Sex Scandals & Cover-Ups

Waiting for the Second Shoe to Fall

by DAVID ROSEN

 

Once again, America is being entertained by a series of sex scandals.  One involves the erstwhile corporate showman and Republican presidential candidate, Herman Cain, and the other is engulfing Penn State’s football-team coaching staff and top university administrators.

The Cain scandal is two-fold: (i) the acts apparently committed on at least four women (the reported “evidence” seems convincing) and (ii) Cain’s confusing attempts to deny what took place that seem to only dig him deeper into the proverbial hole.

The Penn State scandal is also two-fold: (i) the pedophile acts attributed to Jerry Sandusky, a retired assistant football coach, to at least eight of boys (the reported “evidence” seems convincing), and (ii) the university’s attempt to contain the scandal by covering up evidence against the perpetrator that seems to only dig those involved deeper into the proverbial hole.

The final outcomes of both cases are still to be determined.  Stay tuned.

The two episodes are fundamentally different in terms of the sex issues involved, harassment and rape.  Nevertheless, the two episodes share a common attempt to deny, hide or minimize the likely consequences of the alleged actions involved.  And neither involved seems to be getting away with their respective cover-ups.

Equally critical, both episodes point to deeper, more systemic issues of male sexism that all-to-often still continue to go under reported if not excused with a wink-and-a-nod acceptance by those with power and money.

We’ve been here before, many, many times.  Was it just last spring that we were being entertained by the sexting scandals involving Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee?  And didn’t Weiner early on play the same fool’s game of denial until he was finally forced to resign?

And who could forget the fun the media had outing John Edwards, Elliot Spitzer and Tiger Woods?   After so many scandals, it’s clear that the cover-up can be more consequential than the act(s) itself.

It’s as if our politicians and athletes (or their coaches) jump headlong into the media spotlight at scheduled intervals.  Suffering their 15 minutes of fame, they add some seasoning to the hard-to-eat reality of daily life.  Stay tuned as further episodes of sex scandal America play themselves out.

* * *

The Cain and the Penn State scandals are still unraveling; their final outcomes yet to be determined.  Most assuredly, they are very different offenses.  One involves individuals; the other involves individuals and an institution.   One involves adults; the other an adult and children.  One involves sexual harassment, with passive coercion and (apparently) no overt violence; Cain seems to have known where to stop.  The other involves the raping of minors; Sandusky could not stop himself from the nonconsensual sexual violation of young boys.

As the old proverb implies, unless you live in a cave you probably know a lot about the sexual misadventures of Cain and at Penn State.  These two stories have become the leitmotif of daily news headlines.  Set against the looming bankruptcies of Greece and Italy (and the possible collapse of the euro), the Obama/Democrats-Tea Party/Republican political duet, the growing Occupy movement, the grinding recession and daily shoot-em-ups that clutter most local news coverage, these sex scandals poke holes in the generally shared belief about “normal” sex in America.

So far, four women have come forward who have apparently suffered sexual harassment at the hands of Herman Cain.  At this time, two of the apparent victims, Karen Kraushaar and Sharon Bialek, have been publicly identified.  Bialek held a formal press conference at which she laid out a highly detailed account of a very uncomfortable evening with this oh-so helpful executive. Kraushaar has acknowledged receiving a payout from Cain’s-then employer, National Restaurant Association, a trade group.  To date, Cain’s reply has been an assertion that he couldn’t remember Ms. Bialek and, in any case, he was a married man who could never do such dastardly deeds.

The Penn State debacle is a crisis playing out in slow motion.   The very Catholic governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, linked the PSU scandal to the pedophilia scandal long engulfing the Catholic Church.  Whereas the Mother Church retreated into centuries-old refusal to hide its culpability, Gov. Corbett seems to be making all of this sad story public, transparent; time will tell if he doesn’t reconfigure truth to serve private interests.

The heart of the crisis is the link between the alleged perpetrator, Sandusky, with the university’s power elite who, for more than a decade, sought to cover up the crimes.  The cornerstone of this elite is PSU’s version of Rin-Tin-Tin, football coach Joe Paterno.  He is a cash cow, the corporatist version of “Greatest Generation” morals, the all-American granddad.  The Penn State football team, popularly know as the Nittany Lions, generates about $50 million annual in revenue to a relatively impoverished sector of central PA.

Debate within the media about Paterno’s culpability has focused on whether simply reporting to his supervisors information about an incident of locker-room pedophilia was sufficient. This is the legal question, one clearly answered in the affirmative, as Paterno did his job and, unfortunately, nothing more. [See grand jury report.]

However, the more fundamental question is whether Paterno had a deeper, moral, responsibility with regard to the unfolding scandal?  He knew, and was intimately associated, with Sandusky, his wife and children for about 40 years!  Sandusky served on the PSU coaching staff for 32 years, retiring at the end of the 1999 season.

The first reported pedophile incident involving Sandusky was made in 1998 after a mother of a young boy raised the issue with the university police, the state’s Department of Public Welfare and the local district attorney’s office.  The DA, Ray Gricar, dropped the investigation; Gricar disappeared in 2005 and has not been seen or heard from since.

Sandusky had been in line to replace Paterno as PSU’s head coach but, in the wake of the ’98 investigation, Paterno dropped the dime on him and he was forced to retire.  One can only wonder if (and, if not, why) Paterno approached Sandusky as a friend, boss, fellow jock and good Christian and asked him what was happening and if he needed help?

This points to the deeper crisis confronting the PSU leadership.  The grand jury report notes that Wendell Courtney, the university’s counsel, had a thorough knowledge of the charges and also served as attorney for Sandusky’s Second Mile charity.  So, what did this model citizen do in the face of this (and surely other) incidents involving Sandusky?  Does his failure to act, if not his apparent role halting a criminal investigation, constitute grounds for disbarment?

* * *

The modern culture industry effectively obliterates meaning and history from the present.  Thus, the sex scandal involving Herman Cain serves the same social function as the latest gossip about Lady Gaga.  Such coverage is interchangeable, equally distracting and titillating.

But sex scandals have a history that illuminates not only a peculiar past, but also the formation of an equally unique present. Scandals mark out the boundaries of acceptable conduct, and especially sexual conduct.

Sex scandals have a peculiar social function that has changed since America’s founding four centuries ago. Since the nation’s founding, sex scandals have been morality tales intended to punish and/or shame the perpetrator.  They are rituals setting the boundaries of acceptable sexual practice.

Public shaming, especially directed toward political and cultural figures, has been a powerful force used to impose and maintain social control.  As evident in the unraveling scandals involving Cain and Sandusky, the scandals point to deeper issues that the media only passingly focuses on.

The Cain scandal, however it plays out for the Republican candidate, raises the deeper specter of sexual harassment widespread in the workplace.  Most disturbing is the business-as-usual policies practiced by the National Restaurant Association to pay-off at least two women who brought charges against Cain.

Who knows how many other women Cain harassed and from whom he bought their silence through “legal” pay-offs?  And if this is but one case in one industry sector, how many more such deals like this one are struck annually or charges simply not reported throughout the country as part of ongoing business-as-usual?

The Sandusky scandal, however it plays out for Penn State and its football team, raises the deeper specter of sexual crimes (e.g., pedophilia, rape) committed within an institutional setting.  One of the most revealing episodes in the sordid story involves the PSU assistant coach Mike McQueary who discovered Sandusky raping a 10-year-old boy in 2002 and, instead of directly attempted to halt the rape or calling the police, he left the football building and reported the incident to his father who had him meet with Paterno the following morning.

This is the trouble with institutional thinking: personal moral judgment is subordinated to the “good” of the institution, be it football team or local power relations.  Another example of compromised institutional allegiance is evident in the local judge, Leslie Dutchcot, who imposed an unsecured $100,000 bail on Sandusky; Sandusky didn’t have to post any money and walked out of jail. Oh, by the way, the good judge was a volunteer to Sandusky charity, the Next Mile.

Catholic Church Report Cites "Social Tumult" in Priest Scandals

 (It's all the hippies' fault--jef)

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN - NY Times

A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.

Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s. 

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.

But this study is likely to be regarded as the most authoritative analysis of the scandal in the Catholic Church in America. The study, initiated in 2006, was conducted by a team of researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City at a cost of $1.8 million. About half was provided by the bishops, with additional money contributed by Catholic organizations and foundations. The National Institute of Justice, the research agency of the United States Department of Justice, supplied about $280,000.

The report was released Wednesday by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, but the Religion News Service published an account of the report on its Web site on Tuesday. A copy of the report was also obtained by The New York Times. The bishops have said they hope the report will advance the understanding and prevention of child sexual abuse in society at large.

The researchers concluded that it was not possible for the church, or for anyone, to identify abusive priests in advance. Priests who abused minors have no particular “psychological characteristics,” “developmental histories” or mood disorders that distinguished them from priests who had not abused, the researchers found.

Since the scandal broke, conservatives in the church have blamed gay priests for perpetrating the abuse, while liberals have argued that the all-male, celibate culture of the priesthood was the cause. This report will satisfy neither flank.

The report notes that homosexual men began entering the seminaries “in noticeable numbers” from the late 1970s through the 1980s. By the time this cohort entered the priesthood, in the mid-1980s, the reports of sexual abuse of minors by priests began to drop and then to level off. If anything, the report says, the abuse decreased as more gay priests began serving the church.

Many more boys than girls were victimized, the report says, not because the perpetrators were gay, but simply because the priests had more access to boys than to girls, in parishes, schools and extracurricular activities.

In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.

“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.

That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent. 

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.

The report, The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2002, is the second produced by researchers at John Jay College. The first, on the “nature and scope” of the problem, was released in 2004.

Even before seeing it, victims advocates attacked the report as suspect because it relies on data provided by the church’s dioceses and religious orders.

Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a Web site that compiles reports on abuse cases, said, “There aren’t many dioceses where prosecutors have gotten involved, but in every single instance there’s a vast gap — a multiplier of two, three or four times — between the numbers of perpetrators that the prosecutors find and what the bishops released.”

David Clohessy, national director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that while the report contained no surprises, it had nonetheless been a disappointment because it did not include recommendations for far-reaching reforms, including limiting the power of bishops. Mr. Clohessy said this was critical because bishops had covered up many instances of sexual abuse by priests in the past. 

“Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that says what they’ve said all along, and what they wanted to hear back,” he said. “Fundamentally, they’ve found that they needn’t even consider any substantive changes.”

Robert M. Hoatson, a priest and a founder of Road to Recovery, which offers counseling and referrals to victims, said the idea that the sexual and social upheavals of past decades were to blame for the abuse of children was an attempt to shift responsibility from church leaders. Mr. Hoatson said he had been among those who had been abused.“It deflects responsibility from the bishops and puts it on to a sociological problem,” he said. “This is a people problem. It wasn’t because of the ’70s, and it wasn’t the ’60s, and it wasn’t because of the 1450s. This was something individuals did.” 

Kristine Ward, the chairwoman of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition, said the cultural explanation did not appear to explain why abuse cases within the Catholic church have shaken places from Australia and Ireland to South America. “Does the culture of the U.S. in the 1960s explain that? It’s hard to believe,” she said.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a conservative Catholic group, however said he believes permissiveness in the church in the 1960s and 1970s - particularly at seminaries - had been a significant reason for the rise in sexual abuse. Mr. Donohue said that while he generally supported the report’s findings, he believed that the study seemed to have purposefully avoided linking abuse cases with the increase in the number of gay men who became priests during the 1960s and 1970s. “The authors go through all sorts of contortions to deny the obvious - that obviously, homosexuality was at work,” Mr. Donohue said.

In Philadelphia, where a grand jury in February found that as many as 37 priests suspected of behavior ranging from sexual abuse to inappropriate actions were still serving in ministry. The archdiocese initially rejected the grand jury’s findings, but soon suspended 26 priests from ministry.

An essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal last week by Ana Maria Catanzaro, who heads the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s sexual-abuse review board, which is supposed to advise the archdiocese on how to handle abuse cases, said that the board was shocked to learn about the dozens of cases uncovered by the grand jury. Her essay raised questions about whether bishops provide accurate data even to their own, in-house review boards.

Still, the John Jay report says that when it comes to analyzing the incidence and causes of sexual abuse, “No organization has undertaken a study of itself in the manner of the Catholic Church.”

Because there are no comparable studies conducted by other institutions, religious or secular, the report says, “It is impossible to accurately compare the rate of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to rates of abuse in other organizations.”

 +++++++++

How should the Catholic Church respond to sex abuse report?

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey for USA TODAY

A new study was released yesterday, finding that neither the celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were main factors contributing to the sex abuse crisis.

"Individual characteristics do not predict that a priest will commit sexual abuse of a minor," the researchers write. "Rather, vulnerabilities, in combination with situational stresses and opportunities, raise the risk of abuse."

The $1.8 million, five-year study was prepared by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The study suggests that the number of incidents per year increased steadily between the 1960-1970s and declined in the 1980s. Accused priests began abusing during increased job stress and social isolation, the study says, and professional counseling was not readily available.

"The rise in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by social factors in society generally," the report says. "Factors that were invariant during the time period addressed, such as celibacy, were not responsible for the increase or decline in abuse cases over this time."

The New York Times reports that the finding that fewer than 5% of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia is controversial.

...The report employs a definition of "prepubescent" children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests' victims were prepubescent.

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers' victims would have been considered prepubescent.

The majority of the victims (80%) were male, compared to national statistics that suggest girls are three times more likely to be abused than boys, the study says. The report suggests that the majority of those accused of abuse entered the priesthood before 1970.
The study was first obtained by David Gibson for Religion News Service.

The John Jay researchers take pains to credit the hierarchy for making important strides in combating child abuse--an assertion victim advocates will strenuously dispute--and they point out that society as a whole was only slowly coming to understand the nature of child abuse as U.S. dioceses were swamped with cases.

At the same time, however, researchers note the bishops' abysmal track record in so many tragic instances, and say church leadership was reflexively defensive and self-protective--behavior that fits a well-defined pattern of crisis management in large institutions.

On Monday, the Vatican issued guidelines bishops to comply with laws of reporting abuse accusations.

The Pope's Bizarre Justification for Catholic Sex Abuse

(It's a good thing that pope mobile is bullet proof.--jef)

***

By Digby | Sourced from Hullabaloo

Posted at December 29, 2010
The Vatican has come up with some thin explanations for their molestation scandal, but this one by the pope himself last week is a real doozy:

Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict's claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn't considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than' and a ‘worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.

Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics “to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred” and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.

“We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,” he said, citing the growth of child pornography “that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society” he said.

Huh?

I'm fairly sure that pedophilia was considered an absolute evil in the 1970s. It was just covered up --- mostly because of institutions like the Church which made even the thought of sex so shameful that even innocent victims of abuse were afraid to admit it. But whatever "context" he's thinking of, in normal society sexual exploitation of children wasn't part of it except on

society's fringe

(just as it is today among certain fundamentalist sects)

I know the Pope is infallible and all, but you can only conclude from these comments that he still has not come to grips with what happened in his Church and neither has the institution.

There are many examples of our leadership and elite institutions and leadership failing, but I think this one is the best example. When even the Church that has made human sexuality a purely procreative necessity within sanctioned marriage is making excuses for pedophilia among its priests because of "the times" then it's fairly clear that any institution can be thoroughly corrupted to its very core. It tends to create just a little mistrust among the people.

US Supreme Court deals blow to Vatican

By Agence France-Presse | Monday, June 28th, 2010

The US Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal by the Vatican in a landmark case that opens the way for priests in the United States to stand trial for pedophilia.

Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases.

The Supreme Court effectively confirmed the decision of an appellate court to lift the Vatican's immunity in the case of an alleged pedophile priest in the northwestern state of Oregon.

The Oregon case, which was filed in 2002, does not directly address questions raised in a separate lawsuit in Kentucky alleging that US bishops are employees of the Holy See.

In recent months, large-scale pedophilia scandals have rocked the Roman Catholic Church in a number of countries, including Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI's native Germany and the United States.

Senior clerics have been accused of protecting the priests involved by moving them to other parishes -- where they sometimes offended again -- instead of handing them over to civil authorities for prosecution.

The pope, who has himself faced allegations he covered up the scandal, has repeatedly said priests and religious workers guilty of child abuse should answer for their crimes in courts of law.