Editorial: Penn State and the responsibility gap

It would not be accurate to say that the victims of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse have been forgotten in all the furor over the sanctions imposed on Penn State. Those victims, and the goal of protecting all like them, are, after all, the reason behind the harshness of the NCAA’s penalties.

But it is discomfiting to observe that amid the clamor this week — both in the speculative talk and writing that preceded the NCAA announcement and in the loud and voluminous reactions that have followed — only scant discussion has focused on Sandusky’s victims and how they have been affected. A 30-inch Associated Press story published in the Daily Herald, for example, devoted 29½ inches to description of the penalties and reaction to them with only the last sentence noting that the $60 million fine against Penn State “will go toward outside programs devoted to providing child sexual abuse or assisting victims.”

Just how Sandusky’s specific victims will fare remains to be seen not just in the management of the $60 million fine but in the raft of individual lawsuits facing the university. And even there, attorneys sometimes have spoken in the cold and dispassionate language of the law.

Matt Casey, for example, an attorney whose firm represents several of the presumed victims in the Penn State case, said the university appears to appreciate its “exposure” to the victims in “civil litigation.”

A child advocate from Hoffman Estates, in an interview with Daily Herald staff writer Madhu Krishnamurthy, urged a more personal and a more direct response, particularly from Penn State.

“Obscured in all of this,” said Mark Parr, executive director of the Chldren’s Advocacy Center in Hoffman Estates, “is (that) kids do recover from being abused, if they get some help and the proper support.”

It’s that “help and proper support” that ultimately must persist in the residue from the transitory explosion of this week’s dialogue. As Karen Polesir, executive director of the Philadelphia branch of SNAP — the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — indicated, vacated wins and bowl game bans can be too soon forgotten. They must be reinforced by all of us in a way that remembers and emphasizes the human consequences of actions — or inactions — like those of Penn State.

For the issue here isn’t just that rules were violated but that children were harmed. Penn State, no less than all the rest of us, shouldn’t be worrying simply about its liabilities. It should be concentrating on its responsibilities.

A critical chasm separates those two terms. On one side, we hear words like “exposure” and “sanctions” and “litigation.” On the other, are words like “healing” and “support” and “caring.” We cannot escape the demands of the former. We must never abandon the obligations of the latter. They will remain long after the angry talk has subsided and a new controversy has taken its place.