Patriot-News
Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania
To
the Editor:
It
seems to me that many in the spotlight are wringing their hands way too
dramatically over the failure of
authorities at Penn State to call in the police sooner. I think that failure reflects some important truth about
allegations of sex with minors. First,
reasonable people fear that calling in the police will make matters worse for
the child involved. Two, reasonable
people fear becoming “The boy who cried ‘Wolf.’
Everyone knows a powerful person like a Sandusky will get an even more
powerful attorney and challenge the accuser or accusers.
In short, calling in the police over a
suspicion, or with a vulnerable witness, or with a second hand witness, is like
burning down the house to roast the pig.
The
Pennsylvania Attorney General’s public statements about morality rather than law
particularly turned me off. Why hadn’t
this Attorney General spoken to the legislature about that problem in the law
sooner? Something tells me he’s looking
to make a scapegoat out of the graduate student who first blew the whistle on
Sandusky. Yuk!
And
finally, I was disgusted by the thought of a stadium full of sports fans
memorializing these "victims". For
starters, Sandusky has not been convicted yet.
Second, these “victims” are all very much alive and likely to live for
years. That is, if this memorial service itself
doesn’t drive them to suicide.
As
long as reporting sex with minors to the police is destined to blow up like
an A-bomb, reasonable people will look for other options. I don’t blame them.
Tim
Campbell
Houston TX
