Thanksgiving: I’m supposed to be thankful and deep down I know I am. After all, I only have to look at my wife and three kids to know how fortunate I am. But my mind keeps going back to what a sad year it's been for sports in America.
Just a few months removed from Ohio State's scandal involving a legendary football coach caught lying, we've seen players suspended for bar fights and off the field misconduct. And when you thought it couldn't get worse, we were shaken to our core by Penn State's sexual abuse scandal. Sadly, it’s quickly turning out that Syracuse University will be having their own scandal involving sexual abuse by a long time assistant coach under the nose of a long time coaching legend.
Now, we can take everything else and move on but when scandals of child abuse arise as they did at Penn State and Syracuse Universities then everything else matters very little. You simply stop.
You stop because there are numerous kids who were victimized.
You stop again because there are numerous kids who were victimized while other normal intellectual reasonable adults were watching.
And you keep stopping because there are numerous kids who were victimized while normal intellectual reasonable adults were watching and who on their own conscious chose to do nothing.
That my friends is as sobering as it gets and so pardon me if this thanksgiving I am not as jovial as I would normally be.
Lets set aside the perpetrators Jerry Sandusky (Penn state University) and Bernie Fine (Syracuse University). These men are on an island by themselves. They are after all the enemies who infiltrate our trusted institutions like churches and Schools to prey on our kids.
For the rest who were supposed to be watching, where did things go wrong? The fact is, they did watch. And so remove the word “supposed” from the question above and that ought to send a chill down your spine because it points to a much much larger problem.
It's not that all these watchers were bad inconsiderate men. In fact here are some words used to describe them by those who knew them closely – outstanding, honorable, sacrificial, a true leader, always there for the students, capable, determined. These are words we all aspire to be. So what happened? How did institutions that we hold to the highest esteem fail so profoundly and so completely?
There was the first hand group who witnessed abuse going on. A second group got all the clues including first hand reports of abuse going on. A third much larger group of people saw the kids begin to retreat emotionally and physically. They spotted unusual behavior but didn't ask questions. Many of these individuals will never make the headlines but today they are recalling with regret.
"I remember when victim x started doing this and I remember thinking to myself something is wrong. I should have inquired further."
Collectively, they didn’t just suspect but they heard the proverbial duck quack, saw it walk like a duck and where some may have called it a duck, nobody stopped the duck. An entire system of well meaning, normal, intellectual men and women failed and that ought to rattle every single one of us. And in an area where there’s no middle ground, doing the bare minimum or worse nothing is enabling.
Let’s remember that in a fallen world John Sandasky will NOT be the last perpetrator but when good well meaning men and women whom many look up to and trust choose to keep quiet then it’s time all of us to stop and access our society at large
When churches and universities, the only two places where we place the highest values of trust, are plagued by scandals like this, replacing the men and women in these institutions is simply not enough.
I may be miles away from Penn state but that scandal might as well have happened a mile from my house. So on a somber thanksgiving, I'm spending my time asking:
• Am I really acting as my brother's keeper?
• Where or whom do I need to pay more attention to?
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