Opinion: Lessons from Penn State's scandal

Cindy Scott is executive director and Anthony Zenkus is director of education of the Coalition Against Child Abuse & Neglect at The Safe Place, a nonprofit organization in Bethpage.

It is a disgrace that Penn State University brushed so many cases of alleged child sexual abuse under the carpet. It's amazing that officials of an institution of higher learning, with a mandate to prepare young people for the future, appear to have taken so lightly their responsibility to protect the children involved with the Second Mile charity, which had a camp on the Penn State University Park campus.

The university's inaction allowed a football coach the opportunity to establish access to children he allegedly could groom and manipulate in order to perpetrate sexual crimes against them. Its failure to report suspected abuse immediately to law enforcement may have allowed a predator to continue to gather victims and molest them over many years.

This should be a warning call to other youth programs. Organizations that work with children need to ensure that they set policies that protect the children in their care. These procedures should include immediately reporting any suspicion to police, who are trained to investigate these cases.

Right now, there are staff in schools and other institutions that are either abusing children or grooming them for abuse. And right now, there are other staff members who suspect this abuse is going on and are doing nothing about it.

Too many institutions, when alerted to these behaviors, argue that an internal investigation is enough. This line of thinking hurts kids. No organization should take the role of determining whether such abuse has actually occurred; nor should it ignore the signs when confronted with them. That mindset protects the institution instead of the child. While it is gratifying that Penn State officials have been indicted on perjury charges for lying about what they knew, and that others have lost their jobs, the children they neglected to protect will live with this for the rest of their lives.

Sadly this story has been repeated many times before. According to experts, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18. And by the time high school graduation rolls around, 7.6 percent of kids will have been sexually solicited by an adult staff member in a public-school setting.

Most will never tell. And often, those who do are not believed. Yet it is rarely the stranger who molests a child; it is almost always the adult who is known and trusted by the family. Parents may willingly give their power over to adults who take an interest in their children. Kids in sports programs, especially when they have potential, may spend many hours a week outside their home, with coaches and other adult staff.

Most adults who spend their time, energy and expertise to enrich the lives of children would never harm them. But true perpetrators know this, and use that knowledge to ingratiate themselves with parents, institutions and children.

Background checks are not enough. People who haven't been convicted will come up clean. So institutions must establish clear guidelines for adult interactions with children, including eliminating one adult-one child situations, where most child sex abuse occurs. They must train their staff how to identify and prevent behaviors that put children at risk. The excuses that it is too expensive or inconvenient to do so cannot stand.

Parents must demand that staff at youth organizations and institutions get the proper training. And they should also empower themselves to learn more about prevention.

It's not enough just to believe that the sexual abuse of children is repugnant. If we don't change our approach to this abuse -- if we don't take the time to prevent it, or take the risk to believe a child and act on that belief -- kids will continue to be hurt.