More of Patrick Hruby's interview with Coached into Silence director Chris Gavagan

For Chris Gavagan, the ongoing Penn State football child sex abuse scandal looks all too familiar. 


A Brooklyn-based filmmaker, Gavagan is working on Coached Into Silence, a documentary about sexual abuse in sports that includes interviews with experts, victims, and a roller hockey coach Gavagan claims abused him when he was a teenager.

To understand how Penn State fits into the larger context of sexual abuse by coaches—as well as how the university’s leaders could display what the Freeh report termed a “total disregard for the safety and welfare of Jerry Sandusky’s child victims"— I recently spoke with Gavagan for an Atlantic online Q&A about the report, Joe Paterno and where the school goes from here.

Below are additional, previously unpublished items from that interview:

The Penn State board said it accepts "full responsibility” for failures that occurred, yet only one board member has stepped down. Paterno’s family and lawyers for other Penn State officials insist they did nothing wrong. How common is that kind of reaction from the people and organizations responsible for children’s welfare when wrongdoing and cover-ups are exposed? 

With a Federal investigation still ongoing, much of this story is yet to be told. In general, institutions have adopted the deny what you can, admit what you must strategy. In one of the cases in the film, it was only after the coach who made a school a powerhouse for 30 years passed away that the school acknowledged that there were credible reports of sexual abuse of students. Not so coincidentally, this acknowledgment occurred after the statute of limitations on these crimes had passed.

In many cases, you also see similar “cherry-picked” information, such as Penn State’s decisions being made based on Seasock’s psychological report, rather than Dr. Chambers’ report. Loyalists who will back up the school’s version of events are pushed to the forefront, while those who line up against them are discredited.

Still, one need only look at each individual Olympic national governing body, sport by sport, to see the gamut of reactions to allegations of sexual abuse. Sometimes when a high profile program – USA Swimming, USA Gymnastics – is exposed for having ‘mishandled’ sexually abusing coaches within their ranks, those programs have learned from their mistakes, adopting a more proactive stance toward prevention. Many other institutions have responded by reexamining their own policies regarding, among other things, the mandated reporting of child sexual abuse.

Based on what you’ve seen in other cases, what do you expect the ultimate outcome of the legal process to be? Will people besides Jerry Sandusky go to jail?

Anything can happen when a case is handed over to a jury, but from the evidence that has been made public via the grand jury and the Freeh report, it appears quite clear that [Penn State athletic director] Tim Curley and [vice president Gary] Schultz perjured themselves. It is also clear, in denying any knowledge of the 1998 incident involving Sandusky, that Joe Paterno himself lied to the Grand Jury.

Were the coach alive today, I do believe that after the release of the Freeh report there would have been no way for him to avoid being charged with perjury.

What are the most important lessons Penn State can draw from the Freeh Report? What are the most important lessons society can draw?

For society as a whole, I think the most valuable way to see the Freeh report is as a dye-injected MRI through which we can learn more about a disease – the disease of willful institutional silence regarding the sexual abuse of children.

The has report has given us a clearer – though still imperfect and incomplete – picture of how a coverup like this can and does occur so often. It illustrates the positions where the decisions are made, the thought processes that led to those decisions and how very bright people chose to take the legally and ethically wrong path.

What steps can and should Penn State take now and in the future to prevent this from happening again, and also to address the damage done to Sandusky’s victims?

A change in the culture surrounding Penn State is a must, which is much, much easier said than done when the defining moment of a university’s week includes over a hundred thousand screaming “We Are …”

Having met many residents of State College and nearby Bellefonte throughout the course of the trial, I have seen people who are already having to come to grips with the complicated relationship between the geographical area and the university. As one elderly, dyed-in-Navy-and-White supporter told me “Love the Lion, hate the lies.” I admire that. And to that end, no less than full disclosure will do. I am all in favor of an international style truth and reconciliation commission

The soil in State College will remain toxic until the entire truth comes out. Until that time, the foundation is cracked. To build upon a foundation of lies, as shown so clearly in the Freeh report, only guarantees your eventual collapse.

As someone who has been a victim of coach sex abuse, how did the Freeh Report affect you emotionally? Do you have any insight into the sort of emotional impact the report’s release might have on other victims, including those of Sandusky?

Preproduction on Coached into Silence began in the Spring of 2009, with with the first interview shot in November of 2009. That means that through our research and ongoing filming, we have lived with all aspects of the sexual abuse of children by coaches every day for three years. Even more personally, I have dealt with life after sexual abuse for the last 20 years. Far from being jaded by being steeped in this issue so deeply for so long, through the anguish of every victim that I speak to the loss is made fresh and real all over again.

The Freeh report, when coupled with what will likely amount to a life sentence for a highly-respected and powerful man who used his position to prey on children, provides a measure of empowerment in seeing that (a) the victims were (eventually) believed; and (b) consequences are occuring.

When it comes to the unbelievably courageous young men that took the stand and faced their abuser – as well as all other unnamed victims of Jerry Sandusky that will never have their photographs projected on a screen in the Centre County courthouse – my hope is that the verdict brought them hope.

What I know is that somewhere, sleeping peacefully in their bed the night the verdict was handed down, the next victim of Jerry Sandusky just gets to be a child instead. No thanks to the powerful men who ran Penn State – who would have sacrificed that boy on their pigskin altar – but with all credit to those courageous young men who took the stand, who looked the devil in the face and spoke the truth in Bellefonte, PA.

Should the school end its football program? Why or why not?

Many will speak of the unfortunate athletes who would lose the opportunity afforded by their scholarships. My heart goes out to any innocent party that could be counted as collateral damage of this coverup, but the responsibility for the trickle down effect of these crimes lies with those who committed, enabled and covered them up, not those who hand out justice for those crimes.

In my opinion, if children have been raped on your campus, on your watch, you forfeit the right to carry on playing games until a complete overhaul in the way that you do business has been achieved. Calling a billion dollar football-industrial-complex a game may seem naive, but contrary to the prevailing attitudes, that is still what football is.

I don’t believe the program should be ended. Suspension for a period of years? I believe that the NCAA will weigh in very harshly over violations of the Clery act alone.

(Editor’s note: interview was conducted before the NCAA’s levying of penalties on Penn State football).

An institution such as Penn State has learned the hard way that they must bring the same the same transparency, the same level of vigilance, the same strict enforcement to crimes committed on their campus as they have tried to bring to NCAA violations. As detailed in the Freeh report, when labeling a sports agent who bought one of their football players $400 worth of clothing “persona non grata” and banning him from campus, Spanier and his cohorts acted like Michael Corleone. When they were faced with one of their own raping children on their hallowed grounds, when it mattered most … they were Fredo.

The investigation was deep in the places that it dug, but it was not nearly wide enough to tell anything approaching the full story. The bulk of this story, and it’s corresponding missing 30 years, is still to be told.

Could the Penn State Abuse Scandal Happen Somewhere Else? Definitely→

Coached into Silence director Chris Gavagan ’s interview with The Atlantic 

With the release of a damning, 267-page investigative report compiled by former FBI director Louis Freeh, the ongoing child sex abuse scandal engulfing Penn State University and former football coach Joe Paterno went from bad to worse, with possible negligence involving the sex crimes perpetrated by former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky giving way to a probable cover-up.

For Chis Gavagan, however, the contents of the Freeh report were hardly surprising.

A Brooklyn-based filmmaker, Gavagan is working on Coached Into Silence, a documentary about sexual abuse in sports that includes interviews with experts, victims, and a roller hockey coach Gavagan claims abused him when he was a teenager.

To understand how Penn State fits into the larger context of sexual abuse by coaches—as well as how the university’s leaders could display what Freeh termed a “total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims"—The Atlantic spoke with Gavagan about the report, Paterno, and where the school goes from here.

---

What similarities do you see between the Penn State depicted in the Freeh Report and the cases of child sex abuse by sports coaches documented in your film?

You could white out every proper name in the Freeh report and apply it to institutions all over this country that have failed in their responsibility to protect children. Time after time, the evidence has shown the most powerful and influential decision-makers circling the wagons and conspiring to decide, "How are we going to handle this?”

Victims are the last possible priority. Over and over, you see the drive to keep it quiet, to put it “behind us” with the fewest possible people being aware of it. In many cases—particularly at schools whose pristine reputation is paramount—rather than making a successful coach go away, they have made an accuser or the accusations go away.

In one elite prep school featured in the film, several students who came forward about abuse they suffered were quietly dismissed. In other cases, there have been payments handed out, “hush money” to convince a parent pushing the issue to relent.

It would shock me if the same tactics have not been put into play with Penn State over the decades of Jerry Sandusky’s involvement with the program, which began in the late 1960’s.

What differences do you see between Penn State and the cases you’ve covered?

The difference is the documentation. In most other cases, there will never be a report. We will never see this evidence. We will never be privy to these discussions. Without the national spotlight, most of these institutions have been able to avoid the scrutiny of such an investigation. Often, a loophole in the law – such as widely varying state-by-state statutes of limitations—can provide another shield. If an institution can avoid, delay and intimidate long enough, they can make Penn State [vice president Gary] Schultz' 1998 e-mail wish “I hope it is all behind us” a legal reality.

Prior to the ubiquity of email, an institution would have just solved much of this problem with payoff for an accuser and a shredder for the incriminating documentation. In some ways, we are fortunate that technology has created more of a trail in these cases.

Generally speaking, how does something like this happen?

It takes a village to enable a sexual predator to continue unfettered for so long. The combination of ignorance of warning signs and willfully hidden information are necessary for these abuses to go on for decades.

Pillars of the community are given much more of a benefit of the doubt, but what has been demonstrated, unfortunately, is that nobody can be considered beyond reproach. The greatest masks of all are apparent good intentions and a smile. This is one of the most insidious aspects of these crimes. The stranger in the trench coat preying on children is the rarest of cases—the overwhelming majority are perpetrated by someone who is both trusted and known to the child.

In our film, we discussed with former Sports Illustrated editor Don Yaeger his process of researching his1999 cover article “Every Parent’s Nightmare.” In our interview, he quotes a pedophile as calling coaching “the last great candy store of opportunity.” Not only did the most powerful men at Penn State choose not to shut down Sandusky’s candy store when it was brought to their attention, but by allowing his continued access to all things Penn State they went above and beyond to ensure that it remained open for business and that the shelves were stocked with the sweetest bait a young boy could imagine.

Which specific details of the Freeh report most stood out to you, and why?

The coded, callous discussions of incidents that Schultz called “at worst sexual improprieties"—and the talk of needing to clarify to Sandusky his "guests’ use of the facilities"—is appalling. They refer to a child victim of rape as if he were a kid being punished for peeing in the pool. It shows a complete and utter disregard for other human beings.

The nameless boy in the shower was someone’s child.

Also, the fact that information was withheld from the board right until the last possible moment, time and time again, demonstrates the danger of a lack of accountability and oversight. [Penn State president Graham] Spanier, [athletic director Tim] Curley, and Schultz come across as the last men shouting that the Titanic is unsinkable, even as their lungs are filling with frigid water of the North Atlantic.

How does the disregard for children happen?

More often than not, this kind of disregard occurs in tiny dehumanizing increments. For a human being, no matter what is at stake to professionally or financially, to take actions that enable these abuses to continue, they must begin by not seeing the victim as a human. The farther you get away from that flesh and blood child—nameless and faceless—the easier it is for you to proceed.

There is a reason that the prosecutors in the Sandusky trial opened their case by showing photographs of the victims at the ages that they were when these crimes were committed against them—because it works. I was sitting in that courtroom, and to be forced to face the very real, very human toll of these crimes is unbelievably powerful.

The men in power at Penn State did not have to face that. They faced words, they faced an idea, and by facing only that I believe they were able to discount, to some extent, the horrors that were being committed on their watch. There are things that one must lie to themselves about in order to be a part of, if you are to live with yourself. I would imagine that sacrificing a child to the "greater good” of an institution is one such case.

The Freeh report concluded that Joe Paterno and other top Penn State officials covered up the sex abuse allegations against Sandusky because they were afraid of “bad publicity.” Is that unusual? Why or why not?

In the vast majority of these cases, “bad publicity"—and all the considerations that entails, specifically in terms of financial backlash—is the immediate concern.

For example, when you run an elite prep school and charge $33,000 a year for tuition—like one of the schools featured in our film—administrators will go to great lengths to prevent any evidence from coming out that could tarnish their reputation and thereby handicap their ability to charge such an astronomical amount. Schools also rely heavily on alumni donations. How willing do you think their alumni would be to write out generous checks if they were aware that some portion of that donation was going to fight to keep sex abuse cases from going to trial?

Spanier acknowledging in the Freeh report that their decision not to go to the proper authorities leaves them vulnerable is a rare peak behind the curtain of all decision-makers who have chosen the same course of action—or inaction. They explicitly knew the risks, yet they did it anyway.

If there were a fire on campus, there would have been no debate as to "how are we going to handle this?” The proper authorities to handle the specific situation would have been called immediately.

One of the most heartbreaking things in the Freeh report involves janitors who saw Sandusky molesting a boy in the Penn State football showers but did not report the incident for fear of losing their jobs. Was their fear reasonable? What kind of reaction do child sex abuse whistleblowers typically face?

Their fears were unfortunate, but more than reasonable. To ask the lowest men on the totem pole to be heroes where “great men” have failed is unfair. The lower you rank, the heavier the pressure of the edifice above you. The little people get crushed—and who can rank lower than a child? Powerless. No money. No influence. The greatest action taken in your defense by anyone at Penn State was a slammed locker.

In a case featured in the film, it was the assistant coach who was the whistleblower, going to his superiors to report what he knew to be credible accusations against his head coach. As thanks for his speaking out, the administration of the school began a smear campaign against the assistant in the press, even going so far as to remove the whistleblower’s picture from the school’s hall of fame, while the picture of the head coach—who would eventually plead guilty to two counts of child rape—still smiled from his plaque within a glass case.

Personally, my own experience of reporting my coach and abuser to the league is both subjective prism through which I view reporting, and also a glimpse of the pressures that can be brought to bear. Although the director of the league believed me when I reported my coach, the next words out of his mouth were problematic: “I know you love this league too … and when this gets out they’re going to shut us down.” No so subtly, the victim had been handed responsibility for the potential closing of his beloved league. They dismissed the coach that night, but did no more. During the production of Coached Into Silence, I would discover that he took his whistle six miles down the road and continued coaching for years. The statute of limitations in my home state of New York had expired, and there was nothing I could do.

The Freeh report also blamed a “culture of reverence for the football program.” What do you make of that?

In an interview that we conducted in 2009 with Cardozo law professor Marci Hamilton, she discusses the shadow side of a successful coach. Although a successful coach is a wonderful for any organization, there is a danger when that individual’s success has begun “a legacy of donations for the institution.” Sandusky masterfully exploited the cover provided by his own gridiron success, and those in power who surrounded him willingly provided the ongoing shield with the Penn State imprimatur—with one apparent and unenforced condition: Don’t do it here.

We have cases in the film where the abusers have not just won many games or championships, but are gold medal-winners or enshrined in their sport’s Hall of Fame. For a particular institution or sport to admit and acknowledge abuse or a problem with someone who has risen to these heights and has been given every accolade imaginable takes an extraordinary amount of fortitude.

Unfortunately, that kind of courage is rare. More often than not, a literal or figurative cost benefit analysis is done, an institution tabulates the price of potential lawsuits, and the decision is made to do all that is within their power to make the problem go away without reporting it to the police.

A report estimated that the Sandusky case could ultimately cost Penn State $100 million in civil damages. What is the psychological and emotional cost to Sandusky’s victims?

The true human cost will never be accurately tallied. Having personally lived through the effects of these abuses on a victim—and studied all that there is to study about them—I can say that not all who fall prey will live long enough to be called a “survivor.” Among Sandusky’s victims, there are bound to be those who have taken their secret shame to the grave, dying by the drugs or alcohol that they took to cope with the abuse, or succumbing to depression and suicide. The suicide rate among victims is many, many times higher than average.

What lessons can Penn State—and the rest of us—learn from this tragedy?

When any man—or any college sports program—becomes more powerful than the institution itself, corruption is sure to follow.

As someone who remains a true sports fan and has enjoyed the benefits of being involved, I can’t demonize that world. Yet when any aspect of an organization becomes a money-printing machine, the tail begins to wag the dog. For example, Phil Knight’s hero worship [of Paterno] cannot be viewed independently of knowing where his bread was buttered.

Penn State remains an incredible educational institution, turning out many of this country’s best and brightest minds. But some of the deepest soul searching that must be done at the school regards exactly how much power they have ceded to football. They have sacrificed too much at the altar of the sport.

Should Penn State take down its on-campus statue of Paterno?

To choose to continue to honor the man as the winningest football coach and the architect of his “grand experiment” is to ignore this truth: For all of the good he may have done, for all the lives that he may have impacted in a positive way, his grand experiment was a failure. The cult of personality, the total lack of accountability, the man who could tell his superiors exactly when he would be stepping down existed in a poisoned atmosphere of his own creation. The power centralized in one man, immortalized in bronze, made a true chain of command, of checks and balances, impossible. When it is a controversial decision to paint over someone’s halo, we are ignoring the man’s humanity, not honoring it. The disregard for the humanity of the victims—"some Second Mile kid" and “the boy in the shower"—is how this was allowed to occur in the first place.

My wish is for the statue to be taken down and returned to the workshop where it was created, then have Paterno’s skyward-pointing index finger repositioned in front of his lips – the exhale of a quiet, craven "Shhhhh.” Put that new version on a flatbed truck and tour the nation, with those who have survived childhood sexual abuse speaking at every stop to educate and raise awareness of the issue while warning against the hubris that led a “great man” to believe that his own reputation mattered more that the lives of children.

Coached into Silence director Chris Gavagan was a guest on the Diane Rehm show to discuss the film, the issue of child sexual abuse and the charges against former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. 

Our view from the courthouse steps. Bellefonte, PA

Amendola’s one-man circus. 

Harrisburg, PA

Testimony before the Pennsylvania House Children and Youth Committee in support of increased mandated reporting of childhood sexual abuse & opening a “window” in the statute of limitations. 

“I want to thank you all for being here, for convening this meeting, and for listening. 

My name is Chris Gavagan and for the past two years I have been producing and directing a documentary called Coached into Silence which deals specifically with the sexual abuse of boys by their coaches. The silence referred to in the title is threefold: the silence of shame victims can find themselves shrouded in, the silence of institutions protecting themselves before children, and finally the legal silencing of the victims in their search for justice. 

The process of first researching and then filming Coached into Silence, which is ongoing, would have been enough to make me a lowercase “e” expert on the subject of child sexual abuse, yet my expertise is of the decidedly capital “E” variety.

I am today because I am also an invisible, untabulated statistic. In my quest to be a better hockey player, having just turned fourteen years old, I skated down the wrong block in my neighborhood and into the carefully laid trap of a serial child molester. On this tree-lined street, a street just like yours, I would become the victim of an uncounted crime, perpetrated by a unaccountable criminal. 

That day is the B.C./A.D line of demarcation in my life. My childhood ended on a Fall day in 1988 and that was that. I was exposed to everything that a parent would try to protect their child from. An adult world, a darker world, a world that is cruel and obscene. A world where you will be lied to and used, all the while being told that it was for your own good. One “It’s okay to curse here, we’re all guys” at a time. One beer at a time. Or one dozen. One Playboy at a time. One glimpse of pornography at a time leading the way for a hundred more. One “massage” of a pulled muscle at a time. A child in the hands of a polished master manipulator, who had perfected his grooming process over decades. 

Fifteen years ago I was certain that I would take this secret with me to the grave. I had resigned myself to a life as Damaged Goods. As someone who brought nothing but pain to anyone foolish enough to care. I had also resigned myself to life as a liar, because from the moment you first answer the question “Is everything okay?” with “Yes” you have lied about something that is fundamental. Those lies and the echoes from those years of abuse poisoned every single human interaction that I had for a decade. That I am not counted among the other statistics…the addicted, the incarcerated, the incapacitated or the suicides, is it’s own miracle. 

The crimes that occurred in & around State College are appalling, heartbreaking andanything but unique. The nation as a whole seems to be paying attention because of the celebrity status of the names & institution involved. Yet the scale is always the same to the victims. The loss of innocence, the shattering of trust, the sense of betrayal, the shame…occupies every inch of its container. “Grief fills the room up of my absent child”, said Shakespeare. Both my parents & their youngest son would concur. 

In directing & producing my film for the last two years our research has introduced us to thousands of similar cases. All that changes are the proper names for the actors, but the roles played are the same. The pedophile is no doubt the lead, but without the supporting actors this tragic show would have a very short run. Without the willful blindness of the Head in the Sand Ensemble, the “letter of the law” of the Moral Minimalists, the excuses proffered by the Apologists, the Moneymen jangling their thirty pieces of silver backstage, and the uncritical praise of the Hero Worshipers there would be no show at all. 

The Sandusky horror show has made itself a Broadway performance of ‘How Not to Handle a Child Rapist in Your Ranks", but trust this: the curtain rises on this disaster of dramaturgy in Community theaters, in every community, every night. All the world’s a stage for this particular play. In every place that there is a hierarchical structure and a chain of command to be followed…whether in schools or sports leagues, our churches to our military to our families themselves..bucks are being passed, free passes are being given and all in the name of protecting a reputation or a brand, a legacy or a surname. 

In these cases, bystanders are the load-bearing walls of the child rapist’s house of horrors. Without their support, the crimes would collapse in on the criminal almost immediately. Instead, each head turned away, each excuse offered, each whispered benefit of the doubt that it was “just a one time thing” or worse…each willful coverup of a known crime adds up to a generation of children used, raped, sodomized and eventually disenfranchised and silenced by laws that failed to protect them in the first place.

The Law is supposed to function as a system of incentives, which incentivize us to behave responsibly, or face the system of accountability which is in place. It’s why we wear our seat belts. In fact it’s why we have them at all. So buckle up, I’d like to show just a few moments of interviews that I conducted with my own former coach and abuser. A man that I did report to the league to end his access to children. A league that did fire him, but did no more, allowing him unfettered access to a whole new crop of young boys, while coaching just six miles down the road. Prior to this interview, I had not had contact with him for nearly 15 years. 

(I then played four minutes from interviews with my own abuser. His admitting sexual abuse and justifying it by calling it a “lesson”. His concern that doing this interview could put him in jail. His relieved laughter when the issue of New York’s statute of limitations–age 23–is raised, and then this man walking away, fading back in to his neighborhood.)

Coached into Silence is not a monster movie. The man that you met in that video would—to this day–be described by dozens of people around him as “the nicest guy you’ll ever meet”  You’ve seen that face. There are no horns on that head. You’ve seen that smile; there no fangs among those teeth. Yet the sound that has persevered longest & recurred to me the most often in my life is those teeth. The sound of those dentures being removed. 

The wet clicking sound of a serial child sexual predator moving in on his prey. When he was sure that a just-turned-fourteen-year old had consumed enough alcohol to pass out…after countless hours of shock & awe bombardment of pornography. After months of methodical grooming, semi-conscious, I looked down to see the bald head of my hockey coach…while the wet, clicking sound of dentures being removed boomed in my ears. It still does. It always will. 

Because I eventually reported the man that you saw on that screen mere months beyond an arbitrary statute of limitations in my state, he–who explains performing oral sex on children as a lesson—lives freer than I have been any day since the age of fourteen. 

I must add, that after sexually abusing children for a minimum of three decades, that man would also pass any background check in America. The law says: Unprosectuable, unregistered, unrestrained.  His neighbors will not see a red flag on any registry warning them to keep their children away. Just as crucially, without the simple truth that victims of these crimes can so easily provide, law enforcement will continue be forced to fight these crimes blindfolded.

In the world of Homeland Security, the mantra “See something, say something” has gained traction and proven effective. Yet we are missing an entirely different and much more prevalent terrorism. When it comes to the crime of sexual abuse of our children, “See something, say something” has too often been replaced with “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” This is not good enough.  

Maya Angelou writes: “History, despite it’s wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced, with courage need not be lived again. The key phrase is "if faced with courage”.

When a child’s future is hanging by a thread, there can be no margin for error. We must face the wrenching pain of what we see or suspect with courage–and make no mistake—the difference can mean life or death to a child 

My documentary focuses on boys who were sexually abused by coaches because I was one of those boys. Life handed me and so many others that narrative, yet the statistics for girls are even more staggering. 

Two days ago, my wife & I saw the face of our daughter for the first time, in utero. 

We will meet her early this spring. When that day arrives, I need to be able to look into her eyes and know that I am doing everything that is humanly possible to keep her safe. Just as you need to be able to go home to your own children, to see your own nieces & nephews, your grandchildren….and look them in the eyes and know that you are facing this issue–with courage. That you are doing everything within the power your elected position provides to keep them safe. You must answer to those eyes. Today you are a step closer. You are facing this issue with courage today by being here, by convening this hearing, by lending us your ears and your attention this December day.

If protections are strengthened and bills become laws enacted, come springtime your courage to look at the tragedies surrounding Penn State and provide remedies can be the cause of the thaw that turns the tide of this epidemic forever.

Moral minimums will not do that. Passing the buck will not do that. Denial will not do that. Heads in the sand will not do that. Wishing it would go away will not make it so. The time is now to face these troubled and tragic histories with courage.

History is being written every day, with every choice. Every action & every inaction. You have the power to write a safer & more just future wherein you have demonstrated that the protection of our children is paramount. Where you have done better than the moral minimalists and their “I wish I had done more"s. You are all here today, and you are listening. That gives me hope that all of you; elected to serve the people of Pennsylvania, might use this tragic moment as an opportunity to do the right thing. By leading by example. By facing this with courage these dark days can be transformed into a light. If sunlight is the best disinfectant, the time is now to unshutter and open a window provision in your statute of limitations. Let the light of justice, the light of hope, and the light of truth lead the way. 

Thank you for your time." 

I found the full episode of Anderson Cooper’s “State of Shame” episode online. You can see Bravo John Matko, the inspirational Tammy Lerner of Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, Marci A. Hamilton, Keith Smith, author of Men in My Town…and I roll in around the 11 minute mark. Chris

As shocking as sunrise

The day the nation awoke to learn of the charges against former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky the one reaction that I was unable to muster was shock.

Not because we had been following the developments regarding Sandusky since March (we have), but because of the 2+ year process of research & production for Coached into Silence. 

We had investigated hundreds of cases and those cases were chosen from among thousands of others which we could have chosen to pursue. Dozens more every day. Nearly point by point, any of these cases only distinguish themselves from the events at Penn State by the proper names involved.

There is a template which you could lay over nearly every story where an institution has chosen to protect itself rather than the children which fits PSU all too well. There are countless Joe Paternos, following the letter of the law and doing no more. There are untold numbers of Mike McQuerys. There are Jerry Sanduskys in every town, in your town. The story broke and, as ever, I was heartbroken for the victims and their families. The story broke and I was outraged yet again by the protecting of the ‘brand’ while children are thrown to the wolves. The story broke yet what I could not be, was shocked. 

Given what we know about predators of this sort, tragically the only thing that could shock me in this case would be hearing that the number of boys who fell victim to this man doesn’t eventually approach triple-digits.