From shame, hope – A Wee Blether

For more than 10 years, my Pennsylvania-born father-in-law has told stories of Penn State football greatness and extolled the school’s fine principles.

So when ex-coach Jerry Sandusky’s alleged child abuse scandal broke, like everyone else, I was shocked and disgusted and asking how something like that could be allowed to happen. When the students impulsively protested Coach Joe Paterno’s firing, it seemed Penn State was in denial, that its priorities were hopelessly twisted.

But then, Saturday came. The football team walked solemnly into their stadium for a game against Nebraska, linked arm-in-arm in short rows for that somber funeral dirge of a walk.

Then, with all the shame and disgrace in the world hanging over their heads, a stunning act of contrition unfolded. The players and coaches for both teams converged in the center, embraced and mingled humbly, then knelt to pray. The entire stadium fell silent.

It was spellbinding. I hope Sandusky’s accusers were watching—that somehow, in that first communal acknowledgment of their suffering, they might feel less alone.

The tacit silence was about much more than merely Joe Pa or Nittany Lion pride. It was a university community expressing sorrow for the sins of its own, its way of stopping to say, “Oh my God, those poor children. What about the children?”

A great institution’s reputation, decades in the making, is at risk. But it Penn State has a rare opportunity to do something truly extraordinary. That is, to make the prevention of child abuse its institutional focus, its social burden and its guiding mission in life. Rather than a shameful blip in its history, child abuse can become a pillar of Penn State’s study, its innovation and its resources.

Why? Because child abuse is a national problem. Read the police-beat briefs in your morning paper and you’ll find plenty of hometown perpetrators accused of victimizing children.

A typical victim tries to report his abuser an average of seven times before someone finally realizes what’s going on. And it’s estimated nearly 90% of cases never even get reported, leaving many victims to spend the rest of their lives gripped by silent pain and shame.

Fighting and preventing abuse should be no less important at Penn State than its main objective of molding men and women of character. The university should create professorships in education and psychology and fill those positions with the sharpest minds and gutsiest advocates in the field of child abuse prevention. And the syllabus of every course that in any way involves the welfare of children should be overwritten with an eye toward enlightening everyone about the signs, symptoms, causes and effects of abuse.

Penn State is now at the center of the national conversation on child abuse. It needs to take the lead and become the nation’s voice and model for how America responds to abuse.

I refuse to believe my father-in-law’s respect for the university is misplaced. But all it took was one sick coach’s alleged actions, protected or enabled by a small clutch of otherwise good men, to put Penn State’s very character to the test.

Character, my father-in-law will tell you, is what a person does when they’re all alone, back against the wall, with everything on the line. Personally, I think this is one school that’s about to do the right thing.