Adams: Sounding the alarm on pedophilia

Family gatherings are always interesting -- especially when dinner is dished with a hefty dollop of controversy.

Last week's pre-Thanksgiving dinner stew did not disappoint. "I don't jump to be horrified just because you people in the media tell me I should be upset," my cousin poked.

"So you mean, I go to work one day, and a guy says he saw some guy who works for me doing something, and I get fired for not doing enough about it? I don't think so."

No, Cuz, you get fired because he doesn't just say he saw "something" -- he says he saw your second-in-charge rape a 10-year-old boy in the shower. And, instead of supporting that child and protecting others from harm, you and your next-step-up kick that football around in the end zone marked "plausible deniability." That's why you get fired.

Of course we were talking about the resignation of Penn State University president Graham Spanier and firing of head coach Joe Paterno, in the child sexual-abuse case against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. We could also have been talking about similar allegations at The Citadel and Syracuse University.

"We tell cadets to go beyond enforcing rules -- to do what's right," said Citadel president John Rosa. We are confronted with an investigation from 2007 in which I do not believe we met that standard."

"We do not tolerate abuse," Syracuse University chancellor Nancy Cantor wrote in a post on the school's website. "If anything good comes out of this tragedy, it will be that this basic principle is reinforced."

That's what's being said now that each institution has searched itself and, in the light of day and the glare of media scrutiny, come up wanting. When met with the unspeakable -- pedophilia -- people in leadership positions at these institutions opted to do the unthinkable: to cover up. Pedophilia, according to the American Medical Association, is a psychiatric disorder. What explanation is there for those who enable it with blind-eyed denial?

Following up on the conversation with my cousin, a casual waiting-room chat with a stranger yielded this: "A guy's innocent until proven guilty, right? How does a guy get his life back after something like this?"

But in the case of now-deposed Syracuse assistant coach Bernie Fine -- who has not been charged -- evidence is mounting. ESPN broadcast a tape with Fine's wife that seems to support an alleged victim's account.

The more I asked, the less the man in the waiting room dealt with the possibility of guilt. "The guy's been a coach for years," he said motioning his colleague to join our conversation.

Invoking Penn State, the friend said, "They should have put a one-year moratorium on football to get their priorities straight," and walked away.

Before these scandals, there were the Catholic Church's pedophile priests. Those cases, perhaps more than any others, brought home the message that pedophiles can be anyone, anywhere.

As Oprah Winfrey, also a victim of pedophilia, said in November 2010 on a breakthrough program with 200 men across the demographic spectrum, "People don't often talk about childhood sexual abuse, a silent and devastating epidemic, but a staggering number of men live with the lasting effects every day. According to reports, one in every six men was molested as a child."

What, I had asked my cousin, would he want the media to do if his children were among the victims? "If that happened to one of my daughters," he said, "that would be the end of my life because I'd have to take a baseball bat to the guy."

And, that's why we in the media sound the alarm -- sound it loud and clear. So that he, knowing society has his back, can forego the bat and go home to heal his family.

Janus Adams is an author, historian and social commentator.