In Response to the Sandusky Trial
Jun. 13th, 2012 04:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydionThe defense in the Sandusky case is claiming that the love letters to thirteen year olds are because of his histrionic personality disorder rather than proof that he was molesting all those children. This is highly implausible, of course. It sounds like the eighteen year old survivor is sticking to his account despite defense hammering him to the point of tears. My heart goes out to the young men involved. It's a terrible thing to have happened and survivors are so often treated badly afterwards.
Even the second hand reporting is pretty intense.
My school was and continues unsafe. They fired the guy who was molesting 4th and 5th grader boys (but never reported him and gave him a reference for a school in another state), but they made the man who likes 7th and 8th grade girls a department head and he's still there. I realize this sort of thing is considered normal and acceptable in private schools since from an institutional perspective, preventing scandal is vastly more important than the safety of children, but I still consider it fundamentally wrong. (For the record, I was attractive to neither pedophile, but a number of my friends were. My pedophile dodging all went on off campus, though my school was complicit and even directly responsible in a whole lot of damage).
My distrust for authority is there for a reason and honestly earned at an early age. Hence my lack of surprise when Catholic school friends had dark jokes about avoiding priests. Hence my lack of surprise when the Catholic sex scandal broke. hence my lack of surprise that an institution like Penn state prioritized the health of their football program over the safety of the young boys. This is fundamentally how institutions work, prioritizing the Institutions best interests over that of mere humans. It why I always look askance at people who think businesses should be allowed to self regulate, since I've never seen a major corporation champion employee health and well being over profit, and I grew up in the Era of Love Canal and toxic dumping exposees.
Even the second hand reporting is pretty intense.
My school was and continues unsafe. They fired the guy who was molesting 4th and 5th grader boys (but never reported him and gave him a reference for a school in another state), but they made the man who likes 7th and 8th grade girls a department head and he's still there. I realize this sort of thing is considered normal and acceptable in private schools since from an institutional perspective, preventing scandal is vastly more important than the safety of children, but I still consider it fundamentally wrong. (For the record, I was attractive to neither pedophile, but a number of my friends were. My pedophile dodging all went on off campus, though my school was complicit and even directly responsible in a whole lot of damage).
My distrust for authority is there for a reason and honestly earned at an early age. Hence my lack of surprise when Catholic school friends had dark jokes about avoiding priests. Hence my lack of surprise when the Catholic sex scandal broke. hence my lack of surprise that an institution like Penn state prioritized the health of their football program over the safety of the young boys. This is fundamentally how institutions work, prioritizing the Institutions best interests over that of mere humans. It why I always look askance at people who think businesses should be allowed to self regulate, since I've never seen a major corporation champion employee health and well being over profit, and I grew up in the Era of Love Canal and toxic dumping exposees.