On Sandusky and This Nation of Cowards
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 8, AD 2011 8:09 PM MST
I read the grand jury report on Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky and couldn't believe what I was reading. I'm not going to link to it because it is awful. If you want to read it you can find it yourself. It wasn't the fact that Sandusky was a pedophile that was so shocking. We all know about the horror of pedophilia and that it exists in the world. No, what really shook me were the actions of the people around Sandusky - and two of those people in particular.
One was a 28 year old (at the time) graduate assistant in the Penn State football program. He testified before the grand jury, and the grand jury found him to be "extremely credible". This grad assistant testified that he literally walked in on Sandusky anally raping a ten year old boy in the Penn State football locker room showers. Right in the middle of the act itself. He even testified that both Sandusky and the child turned and looked at him - in the middle of the rape act.
What did this grad assistant do? He ran away. He ran away from a child in the midst of being raped. The next day he went to Joe Paterno's house and told Joe Paterno what he saw. In this we have the proof that Joe Paterno KNEW what Sandusky was, and he basically let it slide. For this, Joe Paterno deserves not only to lose his job, but he also deserves to spend some time in prison. Aw, but he's a kind old man. That may be. But that "kind old man" let a man whom he KNEW to be a child rapist have the run of his football facility until JUST LAST WEEK.
What should Joe Paterno have done, you may ask? Well, let's look to history. Have you ever noticed, or thought it strange, that there is no significant mention of child rapists in the courts or prisons in Western Civilization up until about 100 years ago? Why do you think this is? Is it because sex crimes against children are a recent invention? No. The difference is that up until recently, society was healthy enough that it was able to police itself when necessary. When men were caught, and I mean CAUGHT IN THE ACT, like Sandusky, of raping a child, justice was carried out almost instantaneously. There was no need to involve the courts and humiliate and further traumatize the poor child. The crime was eyewitnessed, and the penalty was an absolute given. And so, the men of the community would discreetly either shoot or hang the pedophile. And it was over. The child could move on, and the men in the community moved on secure in the knowledge that the pedophile would never harm another child, with most of the community remaining unscandalized having known nothing about it, and the pedophile, knowing that he was about to die, was also afforded the mercy of the knowledge and understanding of the urgent need for his repentance and to earnestly beg God's forgiveness before he died. This was, by far, the best possible outcome for all concerned.
But what do we do today? Apparently, most people do nothing. They are too narcissistic, too greedy, and too cowardly to act, even if it means to save a child who is being raped. Joe Paterno was more concerned with his reputation and Penn State's reputation, and so he watered down Sandusky's crime to mere "horseplay" and let it slide. Joe Paterno spent YEARS sitting in meetings, palling around, back-slapping, glad-handing and socializing with a man he KNEW to be a child rapist. He didn't even call the police. The mind reels. And I'll say it again: Paterno should spend some time in prison, as should anyone who aids and abets a pedophile.
Now back to the grad assistant. He wasn't alone. There was another instance in exactly the same showers when a janitor walked in on Sandusky orally raping another young boy of about 11 years of age. This janitor was so shaken by the grotesquery of what he had seen, even remarking to his co-workers that it was far worse than the intense combat carnage he saw in Vietnam, that his co-workers thought the man was going to have a heart attack. But again, what did the janitor do upon catching Sandusky? He RAN AWAY. He didn't try to stop any of it. He just ran.
And this is a microcosm of the problem with our culture and why it is collapsing. There is evil in the world, and up until recently, we Christians had the strength and moral authority to not just confront evil, but to literally run at it in a full battle charge when we came across it. That is what we are supposed to do. Those men should have each rushed Sandusky and then either beat him into unconsciousness or broken his arms and legs, thus immobilizing him. They should have then covered and secured the child, and then called 911. But these men were so cowed by their own self-absorption, with both admitting to have feared for their respective positions at the time, that they literally ran away from a child in the midst of being brutally raped.
This is a sick and yet pristine allegory for what is happening to this culture on a macro scale today. We SEE what those "in power", like Sandusky, are doing. We keep catching them in flagrante dilecto and are so overcome with fear, so far removed from Christ and His strength, that we do NOTHING. We slink away into the shadows of self-preservation. And more children are slaughtered. And more Mexican civilians are killed. And more money is stolen. And more mosques are built.
And so, to finish out the allegory, I am the janitor who came around that corner and saw the child being raped, and instead of running away and keeping my job, I bayonet-charged the rapist like a mercenary honey badger. There is no guarantee that I will be successful. My enemies are now simultaneously the Obama regime and the entire muslim death cult.
BUT, can you IMAGINE how those two boys felt when they saw a man there who could save them, and then seeing that man run away? The wound from that might have been worse than the wound from Sandusky himself. Those boys knew Sandusky was a pervert. What must have been hell for them was trying to figure out why the men who COULD have saved them, didn't. Being abandoned is far, far worse than being violently attacked. You can get your head around being violently attacked - the violent attacker wants something from you. Abandonment simply says, "You're not worth it." Even if those men had just stood there and screamed at Sandusky, at least those boys would have known that someone gave a crap about them.
I guess you could say that what I'm doing between my private war against islam and my tax strike is trying to leave a record that someone actually gave a crap.
Sorry to have conceitedly worked myself into the allegory, but the "put yourself in those shoes" lesson about cowardice jumped out at me as being very instructive. Pray for Sandusky's victims, which as of this writing are now numbered at over twenty boys. There will likely be more, as Sandusky was a stone-cold predator who had plenty of people "throwing blocks" for him.
