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Strollerderby
In the case of Sandusky, doing the right thing should have been a reflex, not a decision (and certainly not a decision that was never made!).
Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno died early today at the age of 85 from complications of lung cancer.
Paterno was the coach of the Nittany Lions for 46 years. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer in November, not long after having been fired from his job. The firing came as part of the child sexual abuse scandal in which one of Paterno’s former coaching assistants, Jerry Sandusky, was alleged to have been molesting young boys on Penn State’s campus. Paterno was made aware of the allegations but did nothing other than inform the people to whom he reported. Continue reading »
Steve Buscemi as Coach Bert
When the sexual abuse scandal first broke at Penn State in early November, almost immediately I started receiving texts with “jokes” about child molestation. At first, I wasn’t sure how to react, but the more jokes I saw that were insensitive to the victims, the more I realized that child molestation is no laughing matter. In my post on the subject, I wrote, “As a comedian, I believe that no topic is entirely off-limits if it’s done well, but it’s so hard to talk about child sexual abuse in a way that’s funny unless you’ve been through it yourself.”
Since then, similar allegations of sexual abuse have emerged at Syracuse University, and assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine was fired on Sunday, November 27. This weekend, Saturday Night Live decided to weigh-in on the controversy at both schools, after scoring big with their devil’s take on Penn State sketch that aired during November 12th’s Weekend Update. After this weekend’s show, former SNL cast member Colin Quinn tweeted that he thought the Penn State/SU sketch “Coach Bert” starring Steve Buscemi as a mustached potential pedophile belonged in “the garbage disposal.” He wrote, “I’m ashamed I was ever associated with that show …. When I was on the show yeah we got a little ‘edgy’ sometimes. We like to ‘push the envelop but never to where it made people go ‘whoa’!”
Here’s the thing: despite my reservations about the types of jokes covered in my November 9th post, I actually think this weekend’s episode of SNL got it right. “Coach Bert” somehow found a way to use humor to address a difficult situation in a way that was funny and yet doesn’t mock victims of sexual abuse.
Take a look and tell me if you agree with me or if you think Colin has a point: Continue reading »
Bernie Fine
Penn State athletics isn’t the only college sports organization reeling from child sex abuse allegations. Last night, Syracuse assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine was fired in his 36th season with the university after it was revealed that his wife acknowledged during a taped phone call that Fine had sexually abused now 39-year-old Bobby Davis for a period of 15 years, from childhood until he was 27 years old. Fine has been accused of molesting two other men, as well.
According to ESPN, “Zach Tomaselli, 23, of Lewiston, Maine, said Sunday that he told police that Fine molested him in 2002 in a Pittsburgh hotel room. He said Fine touched him ‘multiple’ times in that one incident.” Fine’s second accuser is Davis’ stepbrother, Mike Lang. As Jezebel noted, Davis and Lang were inspired by the scandal at Penn State to re-tell their story. Davis had reported Fine’s sexual abuse to authorities in both 2003 and 2005. In 2003, police said the statute of limitations prevented an investigation and in 2005 the university dismissed the men, telling them they had no corroborating witnesses.
When Davis and Lang came forward after the news of Sandusky’s alleged abuse broke at Penn State, SU head coach Jim Boeheim told ESPN, “I believe they are looking for money. I believe they saw what happened at Penn State and they are using ESPN to get money. That is what I believe. You want to put that on the air? Put that on the air.” Continue reading »
From a site filled with "jokes" about the Penn State child abuse scandal.
When I first heard about the sexual abuse scandal going on at Penn State, I was shocked, probably because I’m always shocked to hear that someone has inappropriately touched a child. No matter how pervasive this problem is, it’s no laughing matter, despite what football fans and the Internet at large seem to think.
The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has long been fodder for comedians (and “comedians”), so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that jokes (or “jokes”) about the drama at Penn State are already flying around online message boards and being shared via cell phone. I know, because my uncle, a football fan in Pennsylvania, sent me some via text: Continue reading »
The Vatican responded Monday to abuse charges in the Catholic Church.
“The Vatican issued a letter Monday that gives Roman Catholic bishops worldwide a year to come up with national guidelines on how to deal with the problem of child sexual abuse by priests,” the Los Angeles Times reports. The letter, they say, “was the latest indication that Pope Benedict XVI has recognized sexual abuse as a global scourge, not an American aberration.” It’s about damn time.
Australia’s ABC News notes, “The Vatican has come under pressure in recent years over paedophilia, and the scandal of child-abuser priests peaked last year with a string of high-profile revelations in Belgium, Germany and Ireland.” Sexual abuse in the Church has devastated Ireland, and in Italy, victim’s rights groups are dismayed at the Church’s latest attempt to address the issue. Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for an Italian victim-support group, says, “This document is simply meaningless words – they have been forced to act but it is not enough. The Vatican has said it will co-operate with the authorities before, but only because it has been forced to,” the Montreal Gazette reports.
Cardinal William J. Levada, who issued the letter, gave priests worldwide until May 2012 to respond and comply with its demands. The LAT says the Vatican letter “grew out of a meeting Levada held with a group of cardinals last fall” and “reminds bishops that sexual abuse of minors is not only a violation of church law but also a crime prosecuted by civil law.” The letter continues to exempt bishops “from reporting information that emerges during confession.” In other words, if a priest admits that he abused a member of the congregation during the rite of confession, that information remains privileged.
Both boys and girls need to be informed about childhood sexual abuse.
It used to be that when parents thought about sexual abuse, they thought of little girls, but in recent years, everyone from Oprah Winfrey to the widespread abuse scandals in the Catholic Church have brought the sexual abuse of young boys to the forefront. Celebrities, such as writer and author Tyler Perry, actor Gabriel Byrne who was molested at a seminary school, and Ireland and Cincinnati Bengals’ Laveraneus Coles, have revealed their childhood abuse. The latest celebrity to reveal childhood sexual abuse is Sugar Ray Leonard, who was abused by a prominent Olympic boxing coach at age 15.
Today 1 out of every six American men have been sexually abused as children. Obviously the incidences of abuse go back many, many years but it is only now that men are starting to feel comfortable revealing it. They are doing an incredible thing when they do disclose their secret because they are letting parents know that we need to be just as vigilant in protecting our little boys as we are about protecting our little girls.
74-year-old former bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who thinks molestation is no big deal.
In an addendum to last week’s mind-blowingly offensive assertion by the Catholic League that sexual abuse in the Church is caused by “homosexuality, not pedophilia,” and that some children willingly participated in the abuse, a Belgian priest made a televised announcement on Thursday admitting that he sexually abused two of his nephews, diminutively describing the molestation as just “a little game.”
As you can imagine, this “caused an uproar in Belgium on Friday, with the prime minister, senior clergy and a prosecutor expressing shock at the way the ex-prelate made light of his offenses,” the Associated Press reports. The priest, 74-year-old Roger Vangheluwe, the former bishop of Bruges, contends that he was never naked, therefore the abuse was never about “real sexuality.” Vangheluwe declared, “I never felt the least attraction to a child” and denies being a pedophile.
Okay, sure. So why touch your nephew for 13 years, from when he was 5 to 18, then? Vangheluwe dismissed the severity of his offenses by saying, “From me toward him there was a bit of intimacy that occurred each time we saw one another. And of which we later said, ‘That’s not right.’” Continue reading »
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