The dark staining circle of sexual abuse and violence is a tricky thing. It’s impervious to circumstance, family, culture, age, geography, or status. It can happen anywhere, at any time. And yet, when it hits a mainstream culture – like college football – it suddenly becomes this complex “issue” that everyone needs to start educating themselves about.
Sexual abuse and assault is actually quite easy to understand. It’s an act of power, of ruthless and violent domination. Unfortunately, outside of women, gender, sociology, psychology, and ethnic studies disciplines, most college students don’t learn that.
In Sexual Abuse 101, one would also learn there are circumstances sought out to repeat this abuse. Children, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, the elderly, persons of less physical strength with higher rates of vulnerability are targeted. They’re targeted because they’re more likely to be controlled and silenced. They’re also targeted because they’re easier to dismiss if they ever come forward.
The silencing is not usually done by the abuser or rapist. The silencing usually comes from the others who hear of what happened after the abuse is done. Silencing is done by not believing the victim, disregarding their trauma, or just telling them other matters are more important than their violation. It would behoove Penn State students to understand that their “riots” – aka college kids wanting attention and not knowing how to see anything beyond themselves and football – are silencing and hurting the victims and their families.
But who are rape victims to get in the way of a football legacy? If the world was run by college students, this would be about the Board of Trustees firing a “coach” and all this other useless detail – accountability, responsibility, moral integrity, sexual abuse prevention (it takes more than just taking away locker room keys), and trust – is dust compared to JOE PATERNO getting canned.
And speaking of getting canned….
On my Twitter account I received a message basically stating that Mike McQueary should NOT be fired because if he is, it sends a message to all other graduate students that they shouldn’t report anything immoral or wrong to the university.
I replied: Right. He should’ve reported it to the police.
Replied tweet: YES! but the university *might* want crimes on university property reported to them ALSO. fire him = nobody will do that
So, let me get this straight.
1. McQueary witnesses a 10 year old boy being raped by his hero in the Penn State football locker room
2. Calls his dad
3. The next day goes to Paterno’s house to tell him
4. The day after that Paterno, McQueary and Curley meet at Paterno’s house
5. Some time after that McQueary goes through a myriad of meetings with Curley and Schultz who promise to look into it
Based on this, McQueary is called “the whistleblower.” And if fired, then this would discourage other whistleblowers?
Look, I get the academic scene. I went through a grad program, I worked at both college and universities, my best friends are all nerdy PhD grad students who tell me about the hierarchal power dynamic of the academic mill. I get it. I get that McQueary was a lowly grad student. I suppose that’s what other graduate students would see and argue: he had very little power, he told the people he thought he should, and now he’ll get fired for trying to do the right thing.
But here’s what I see: I see a (then) 28 year old man who saw a felony of the worst kind and didn’t think it through. Maybe he didn’t want to, or maybe he was advised not to. Regardless, at 28, at any point over nine years, you don’t think both the university AND the police should be called when it’s clear that Sandusky was not held accountable AT ALL? Not until 9 years later and then the REAL whistle was blown?
McQueary isn’t a whistleblower. To be a real whistleblower, the whistle has to stop the play. The game has to stop. The problem is, the game continued.
It continued.
If a segment of Penn State students want to thoughtlessly support Paterno and make this about football, and if their graduate students fail to report an immoral act or any other crime because McQueary lost his job for not interceding on behalf of a raped child, then Penn State has failed on more than just mishandling sexual abuse. They failed in their education system as well.
I think the story of McQueary is valuable to ponder ethically precisely because many others would have acted exactly as he did (or done even less- I’m looking at you custodians for the football showers). This blog post had a good treatment of the situation in light of the banality of evil http://mommadata.blogspot.com/2011/11/social-psychologist-stymied-by-penn.html
Recognizing this does not, I think, imply in any way that McQueary should not be held accountable or that he was not an utter failure as a decent human being. It does, however, demand a recognition that unless you have lived it, you do not know how you would act in his shoes.
As an aside- the voodoo thing is something my mother taught me- there’s a religious belief system there. In a sense, if you want to take seriously a Catholic’s belief in transubstantiation, you should take seriously a Vodouisants belief in Nkisi. It is not a nice nor culturally aware thing to joke about, irrespective of how “bad” it is compared to “real” death threats.
I mean, yeah. Life asks a lot to do the right thing. While most of us have probably not witnessed what McQueary did, doing the right thing, albeit taxing and probably inconvenient, is what you do for children. For me, end of story. And any other fancy talk about how hard it is doesn’t really resonate with me. Follow up. A kid was raped. follow up. I mean, seriously? “not a small thing” I’M asking? Like, the kid he left was calling for less?
And, point taken if you don’t like my voodoo doll comment. But siding a clear use of humor and joke on twitter about wanting Spanier and Paterno fired is different than a call for violence and death threats that threaten McQueary’s life.
Twitters’ tough for this- complex ideas.
My main point is not that complicated though- he should have called the police AND told the university.
The only thing I can say in McQueary’s partial defense is that there is a slim chance he was deluded and/or misinformed about what Scultz’s role was (as VP of business and finance, he did oversee campus police). McQueary took it to “higher authorities”, just not the right ones. They failed him as well as the victims (he’s now getting death threats).
It’s also worth noting that Sandusky was investigated *before*, and legally nothing came of it (as far as I have been able to determine)
So anyway, my takehome message is that EVERYONE should be prepared to stop or at least report such a heinous crime, but that they should also be aware it will need to be reported again and again. It will need to be followed up. It will consume a large portion of your life. And the chances are very, very high that the cops will still do jack shit.
When you call for someone to report things to the cops, this is what you are calling for. It’s a completely reasonable expectation, given the awfulness of the crime any inconvenience to the witness is vastly outweighed by the importance of getting what justice is possible, but it is not a small thing you are asking.
All that said, there is still the matter of whether the *university* should be telling it’s students “don’t report shit to us, cause we’ll ignore you and then fire your ass”. The university (like any large institution, really) probably has an interest in doing their own investigation to see what should be done (the fact that they totally fell down on the job and if anything did the opposite- a cover up- is immaterial to the fact that *other* crimes may be committed and the university may want to have the opportunity to dismiss the accused even if the legal case isn’t successful). If they fire McQueary, they will have a much harder time getting anyone to come to them- that’s why I think it’s the wrong move.
I do think the decent thing would be for McQueary to quit, of course. But I don’t agree with threatening to kill him (or even jests about voodoo dolls).