A quote, revisited

Casey: Hey, you want to get involved with this?
Dan: I so don’t.
Casey: Didn’t you used to care about these things? And it wasn’t that long ago that you did.
Dan: No.
Casey: I mean, it was like yesterday.
Dan: Right.
Casey: Now, when I say yesterday, I’m not speaking metaphorically. It was yesterday! What happened to your values?
Dan: I find that maintaining them is a lot of work. I take a day off now and then.
Casey: You take a vacation from doing the right thing?
Dan: Yeah. I don’t loot store fronts or anything, but once in a while, when I consider the effort it takes to diligently adhere to a moral compass I take myself out of the line up and I rest for the next game.

I don't write much on this blog anymore. And even when I wrote pretty consistently, I never said much about politics, religion, or, to be truly honest, anything that is really important to me, except for my family and friends. But this week, the intersectionality (a nonexistent word that comes up in my profession) of my undergraduate family violence class, my employment at a university, my position as a mandated reporter, and my love of college football have caused me some unrest.

I have linked this timeline of events to my blog because, for those three people who read this who may or may not be college football fans, I don't have the energy to relay all of the events that have gone down at Penn State this week. Suffice it to say, a football coach (defensive coordinator) for the program was arrested on Saturday with 40 counts of sexual abuse of eight boys he had access to through a charity dedicated to helping "troubled" boys from "dysfunctional families." Forty counts. The man has been retired since 1999, but has continued to enjoy the perks of Penn State football, a storied program with a head coach who, until yesterday, had been there for 46 seasons and brought the school much glory and honor.

Then, yesterday, the head coach got fired. This has brought many mixed reactions from fans, sportswriters, NCAA officials, and those people who comment on internet stories. The reactions do not have to do with whether or not it is wrong to sexually abuse a child: people are pretty unanimous that child sexual abuse is okay. Score one. The unrest has to do with what a head football coach-a person in a position of leadership, and, if I'm not mistaken, a mandatory reporter under the Clery Act-should or should not do if it is reported to him that one of his colleagues has been seen on molesting a child on school property. There is also unrest about the person who witnessed the child being molested-a man who, at the time, was a student assistant, but is now also a coach at Penn State. In the case of the student, he reported the incident to the head coach, who, in turn, reported some version of the incident to the university's athletic director, who elected to handle it internally.

This happened years ago, and the details are just coming out as a result of one of the victims going to the authorities. Like I said, the head coach was fired yesterday, and many people in the town of State College protested this decision. Others, while supporting the decision to fire the head coach, are wondering about the former student assistant, still employed by the Penn State football team, and calling for his termination, as well. Again, the unrest seems to stem from whose responsibility people view it is to handle these things, and whether or not they are handled in the proper way.

The bottom line is this: the man who abused these children-children who were already vulnerable coming from poverty and absent homes-needs to be punished for his crimes with the stiffest penalties the law allows. But, as for those who knew and didn't say anything, or tried to cover up what had happened, it gets a little fuzzier. There's the university piece: what is the university protocol? There's the mandated reporter piece: do I have a responsibility to report something to an official?

Having worked in a university, I understand that there is a chain of command that must be followed. Universities have reputations to protect, and they like to have control over how things are handled. When I see something happen with my colleagues, or my students, I tend to have this thought process: is this something I can talk to the person directly about and leave it at that? If so, I usually do, and it dies there. If not, I ask myself, who is the person I need to inform next? If it is a student, the answer is typically either that person's clinical supervisor or their thesis/dissertation chair. However, if the matter is serious enough, I typically talk to my immediate boss-the program chair. I have a lot of faith in my boss, and expect her to do the right thing. I find that she does. As a student, I depended on the faculty around me to do their jobs, and if I had a concern, I would leave it with them. But I recognize that, as I type this, I have never had a situation come up that involved any of my colleagues or students abusing a child.

However, I am a mandated reporter, which means that, if I see or hear of anyone abusing a child, I HAVE to report that. I could lose my license and my job. I take that pretty seriously. I met with a student for supervision today, and told her twice that she needed to report an instance of child abuse, for the safety of the kids, for her, and for me. As a therapist, it is something I struggle with. After meeting with clients for a few sessions, I begin to have a relationship with them. If I find out in the course of therapy that they have been abusing their children, reporting them becomes tough, even though I know it is the right thing to do, and even though I always tell them at the beginning of therapy that I have to do it.

Then, there's this piece I don't want to talk about that is sort of nagging at me: I love college football. I originally heard this story on a sports talk radio show that I listen to every morning as I drive into work. I have season tickets to BYU football, and I have cable TV expressly so that I can watch college football games on Saturday. College football scandals drive me crazy, particularly when they are related to recruitment, and the teams involved get to go to BCS Bowls. And while I truly believe that, when a scandal goes down in a college sports program, there should be ramifications, I know that it is a little bit harder to swallow when they happen to my team, and my team is poised to compete for a national championship. And, for the record, I do not think that violating university or NCAA policies are in the same universe as pedophilia, but I do think that when we break rules, we need to expect consequences, even if they interfere with our sports teams.

That said, the bottom line for me is that child abuse is wrong. It is wrong when it happens in families; it is wrong when it happens in institutions. There are times, as a therapist, a professor, and a human being, when I weigh the costs of a battle and decide it isn't worth it. However, reporting child abuse should never be thought of as "not worth it" for any reason, be it institutional ramifications, because it should be someone else's responsibility, or merely because I don't want to get involved. If I as a bystander take the position that it is not my responsibility to make sure that something is done, than whose responsibility is it? At some point, that only leaves two people: the victim, or the perpetrator. Obviously, perpetrators are unlikely to report themselves. Putting the responsibility on a child victim to report abuse sends a message that, once again, society has failed to protect him-a lesson he already knows too well.