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The Penn State scandal is not going away anytime soon and it’s given me a lot of time to think about about it and how it hit very close to home for me. What is interesting is how it hit close to home on multiple fronts. On the first front and the most personal, I was sexually abused as a kid. I won’t go into the gory details here but I believe that this is a major reason why I don’t remember a lot of my childhood. So of course my thoughts go out to the victims of this horrible crime.
On the second front and a little further from home is that a few years ago I wanted to get back in touch with my godfather. He and my dad went to high school together at a Catholic seminary in Indiana. Yeah, my dad wanted to be a Priest when he was growing up. My dad decided not to follow that path but my godfather decided to continue that path and became a priest. While I was searching for my godfather on Google, I didn’t find a lot of information about him aside from criminal and civil cases against him for molesting kids. I was stunned and I couldn’t believe it since he was always so kind to me (for the record, I don’t think that my godfather was the one that molested me – that was a babysitter). After I made this discovery I was talking to my dad about it and he wasn’t surprised by this since this abuse seems to be somewhat of an institutional thing with elders always doing this to younger students. I’m not condoning what Sandusky did but there is a good chance that he was abused in the same way that he abused those poor kids.
The final front is that a very good friend of mine was also the victim of sexual abuse and it’s cast a long shadow over his life as well.
I only wish I knew when this cycle of abuse will stop.
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