Let me start by saying I'm normally not a huge sports nut, but lesbihonest. I live in Michigan, I go to school ten minutes from Ann Arbor, and I love University of Michigan football. In fact I love
football.College football is great. Drunk frat boys, beer bongs, chants and songs, the ridiculous trick plays. Its all just good clean fun, right?
Oh cheez-its, who invited this guy?
If your not familiar with the face staring back at you, that's probably a good thing. His name is Jerry Sandusky. He is a former assistant coach in the Penn State football program, and oh boy is he a trooper.
The Story Goes...
Back in the 1970s, Jerry Sandusky was a budding young defensive coach working for Joe Paterno, the head coach of Penn State's football team. He proved to be an excellent coach, especially with line backers, and he eventually earned the posistion of defensive coordinator. He was a worthy talent, good friends with Joe Paterno, and he was widely considered to be a shoe-in to take over the head coaching job when Paterno left.
At the same time, Jerry founded a program called "The Second Mile", which was a charity devoted to getting troubled kids off the streets and back on the up and up. Jerry was a model citizen. He adopted six kids, and ran a charity and a football program all at once.
Well, kind of...
As it turns out, the whole time that he is running this youth camp and football team, Jerry was having sex with one his adopted sons, Matthew. Kinda fucked up, huh? Fear not, it gets better.
In 1998, it was brought to the attention of Penn State football coaches and administrators that Jerry had been having a few "incidents" in the showers with some of the young boys from his Second Mile charity. The details are sketchy, and no body really wanted to attach words to what he was doing. His action were being described as "horsing around", but perhaps the words "forced oral sex" are a bit more accurate.
Anyway, word reaches Joe Paterno's ears that his best bud is padiddling with kids in the showers. This is not good news. Penn State politely asks that Jerry Sandusky step down from his job as defensive coordinator in 1999. Though he is still in the prime of his career, he retires. Suddenly, all the other colleges who were offering big bucks to have Jerry training their linebackers, are all very suddenly not interested.
So Jerry is allowed to continue working on campus, continue volunteering at Second Mile and at local high schools and what not. Jerry is continued to be surrounded by 12 year old boys. He is allowed to keep his keys to the Penn State campus.
In 2000, a janitor named James Calhoun catches Jerr Bear giving a kid oral sex in the shower. Nobody tells the police.
In 2002, another football coach by the name of Mike McQueary catches Jerry having anal sex with another boy in the locker room shower. McQueary tells Joe Paterno. Joe Pa tells the athletic director, who tells the president of the university. They decide to ban Jerry from brining Second Mile boys to Penn State. Remember, this is AFTER he's already been asked to resign for this same problem.
Still, nobody tells the police.
Finally, in 2008, somebody lets the cat out of the bag. A mother of one of Jerry's Second Mile boys calls the police, and accuses Jerry of molesting her son. An investigation is put underway. It takes three years, but in November of 2011, after no less than 12 solid years of being a known pedophile, Jerry Sandusky is indicted by the prosecutor's office, and is arrested.
A firestorm breaks loose. The public is outraged. Jerry's face is plastered all over ESPN, the Today Show, Fox News, everything. Joe Paterno is fired. The AD is fired. The president of the university is fired. The rest is history.
Now what do we do?
"If I would have caught that guy in the shower with a little boy, I would have killed him right then and there!"
That's the macho man response.
Number one, no you wouldn't, and number two, you sound like a fucking ass, and your ignorance is only contributing to this problem. So stop saying that
Its pretty obvious whats going to happen to Jerry. He's going to be thrown in jail till the day his aging heart gives out, or he gets murdered by irate inmates (more likely... felons really hate child molesters), or he kills himself ( perhaps the most likely?).
But the greater question is what to do with everybody else. Take for example, Joe Paterno. Despite being a local hero, we know that Joe Pa knew what Jerry was doing. We know that he knew about this abuse for AT LEAST a decade, and he did nothing. Of course, Joe Pa died about 6 months ago (fucking lung cancer), but what if he hadn't?
Surely Sandusky deserves to die in jail, but what about Joe Paterno? Let's say he was still alive today, should he be going to jail too? On the one hand, he was harboring a known child molester, and that deserves punishment.
But on the other hand, Joe Paterno had a tough choice to make. For one, Jerry was his friend, and Penn State was his family. Joe Pa built Penn State's football program from nothing. Sending Jerry to jail would jeopardize all of that. Oh yeah, and Jerry was his friend. Do you people know what they do to child molesters in jail?
Poor Joe Pa had a choice to make. He could either A: do nothing, or B: call the police, destroy his football program, and send his friend to get murdered in prison. He chose A. He chose nothing. It was the wrong choice, and it led to a lot of kids getting hurt. Does that make Joe Pa guilty? Should he have been dumped in prison with his molester friend?
This leads to bigger questions:
I know the knee jerk response to this already; "WE SHOULD JUST TAKE ALL THE CHILD MOLESTERS AND FUCKING GAS EM! YEAH!"
Its a cute thought, but its not really applicable to the real world.
I know from my own experience that we don't really choose who we are attracted to. I know that I didn't choose to be attracted to men.
I didn't choose to be attracted to men, but sure as shit I chose to be gay. It wasn't my gene pool or my instincts that made me come out of the closet in high school, it was my concious brain. I'm sure Jerry never chose to be attracted to little boys, but he CHOSE to put his dick inside of one of them. If we're ever going to solve the child molester problem, we have to understand the differences between the attractions and the behaviors.
I made a choice to be gay. I could have stayed straight and miserable and I probably could have gotten through it somehow, but I chose to be gay and happy. It was a wonderful choice, but child molesters aren't afforded such opportunities. It was mostly fine for me to act on my impulses towards men, because we're all consenting adults and nobody is getting hurt. Obviously, this is not the case for sexual attraction to kids. Having sex with kids is NOT a consenting practice, and people do get hurt.
Look, the problem isn't that we have child molesters. We've always had child molesters and we always will, its part of life. The problem is that we have no way of dealing with child molesters. When a man realizes that he wants to have sex with young boys, what is he supposed to do? He's got a lot of things working against him.
- Nobody ever talks about child molestation. We are scared shitless when it comes to this situation, and there is so much misinformation that most people don't even know where to begin.
- We throw child molesters in jail, which is basically the worst thing you could do with a child molester (besides buy them an ice cream truck). Prison does nothing to rehabilitate these people. At best, it keeps them off the street for a little while, and at worse, it contibutes to the cycle of violence and secrecy.
- Child molesters think that if they admit to wanting to bang kids, the only thing that can happen to them is they'll sent to prison to be raped and killed by other inmates. This basically forces them to repress this emotion, and NEVER admit it to anybody.
- Most people are so scared by child molestation, that they will GLADLY turn a blind eye to suspicious behavior, simply because its all much too scary to get involved with. That's when people like Joe Paterno do nothing. I mean, yeah, he's a coward, but most people are.
- Once a molester starts, there's really nothing to stop him. He may know in his heart of hearts that its wrong, but if you've done it three times now, and no one ever got on your case about it, why would you stop? They just keep getting braver and braver till finally they get caught, sent to jail, and beaten to death. What part of this is justice?
- Finally, we don't even really understand why molestation is so devestating. Some kids get raped, and except for being a little bit sore, are really no worse for wear. They move on. They lead normal lives. Other victims just MELT THE FUCK DOWN. They no longer trust other people. They grow up with broken emotions, and often times become child molesters themselves. I don't know why this happens, but I think somebody should really figure it out. Maybe they already have, but I haven't heard anything.
Jerry Sandusky is a FUCKING PERVERT. Make no mistake, I want that guy to die in prison. But if any of you are convinced that this situation is resolved, and justice has been served, then you are part of the problem.
Attraction to children is a phenomenon of the human psyche. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS. Its been going on forever. We need places where people can go if they are worried that they might rape a child. We need hotlines. We need therapy sessions, and we NEED THEM ADVERTISED so that these people who are feeling this way know that they have options. I don't have any answers, but I know that if we start talking about it, somebody will at least have some good suggestions.
- Alex Price
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