I want to use the case in State College, Pennsylvania involving Jerry Sandusky as a jumping off point for a very similar situation that hits a lot closer to home with me. The Sandusky case, as of November 16, 2011, may have as many as ten new alleged victims to add to the roll call being made at The Second Mile home for troubled boys. Sandusky now appears to have stretched his sick hand out beyond The Second Mile home to include other “at risk” boys in the area surrounding Penn State. Many of the comments so far have been about the shock everyone feels at the scope and magnitude of these horrific crimes. People seem to be overcome by the fact that a man that was held in such high regard by so many could do the things listed in the recent Centre County Grand Jury report.
I simply don’t understand why everyone is in such an outraged state of shock. It’s almost as if someone had told them that the people we trust so much with our precious children, might not be so deserving of that sacred trust. Oops. I used a couple of words that probably gave away where I’m headed with this. Sacred Trust. That is why everyone is acting so shocked by this. It’s not the actual sexual abuse that is so hard to understand. As a matter of fact, the sexual abuse of our children isn’t a very new phenomenon after all. It wasn’t very long ago when the Vatican itself was dealing with the same issues that Penn State is dealing with now.
Personally, I’m from the South. Abuse of any kind, but especially sexual abuse, is no big thing down here. Incest, rape, sodomy and child pornography all seem to have a strange hold on the Southeastern United States. We don’t talk about it, mind you. That would step on the toes of those beloved southern manners we’re so famous for. When I was in my early twenty’s, we would actually joke about the fact that there had to be something in the water down here that caused old men to, well, you know.
As I got older and started having children of my own, the jokes weren’t near as funny as they used to be. Now I had to keep an eye on these old men around my kids. I had three beautiful daughters over a seven year period and it seemed like perverts were coming out of the woodwork around them. About the time my oldest daughter reached junior high I started remembering some things that I had kept buried in the darkest places in my mind for many years. When I was in the sixth grade, my older brother had been removed from our home by DHR. That will be a story for another day, I promise. But for now, DHR had my brother and they had to place him somewhere.
There was an eighth grade teacher who had only recently went through the application process to become a foster parent in our county. He seemed to have every part of the “American Dream” except for one. He and his wife couldn’t have children. They were very well respected throughout our small community. His wife worked at a local car dealership while he was one of the areas best teachers. He had a special way with kids. Especially those that were showing early signs of instability. If the child was missing a parent, or was caught using drugs, or just simply got suspended from school several times in one year, the parents and teachers often went to him for help. Needless to say, that’s where my brother Randall ended up going.
He stayed with this teacher and his wife for almost a year. During that year my mother made a lot of telephone calls to the DHR office concerning what she called strange behavior by the teacher. Randall was allowed “trial visits” home every so often, to see if he had changed enough to get to come home. Me and my brother Rodney even went up there several times and stayed over the weekend, in order to get to spend some time with our brother beyond our mothers reach. During that year I was informed as to how bad my family life was. I was told how terrible my mother was at parenting and how it would be so much better for everybody if we all just moved in with the teacher and his wife.
If you haven’t noticed yet, I’ve failed to mention this teacher’s name or give any kind of identifying characteristics about him or his wife. I have a real good reason for that. During that year, when I was being told how terrible things were away from my brother’s foster home, me and my two brothers were all three being molested by this teacher on a regular basis. This is something that has haunted me for years, far into my adult life.
The few people that know about it want to know why we never told anyone. Well, we did tell people. We were “troubled” boys. We came from a broken home and each of us had had brushes with the law in our short lives. To put it plainly, those people that we did tell, either didn’t believe us or knew it was our word against his. When it finally sunk in to the people at DHR that something very wrong was going on at that house, they did the only thing they believed would help. They removed my brother from the teachers home. They didn’t place any more children with them either. Although no criminal charges were ever filed.
The teacher went on to teach for many years afterward. He was able to retire from a nice job and now lives in moderate comfort. He is getting older and his day of judgment will come. He will have to answer for the things he did to us. My real problem with the whole situation is this. Just like in the Jerry Sandusky case in Pennsylvania. I wonder how many other little boys were raped and abused by this man who is still held in high regard by his peers. I wonder how many others bear the same scars that I bear. I wonder what they dream about at night when they finally fall asleep. I wonder if there were any others. And if so, one huge question remains. How many others?