The Penn State scandal has Justin Cascio wondering what’s wrong with a culture that prevents a simple call to 911.
Why didn’t that graduate assistant call 911 when he saw a child being raped in the shower?
Imagine that it’s 2002 and you’re a grad student—a 28-year-old former division-one quarterback, yes, but still a graduate assistant—in the Penn State athletic department. Late one night when you should be alone in the building, you hear what sounds like sex in the locker room showers. Following the sounds, you see something so terrible that you have trouble believing what you are seeing: a man sexually assaulting a boy. What do you do?
Mike McQueary, a man who once broke up a knife fight between two Penn State players, certainly could’ve stopped whatever he saw Jerry Sandusky doing to that little boy—and he certainly should’ve—but how do you react in that situation? What do you do when you, a former Penn State player, see your former coach, the legendary defensive coordinator, doing something unspeakable, something so totally unthinkable? Well, what we know is that McQueary behaved like someone in a panic: he ran away.
Having found a phone, the next appropriate reaction to witnessing a violent crime would be to call the police. Instead, the panicked student called his dad, who advised him to get out of the building. The foundational horror of the moment, that a child was being raped at that very moment, in that building, was apparently forgotten and, in a lapse of perspective the father advised his son, not to call the police, but to tell someone in the school administration what he has seen. Sadly, the administrators who were notified worked only to cover up the crime and minimize the harm that their resident child molester—and beloved football coach—could do—but only what he did on campus.
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By reporting on this crime in the sports pages, we frame this and other stories involving anyone in sport as being about sports: about institutions, teams, and their brands. A pathological overidentification with an institution or in-group may be why a grad assistant in the athletics department chose to report a first-hand witnessing of a sex crime against a child to a school administrator instead of to the police. The school takes on a kind of tribal identity, with the school administrators being like lords or chiefs: the proper authority for everything that happens on their turf.
To Penn State college football fans, Paterno and Sandusky are Penn State. They see Sandusky as their own, and the victim, who Sandusky met through his work with Second Mile, an organization set up to help troubled boys, as being from the outside. When everyone from the grad assistant to the upper administration acted to keep crimes committed by one of Penn State’s brand-makers secret, they were hiding their own shame for admiring and abetting a known child molester.
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School administrators who restricted Sandusky’s activities on campus convinced themselves they had done enough. People empowered and accountable to act in the face of an accusation, acted out their denial. Resolving the cognitive dissonance caused by believing both the witnesses’ accounts of Sandusky’s attacks on boys, and that the coaching team of Penn State was a force of good, meant behaving like a dysfunctional family, in which everyone acts to hide and protect their abusive member. This is where vigilante systems of justice always break down, whether in a town in the Old West, in a family, or on a close-knit campus: when it comes to policing one’s own.
I wonder if the any of the men who could have stopped Sandusky ever imagined themselves in the boy’s place. Facing the terror of childhood sexual abuse may have been more than any of them could handle, and while no excuse, could explain the passivity of each of the men who could have reported Sandusky to the police, and did not. I wonder if they projected onto the boy their sense that a shameful thing had happened to the victim and that, as a future man, his sexual injury must be hidden. I can’t know what was in any of their heads, but I also can’t stop wondering what would have to change in the culture of the Penn State athletic department, for anyone involved to have made the right decision when they had reason to suspect Sandusky’s crimes. What would have to change about not just Penn State, but the culture of collegiate sport, or of men, or all of us—for McQueary to have known the right thing to do? What is wrong with our culture when neither a grown man nor his father knows that, when you see a violent crime in progress and you can’t stop the attack yourself, that you call 911?
photo: vvvracer / flickr
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The GMP on Penn State:
We Are?
Paterno and Pedestals, Julie Gillis
When the Game Becomes Religion, Gary Percesepe
Male Lust Arrives in Happy Valley, Tom Matlack
Destroying a Young Boy’s Soul, Ken Solin
Power Is at the Core of Sexual Harassment, Mervyn Kaufman
The Tragic Lionization of Joe Paterno, Tom Ley
Men, Monsters, and the Media, Nicole Johnson
Loyalty and Responsibility at Penn State, Andrew Smiler
Jerry Sandusky and Penn State: A Familiar Story, Sophia Sadinsky
Beware the Legacy You Are Protecting: Winning Isn’t Everything, Eli Kaplan
Institutional Injustice: Why Rooting For Universities Breeds Immorality, Aaron Gordon
I Failed, Rick Morris
Sandusky-ed, Tim Green
Penn State: What Are We Talking About?, L. Edward Day
We (Still) Are, Cameron Conaway
Cognitive Dissonance and the Sandusky Situation, Justin Cascio
Start Snitching, David Perez
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Justin. Yeah, it’s about the PSU culture consisting of, as far as we know now, about four guys.
The rest of us…not so much.
False premise. If we had a culture that kept people from calling 911, the 911 operators would all be laid off due to lack of business. What we have here is a situation of great complexity–given the hierarchy of the Penn athletic department–and one guy, McQueary, who will no doubt rot in hell and the sooner the better, who didn’t do what 98% of the rest of us would have done if it meant assailing Sandusky with our elbow crutches. The situation tells us something about McQueary, a good deal about the reflexive CYA activities of educrats. Possibly, as this… Read more »
It’s about a culture that doesn’t regard the anal rape of a ten year old boy a violent crime in progress, to be handled accordingly (including by calling 911), and not as being something like a code violation, to be reported up the chain of command. When your house is on fire, do you write to your councilman?
I have a different question that has been plaguing me, and that I was planning to write about for GMP, but I’m just going to put it in this comment for now and see if I have time to take it on as a full-blown blog post later for GMP later. My question is, if you see a man raping a child, why would you not attack the man with whatever physical force you have, at whatever risk to yourself it may be, and try to IMMEDIATELY get him off his victim. I’m a relatively small woman. I can tell… Read more »
I suspect there are a number of reasons for the Paralysis that occurred, and that many were compromised by just one “S”ertain person who lived a strange life and existence that had no moral boundaries, was not limited by conscience and which others tried to control. And I also suspect that they will not come out until any trial takes place. Even then it may never come out. I even have concerns that there may be no trial, as it hinges around one person. The reasons and explanations that people want may be denied to all. The person may decide… Read more »
According to the GJ report, there was an official investigation into Sandusky in 1998 (involving CPS) but that investigation was halted by higher ups at PSU. Interesting that PSU was able to halt an investigation like that, isn’t it? Then, soon after, Sandusky, the #2 guy at one of the most prestigious and successful football programs in the country and heir-apparent to Paterno, suddenly ‘retired’ at age 55 with a generous benefit package and never coached anywhere else again. Also a fairly odd scenario. One would think other programs would have tried to snatch him up but they didn’t… I… Read more »
Sandusky started Second Mile in 1977. That is 21 years before 1998 and some 34 years ago. There is as yet a 21 year window uncounted for. Three cases were Known to PSU 1998 (two boys) 2002 (one boy) – The other reported case does not make clear if PSU authorities were made aware – or had any knowledge of event and janitorial staff in 2000. Given the Grand Jury report, I would suspect that Grape Vines had in some way communicated the 2000 event. If nothing else, janitorial staff would have warned friends and family to not allow kids… Read more »
Addendum
It is now apparently revealed that Second Mile were aware of the 1998 reports involving 2 children. The person with full knowledge of the reports was State College attorney Wendell V. Courtney.
He was at the same time counsel for Second Mile.
I hope that Mr Courtney grasped the nature of conflicted interest and did not advice one or both of the people he worked for so that Vital Information did reach the right people.
It’s a good question, and I can understand on a gut level why someone would not intervene, but they’re not reasons that make me feel good about a person. There are multiple adrenaline responses besides fight, including flight, which it seems is what McQueary did. He was really scared. I get that. Men in wartime run away from the battlefield. This kind of thing happens. But then he gets grounded enough to have a phone conversation with his father. I mean, when I imagine the call, I imagine his mother answering, and him asking for his father, waiting for him… Read more »
Lori,
I am sorry to say this, but you have NO idea what you would have done if you had actually witnessed something like that.
It’s easy to judge and say what you would have done – but you really don’t know. Statistics say that you would have done the same thing – run away.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but what a discouraging thing to say to me or anyone. I’m not a statistic…I’m a human being and a mother. Whether you’re “right” or “wrong” about what would have rhetorically happened, I don’t understand what feels like a defense of the people who looked the other way. Righteous anger, indignation, and resolve that one would have DONE something should be encouraged, not dismissed. We NEED people to believe they should and can take action. Your comment is disillusioning. I just don’t get why you felt you needed to weigh in with a defeatist opinion…
There is only one way to describe the behavior of McQueary (and apparently his father): cowardice. To see a boy being sexually assaulted by a man—any man—and to walk away is simply cowardly. To advise your son to walk away when he calls to tell you that he just witnessed a man—any man—sexually assaulting a boy is cowardly.
They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In the case of the cowardly McQuearys, this seems to be true.
Could McQueary be another one of Sandusky’s victims? He’s a local boy who grew up pretty much in the PSU football program. Sandusky’s behavior probably started long before the date of the first accusation in the grand jury report. If so, that might help to explain a little about why McQueary reacted in the way he did. His reaction and his subsequent behavior is incomprehensible to me. How could you see what he alleges to have seen and not do something proactive and definitive to stop it? And how could you continue to go to work in that place and… Read more »
If as you hint there was a connection between McQuary and A “S”ertain person, it may provide some form of explanation as to McQuary’s actions. It may not be excusable, but it may provide a form of rational reasoning. It’s worth remembering that an abuse victim will often not act rationally, in the eyes of others, within their own situation. That tendency can last a long time – and it can even last a life time to varying degrees. Ask anyone with abuse induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even being able to recall events in a cohesive manner and communicate… Read more »