Honored to be a part of this project: “Just Tell is thrilled to debut our new Be Your Own Hero video project with the first video made by our dear friend Chris Gavagan of Coached into Silence! Videos made by friends and supporters of JustTell will empower youth to tell someone if they are being sexually abused.”
“The documentary is only a work in progress; but, on the evidence of his contribution to a conference in New York last week, Christopher Gavagan’s story – for he is the filmmaker with the guts and courage to delve into his own past – should make for a harrowing tale. It should also serve as a lesson, not just to other young sportsmen with their eyes on pursuing the dream of sporting excellence, but to many families and to society at large.”
Philip Reid zeroing in on what Coached into Silence is all about, in The Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2012/1124/1224327042084.html
Coached into Silence in The NY Times: Close Relationship Between Player and Coach, Potential for Sexual Abuse→
/It was the summer before high school, and Christopher Gavagan, then 13, was preparing to leave the safe familiarity of the friends he had known during his boyhood. With a plan to excel at ice hockey, he began training on inline skates, moving through his New York City neighborhood, up and down the streets until, he said, “I turned down the wrong street.”
Gavagan, now a filmmaker, was one of eight panelists who participated Friday in a discussion about young athletes who have been sexually assaulted or abused by their coaches. The panel was part of the MaleSurvivor 13th International Conference, held this year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The conference brought together men who have been sexually abused, as well aspsychologists, social workers, academics and members of the legal community.
You can read Eric V. Copage’s full article here.
Once Keyon Dooling let his secret go, it set him free to help others→
/I had the honor of sitting next to Keyon on the panel “Abuse in Sports: How Can We Change the Game?” at the MaleSurvivor.org International Conference last Friday. For some background on Keyon you can read Dave D’Alessandro’s piece below, from the Star-Ledger.
There was a memorable self-portrait from the troubled hockey genius who passed through New York a decade ago, Theo Fleury, who tried to explain an endless battle with alcohol and drugs with this poignant observation: “You’re only as sick as your secrets,” he said.
And so there was Keyon Dooling, just three months ago, back home in Florida after signing a one-year, $1 million invitation to return to the Boston Celtics and making plans to head north for pre-camp workouts. The only problem: He was tired of the NBA life. Indeed, he felt forced into it.
“I had planned my exit strategy during the lockout — that took a lot out of me, and I thought (the 2011-12 season) would be it,” he said. “But it wasn’t just my friends and relatives opposed to me retiring, it was my wife, my kids, my pastor.
“I never felt so isolated before, and it was like a big conflict at home. Even my agent waved (dismissively) at me. I was like a kid who couldn’t get his way, and didn’t know how to handle it.”
Dooling, 32, signed the deal to make everybody happy. But his behavior became erratic, his cognition faltered. A public incident in front of his home, where a neighbor believed he was playing too roughly with his own children, led to a visit from the police.
“And when the cops came to my house, it just set me over the edge,” Dooling said. “But that’s all I can remember.”
His next lucid moment — this was after the medication wore off — was at a psychiatric hospital in South Florida. And it was there that Keyon was told by his wife, Natosha, that it was time to explain how this finest of men — a pro’s pro for 12 NBA seasons (two with the Nets), a deeply spiritual family man, and a superb father — could be dragged out of their house in handcuffs in front of their four children.
“We’ve known each other since we were 15,” Natosha told her husband. “And you’ve never hidden anything from me before. I need to know now how we got to this point.”
“So,” Keyon said, “I told her what I had kept hidden since I was 5 years old.”
It was at that age that Dooling was first sexually molested — by a male, teenaged friend of his older brother.
“It happened … many times,” he explained, “and also with young ladies in my neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale. I was so young I didn’t consider that part abuse, because I thought I was just hanging with the in-crowd. But it was something I suppressed all my life.”
If you express shock at the torment he has carried for 27 years — and the post-traumatic stress that triggered the meltdown in August — Dooling responds like this: “But I’m grateful it happened, my man — because now I have to deal with it, and now I know it’s my time to help others deal with it.”
He was driving down from Boston on Friday morning as we spoke, heading toward John Jay College in Manhattan, where they were holding the annual International MaleSurvivor Conference. Joe Ehrmann, the former Colts tackle from the ’70s — also a minister and abuse survivor — was to deliver the keynote.
Dooling wasn’t sure which part of the symposium he’d address, and he knows the details of his story are excruciating — just Google his appearance on the Katie Couric show last week — but he feels obligated to share it.
This is his reason:
“I always felt destined to do something important,” he said. “My basketball career wasn’t the one I wanted to have — I was a lottery pick, I had great potential, but I didn’t necessarily reach the level I wanted to as as ballplayer.
“But this is a time when I must maximize my potential as a man and as a human being. I know that now.”
That’s the thing that strikes you hardest, if you know him — which, clearly, nobody really did. But of all the guys who had passed through Jersey these past 30 years, he was a special one, and it had little to do with talent. It had to do with two other traits, which made others gravitate toward him: wisdom and attitude.
He could turn a losing locker room into a pep rally inside of five minutes. He could turn a dour, baffled coach into someone who understood his team better with a single conversation.
When we asked Vince Carter during the worst of times how he kept his sanity, he pointed at the Nets teammate wearing No. 51 and said, “Right there — he does it for me.” When it came time to choose a No. 2 man for the NBA Players’ Association, his peers voted Dooling first vice president.
When the Celtics spent a third year debating the merits of moving chronic irritant Rajon Rondo, they instead made him Keyon’s Project, and now Rondo is a top-three point guard who probably will retire in Boston.
That is the effect Dooling has on people, which is why the Celtics put him right back on the payroll as “Player Development Coordinator.” Basically, he’s a peer mentor, but he’ll be around the basketball ops side to learn from Danny Ainge and Doc Rivers. It’s also the kind of job that will leave time to do what he thinks he was destined to do.
“He can help a lot of people and a lot of kids,” Natosha said. “That’s what’s important now.”
The work already is in overdrive. Since the Couric show aired, Dooling has received “thousands of e-mails and texts,” and they come from every corner of the country, from every kind of community, from every race and religion and age group.
“You know, when I was in Jersey, that was my hardest period — I lost my dad, I had hip surgery, and we lost a baby,” Keyon recalled. “I knew I was on borrowed time, but I still loved the game, and I felt I had to play.
“So you know I can’t run from this. I’ve never been a runner, I always stand for what’s right. I can’t lie: I thought this phase of my life was supposed to be more about me — pursuing a business, working my way up the NBA ladder in some way. And that’s still doable.
“But people are reaching out to me now, and God is using me to have a bigger impact on the world.”
Dave D’Alessandro
In this week’s issue, Malcolm Gladwell writes about Jerry Sandusky and the mind of a pedophile: how child molesters get away with it: http://nyr.kr/NsmbdW
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.
A powerful collaboration between our friends at Just Telland Project Unbreakable.Two incredibly important, empowering movements collide, with amazing results. Fantastic work by Grace, Vivian & Hannah.
1) Hannah’s poster: I told.
“When I was eleven, I was sexually abused. I told my mom as soon as it happened, and we pressed charges against my abuser. My mom took me to speak to police detectives, and she testified for me in court. After being sexually abused I went through a period of time where I was uncomfortable with my body, and wore baggy clothes. There were times where it has been hard for me to be intimate with another person, but because the abuse had not been repressed, I was able to start healing from it soon after it happened. Having been sexually abused, -while unfortunate and something I wouldn’t wish on anyone- has made me part of who I am today. But I know that I would not have been able to move on from there if I had not told.”
Vivian’s poster: I didn’t know I could tell.
Vivian was sexually abused as a child, but didn’t realize she had the right or ability to tell, and she actually blanked it out so she didnt even remember the abuse. It was 10 years before she remembered and disclosed that she had been molested repeatedly over 2 or 3 years. She suffered a lot during those years, without knowing what made her act out. Finally when she was 25, it all came back to her and her healing journey could begin. Vivian became a social worker who worked with kids who were sexually abused for many years. She also teaches new social workers to work with sexual abuse issues.
She had her daughter, Hannah. Hannah was sexually abused at age eleven.
2) Because of the differences, we started JustTell.
Inspired by her daughter’s strength and by how Hannah was able to let go of any sense of responsibility or blame for what happened to her, Vivian had the idea for JustTell. When she saw the difference between how she suffered over those ten years before she remembered and disclosed her abuse history, and how Hannah was able to let go of what happened to her once she let go of the burden of and told her mom, Vivian realized other kids needed to know that if they have been sexually abused, they need to choose an adult they trust and …just tell.
With the advice of many other professionals and teen focus groups online and in Hannah’s school, they started JustTell in 2007.
From the website JustTell.org: The mission of Just Tell is to reach out to youth aged 8 to 17 who are being sexually abused in order to convey, in age-appropriate language, that: they are not alone, they are not to blame for the abuse and should feel no guilt or shame, and that they need to choose a trustworthy adult in their life and tell them about the sexual abuse. The secondary mission of JustTell is to educate and empower all youth around the issue of childhood sexual abuse.
3) You have every choice to use your voice.
Hannah, shortly after her abuse, wrote a poem about her journey, which featured this line.
“Although I told my family and police detectives that I had been sexually abused, it wasn’t until I was sixteen that I decided to tell someone my age. I realized after I told that I felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and it felt good to tell. I found out that though being sexually abused is my secret, it is also my choice who to tell it to. I wrote a poem after telling the first person my age, titled ‘A Secret You Don’t Have To Keep’ about deciding not to keep this secret, and wrote the words ‘Don’t ever say, you don’t have a choice/For you have every choice to use your voice’ as a message of encouragement for myself and others to speak up. Because unlike what abusers say, you do not have to keep their secret, and I know that in my experience I feel a sense of relief every time I tell.”
—
Photographed in Brooklyn, NY on June 6th.
—
Not sure what Project Unbreakable is? Click here.
Want to be a part of Project Unbreakable? Email us at projectunbreakable@gmail.com
—
View submissions here
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.
It was an honor to be involved with such an important project which has already helped so many.
Chris Gavagan is a Brooklyn filmmaker working on a documentary about sexual abuse in sports called “Coached into Silence”. In this documentary, he asked his old coach to be interviewed, pretending the film was more along the lines of honoring him. He confronted this man, who abused him as a child, asking “what he felt about the abuse he caused” while on camera. The quote on the poster, “It’s all about being unembarrassed and unashamed,” was the coach’s response - what I’m assuming as a very guilty, very caught off-guard one. Chris currently travels to film survivors for Coached into Silence. Find more info here.
—
Photographed in Brooklyn, NY on June 6th.
—
Not sure what Project Unbreakable is? Click here.
Want to be a part of Project Unbreakable? Email us at projectunbreakable@gmail.com
—
View submissions here
Somewhere...
/…the Next Victim of Jerry Sandusky…just gets to be a child instead.
LA84 Foundation's SportsLetter Interview: Chris Gavagan's documentary on sexual abuse in youth sports→
/An in-depth interview by David Davis with Coached into Silence director Chris Gavagan
My aim is true.: Prep-School Predators The Horace Mann School’s Secret History of Sexual Abuse→
/
I posted this New York Times Magazine article yesterday on the Coached into Silence Facebook page, but the Pandora’s box of broken silence ensures that there is much more to follow.
There are so many aspects of these Horace Mann revelations that echo what we have seen at institutions…
