felt about the mishandling of reports of sexual crimes in the Jerry Sandusky case at Penn State, but the university managed to avoid the "death penalty" — a complete shutdown of its football program. It will be interesting to see how the NCAA reacts to  the Baylor findings.