Leave the kids alone, please!

Where will it all end? It seems that just as we get past one horrible case of child sexual abuse, another one crops up. Certainly, there were many cases of child sex abuse before the Catholic Church got hit with scandal upon scandal regarding many of its priests who took it upon themselves to take advantage of the young boys in their charge. It has taken years to unravel that mess, and many of the priests have escaped justice because the church itself had been hindering the investigations.

The next turn of events brought us into the college sports arena, where the Jerry Sandusky incident at Penn State University played out over several months. It seemed like eternity as the stories came out slowly and painstakingly. And the horror that Penn State officials were complicit in some extent to enabling Sandusky to continue his vile acts on those poor kids.

Sandusky’s case seems to have precipitated two others, Bernie Fine, the assistant basketball coach at Syracuse University, and Louis "Skip" ReVille, 32, who was working as a school principal in South Carolina when he was arrested last fall for sex abuse accusations involving 15 victims while he was a camp counselor at The Citadel. All of these places are highly reputable, and in some sense seem to be above suspicion for those kinds of allegations. And yet, here we are.

But these kinds of cases aren’t just US issues. In sunny old England, Sir Jimmy Savile, an eccentric and jocular host of children’s shows and charity fund raisers, has recently fallen under accusations of child sex abuse by a number of women who claim he abused them when they were children. Ironically enough, his associates said that there had long been rumors of Savile having his way with these youths. But for whatever reason, no one took them seriously and no one bothered to investigate. That sounds a lot like the Sandusky case, doesn’t it?

It seems that Mr. Savile, who died last year at 84, followed a pattern that even the British media says resembles the Sandusky pattern. The following comment comes from bigstory.AP.org, an Associated Press website:

Child protection advocates say the case fits a pattern seen in the response to the child-molesting Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and in the English town of Rochdale, where a gang of men groomed vulnerable young girls for sex. Authorities in both places have been criticised for failing to act on claims of abuse.

Savile, like Sandusky, may have become too big a name to touch, so the local officials there also opted to take the “do nothing” path that Penn State followed so well. It is appalling that people in authority fail to make the proper step in such situations and call in the authorities.

And if all that isn’t enough, now we have the Sesame Street version, with the voice actor behind the character Elmo being dogged by the same kinds of sexual abuse allegations. When the issue first appeared it seemed to get “resolved” via a monetary payoff.

But, as it happens with many of these sex abuse cases, more victims start to appear. Now, Kevin Clash has two additional lawsuits against him for sexual abuse of teenage boys. It seems that Mr. Clash was “trolling gay telephone chat lines seeking underage boys for sex” according to one CBVS News account.

With such things cropping up every day, it sort of makes you wonder a bit. I think, for most people, it makes you take an extra look at things that on the face of it seem a little odd.  But sex abuse never really crossed the minds of the school personnel, who thought that Jerry Sandusky had a heart of gold while he was really raping students at their school.

Most of these cases, or at least a good portion of them, could have been avoided if people who were in the position to do something about it, just did something. It’s a shame that these people failed to take action when they were in a prime position to do so. It supports the 18^th Century British Philosopher Edmund Burke’s statement: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing!”