Joe Paterno

Until yesterday Joe Paterno, Penn State, and Jerry Sandusky were old news in a way.  A verdict has been reached that will essentially put Sandusky behind bars for life, though various lawyer-stuff will continue for years to come certainly.  Yesterday, however, former FBI-director Freeh released and commented on his report on the independent investigation into the handling of the situation by Penn State officials.  Basically the report damns everyone: the President, Vice-President, athletic director, McQueary, and Joe Paterno.

Joe Paterno is more than famous, he's a legend.  Now that there exists a 250ish page report detailing the failures of Paterno and the others all hope that Paterno's legend would escape mostly unscathed has been erased.  Almost certainly now Penn State will need to begin the process of disassociation and perhaps take down the statue of Paterno on campus.  At least, that's what most commentators are concluding and encouraging.

To me, there are two upsetting parts to this story that are relevant to the fight against human trafficking.  First of all, the fact that someone can have desires involving children is horrifying.  I can understand it in Greek culture where an older man tutored a young boy alone for hours with hardly any life apart from one another.  We don't have anything like that today.  We need to think long and hard about how in the world that type of desire blooms in today's world.  More importantly, we have to acknowledge that there are more people with those types of desires than we might think.  And even more importantly, the instinct to cover up is indeed strong in many places for many reasons.  What that means is that we have to work harder at looking with our eyes and really seeing what's going on in the world around us, we cannot float through life thinking all is well simply because no one runs up to us yelling, "I'm a slave! Help!"  If Joe Paterno is the great guy that many still want to think of him as, then we must realize that even the best and most well-intentioned people can suffer from the instinct to cover up, and perhaps be involved in, the worst of crimes.  And, of course, this particular crime and desire are what fuel child sex slavery.

The first part of the story is more obvious.  The second part of the story, however, doesn't seem to be acknowledged much: we should not stand in outrage that Paterno could have done what he did.  I don't intend to defend Paterno's image or anything associated with him.  All I know is that if we continue screaming or sighing, "How could he have not done more?" then we are avoiding the question that most tugs at us.  Indeed, when we focus on Paterno and not realize that others are just as responsible, or when we realize that others are just as responsible but only talk about Paterno, we are purposely funneling our anger.  Why would we want to funnel our anger onto one person?  We are outraged with Joe Paterno so thoroughly because we like to take down people in the spotlight so that we can think we are better people, that we'd do something different in his position.  We don't want to think about the communal nature of this crime or the communal nature of slavery, by which I mean that a whole lot of people participated and participate and not one does the dirty work of exposure, because then we might think about how human nature can be rather disgusting.

Fact is that we are all human.  Again, I'm not defending or justifying Paterno's actions, but I'm asking us to really and actually question ourselves.  Are we any different than Paterno at heart?  If he is a good person as many people say, then what might lead him to do something we hope we don't repeat?  That is, what might lead us, if we think of ourselves as good people, to participate in a crime like that?  Indeed, outrage with Paterno and other figures who splash into the limelight through bad deeds often allows us to forget the unfortunate characteristics and activities that we already engage in. 

News like we have from Freeh and Penn State should not lead to outrage, it should lead to self-reflection.  No matter how angry we get, if we don't inspect ourselves closely then evils like child molestation, child slavery, child sex slavery, and slavery in general will all continue.  We need to promote the act of self-reflection rather than public outrage, which unfortunately only shoves those in the dark deeper into the dark to avoid exposure and intensifies the underground torturous quality of slavery.  Compassion might be worthwhile, but for now I'm not talking about compassion: I just encourage us to reflect on our own selves and, hopefully, by doing so we will bring about a better, healthier society one heart and soul at a time.