Four Octobers ago, I stood in a single-file line outside a small county courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. It was a crisp, sun-dappled fall day. I’ve never experienced such rage.We were waiting to get into the courtroom where Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach at Penn State, would be sentenced to 30-60 years in prison for the sexual abuse of 10 boys.
The college president would resign. The athletic director would resign. And the head coach was fired in disgrace. They all knew.
I was traveling with a man I’ve known a long time and he quietly reviewed the story of what happened to him, some 40 years ago when he was 12. He thought about his family betraying him the way the Penn State “family” betrayed those boys.
This weekend, former players and tens of thousands of fans paid homage to the late Joe Paterno on the 50th anniversary of his first game as head coach. Paterno happened to win 409 games over 46 years and gave his college town a national identity as a football powerhouse before we found out his real legacy: enabler of a convicted pedophile who raped boys over at least four decades.
Sandusky used his Second Mile Charity for at-risk and underprivileged youth to groom his victims. He did not discriminate. Black, brown and white kids were molested, their economic status creating another layer of vulnerability. Many of these boys were orphaned. They didn’t merely come from broken families; they had no family.
Second Mile and “Touchdown Jer” became their family.
They say, “We are Penn State.”
They call themselves a family …
Well, I happen to know something about families like this.
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When the bailiff let us into the courtroom that day, we were seated maybe 10 yards from Sandusky. The man wanted to strangle him. Then one of Sandusky’s victims spoke. And another victim spoke. And another.
He couldn’t believe it – the courage they showed to look their abuser in the eye, to do the job Paterno and the athletic administration at Penn State failed to do years ago: ensure that other boys don’t lose their souls to a sick man.
“As I put the 1998 shower incident into focus . . . that night you told me you were the Tickle Monster so you could touch my 11-year-old body,” began Victim 8, choking back tears. “I’ve been left with deep, painful wounds that you caused and had been buried in the garden of my heart for many years.”
The man especially related to Victim No. 4, who eyeballed Sandusky with venom. “Because of you, I trust no one. I won’t leave my child alone with anyone. My only regret, I ask that others [who came forward] before me forgive me for not coming forward sooner.”
The man knew Victim No. 4 had wanted to put his hands around Sandusky’s neck, too, and not let go until the smirk was choked from him. But he hadn’t. Not then and not over the ensuing years after the rape. No, Victim No. 4 wouldn’t throw two lives away. He had not given in to his rage. And in so many ways, this was even more courageous, the man thought. For it gave him hope.
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After a while, the man realized there was a part of Uncle Spud his siblings loved – the part that protected his sister when children tried to bully her as a child, the part that made children smile and laugh, the ones he never harmed. This was their cognitive dissonance. It helped them cope with the fact that their brother had stolen other young boys’ souls.
It’s the same kind of cognitive dissonance the Penn State alumni and fans, all in deep, sad denial, need to coax from themselves to cheer for all the good Joe Pa did for everyone.
Joe Pa knew. He knew and he did nothing. He knew in 2001 and 1998 and, because of unsealed court documents, we learned this summer that he also knew as far back as 1976.
Leaders of men do not deserve to be commemorated if they cannot protect children. Taking the good parts of a man’s life and celebrating them – paying homage for all the character-building he did for his players – disrespects and demeans the boys who became men after they were abused by Sandusky, especially the ones whom Paterno knew about.
As the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel once said, “The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.”
The people who stood to honor Paterno may have meant no harm. But to Sandusky’s victims, to all victims of child sexual abuse, pining for Penn State’s past is the opposite of love.
I was that man in the small county courthouse. I was that prepubescent boy. I was he and he was I, and we have been living with the sadness and the trauma of that night for 40 years.
I am a survivor of child sexual abuse. I write this for myself, because I am the one who should decide when and if to forgive my uncle, and I also write this for the adult survivors, the men who were victimized by Sandusky.
I know now it wasn’t my fault. I’ve purged my shame and guilt. I believe in family, now more than ever, as I’ve got a family of my own. I’ve even forgiven my relatives, the ones who knew. But I’m not ready to honor them on a college football Saturday.
It’s not up to the Penn State community – the unaffected fan in the stadium’s third row – to decide how Paterno’s legacy should be treated. It’s not up to his widow, Sue Paterno, who persuaded the university to have this weekend.
It’s up to the men who were molested. They get to decide.
