Finally, Jerry Sandusky's part of the story is over. He will never be seen or heard from again. But his life will leave a lasting impact on our country and our culture.
Penn State University still has a lot of issues to sort through, because even with Sandusky behind bars, there are still plenty more who must be held accountable.
But far beyond the confines of Happy Valley, the fallout from this horrible story is going to stick with us for a long time. It has changed us. It has improved us, perhaps, in some ways. To a point, our anger is healthy. Our compassion for victims of sexual abuse is genuine. Our outrage at the institutional cover up is valuable.
Since the Sandusky story has broken, we've seen more and more people find the voice to tell the world, or maybe just a few trusted friends, that they were victims once too. And we've seen people who had been too ashamed to come forward, finally have the courage to accuse those who wronged them. Hopefully now we are more familiar with the warning signs of abuse, less suspicious of those who claim to be victims, less tolerant of institutions that cover their asses instead of rooting our wrong-doing.
| Related: Sandusky Found Guilty On 45 of 48 Charges |
The other inevitable fallout from this tragedy, however, is that we've lost trust in one another. Like Charles Manson before him, Jerry Sandusky has introduced us to an evil that we never wanted to believe was in our midst. He has planted in us new fears that can get so easily warped and distorted and exploited. And a generation of already over-protective parents has surely just gotten even more paranoid.
Have you ever volunteered to work with children? Had to undergo background checks? Received your training on how you should never be alone with a child, how you should avoid any physical contact, be careful to avoid any situation in which you could even be accused of anything innapropriate?
The precautions were already dehumanizing enough - both for the children and for anyone who had the innocent goodness in their heart to want to help a young person in need. How Sandusky was given the opportunity to be so close to so many children for so many years is a terrible breakdown in these defenses. So, in order to prevent something like this from happening again, many institutions may now find themselves going so far as to sterilize away the possibility for any meaningful relationships between children and a great many people who have only the purest of aspirations.
You know the feeling you get when you're getting frisked by a TSA agent before you hop on a plane to visit your family for Thanksgiving? You better get used to it if you want to work with kids.
But what else are parents and caretakers of children to do? One more Sandusky is too many. One more child predator, one more perverted priest. This can't happen.
We should all be glad for the part of this saga that's behind us, but also cognizant of how we're changed. Hopefully, as a culture, we'll be able to learn as much as we can from what went wrong, and correct the mistakes that let people like Jerry Sandusky operate. But let's hope that we'll also have the sense to realize that not every stranger you meet is another Jerry Sandusky.
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