Published Saturday, Jun 23, 2012 at 1:14 am EDT Last updated 36 minutes and 19 seconds ago
We follow sports down the paths they lead. On the good days?and there are plenty of them?they take us to places that celebrate the best in human theater.
Then there are nights like Friday, when the stomach curdles and the eyes tear and we wonder how sports lured us to this dark, wretched spot.
Jerry Sandusky is guilty of 45 counts of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years. The former defensive coordinator for Penn State, one of the country?s most storied and beloved football programs, will likely be sentenced to life in prison, and faces a maximum sentence of 442 years. Given his hideous crimes, that is not long enough.
Sandusky is guilty of raping little boys, of trolling his Second Mile charity for preteen children and grooming them for sex while so many adults refused to take notice. He assaulted these kids in the Penn State football locker room and on Penn State football road trips, lewdly hugging them and defiantly soaping them up and sodomizing them, and if that doesn?t make every single person who has an ounce of authority in sports want to vomit?well, that person should never again be allowed to be near children.
After a week in which the court listened to heart-stopping testimony from eight of Sandusky?s victims but never heard from Sandusky himself, and after 20 hours of sequestered deliberations in which the jurors mulled over 48 counts separately, here is the juncture we?ve reached on this sinister path.
Guilty on all but three counts. Numbers we wish never made it to this space suddenly elicit powerful cheers.
For months?all the way back to that autumn day in November when the grotesque details in a grand jury presentation landed with a thud?plenty of people here and at other sports media outlets have wondered what in damnation the charges against Sandusky had to do with the games we watch and adore and often play.
Why should nauseous details about the sodomy of a child be featured right next to baseball scores and the like? The language and raw subject matter was beyond disturbing.
And as one victim after another took the witness stand in the Centre County courthouse in Bellefonte, Pa., to tell of the trauma they suffered at the hands of this monster?for years and years?images no fan cares to read or hear continued to increase.
What did they have to do with sports? That question was asked again and again, louder and louder, and the answer is: In this case, everything.
Sports might not have created this slice of evil, but they sure did give him a secure haven in which he could prey. It?s precisely because of sports? bright glare that Sandusky was able to cull his victims, keep them in his fold, rape them and psychologically torture them with threats if they dared leave.
The same sinew of sports that feeds our football Saturdays molded this false god, this ogre who used the appeal of the Nittany Lions like candy for kids who craved a place in that world. They stood on the periphery as the games rolled on, as enablers within the besotted PSU community were either massively ignorant or blinded by the program?s gaudy success.
Some may have intentionally aided this wicked man. The trials of those enablers loom, and again they?ll force us to look hard at the out-of-control worship that permeates so many athletic programs, big and small.
Half of the jurors in the Sandusky case had ties to Penn State. It?s fair to assume that while some might not have slept in blue and white clothing, they keep a few pieces in their dresser drawers. So give a standing ovation to these folks for not being blinded by the light like so many others.
Sports and their marrow led us to this warped culture. It led us to those young men who courageously swallowed their shame and embarrassment and stepped forward.
Did they offend the senses of those who turn to sports for reprieve from the universe?s ghastly ills? Too bad. The victims? bravery might prevent just one child who today dreams of hitting a T-ball from tomorrow?s nightmares.
For so many years, those boys had no voice. For so many years, they feared the recriminations of what might come if they shared their unimaginable secrets.
?Who would believe you?? testified one. ?(Sandusky?s) an important guy. Everybody knows him. He was a football coach. Who would believe kids??
Some sobbed on the witness stand as they told of the horrors Sandusky inflicted on them when they were looking for a father figure, a protector. The jury heard testimony of forced oral copulation, of the famous, hulking pedophile sexually assaulting a boy in the football showers. One victim said he bled from Sandusky after forced sex, but that he couldn?t bear to ?even tell my own mom.?
That testimony belongs here, in bold print next to the Friday night scores, because while it might cause any reasonable person to wretch, it should also make a little bit safer our Little Leagues and Division I goliaths and every program wedged between.
In one of his creepy love letters to one of his victims, Sandusky mentioned the many legit sporting activities he shared with his prey: ?Try to remember canoes, squirt guns, water balloons, fighting outside, miniature golf, Polish soccer, basketball, racquetball, football, swimming, studying, lifting, working, golfing, volleyball, kickball, soccer, laughing, hurting, arguing, crying, caring and so much more fun,? he wrote.
That paragraph ought to make its way to the bulletin board of every coach and athletic director in the nation. Sandusky?s victims, his cultivated children, roamed the edges of what had been lauded as one of America?s squeaky clean athletic environments. These silent children, these boys, might not have had an ideal home life, but they had Penn State football and all of its glorious, hideous trappings.
Sports brought them to this awful place. We owe it to them to open the blinds and examine all that crawls behind, no matter how sickened it makes us feel.
Shortly after the jury began deliberating Thursday, there came shocking news that Matt Sandusky was prepared to testify against the man who took him in as a foster child and later adopted him. That night, another of Sandusky?s victims who is not part of this trial told NBC?s ?Rock Center with Brian Williams? that Sandusky had abused him more than 100 times over four years beginning in 1992, when he was 10.
This victim, Travis Weaver, allowed his name to be used, his picture to be beamed worldwide. More trials, civil and perhaps federal, will flip over more rocks, and each time another victim will heroically find his voice.
?I have 10 souls in my pocket,? prosecutor Joseph McGettigan III told the jurors in his closing arguments. ?Their childhood has been ravished. Their memories have been destroyed by this pedophile. It is beyond my capacity to give them back that portion of their souls. What you must do for them is come and say to the defendant he molested and abused children horribly. He knows he did it. You know he did it. Convict him of everything.?
In his opening statement, defense attorney Joe Amendola had said: ?A lot of people lied.? He sure was right about that.
There he was again hours before the verdict was announced, telling reporters he?d have a heart attack if his client were acquitted. Afterward, Amendola gave what would be considered one of the most shocking defeat speeches ever heard, if we hadn?t long ago lost the capacity to be shocked.
?The jury acted in good faith. The jury acted on the evidence presented to it. We had a good jury,? Amendola said from the courthouse steps. But when he noted that lots of people sitting in jail are innocent, the rumbling crowd shouted him down.
From a candlelight vigil on the lawn of sainted coach Joe Paterno, now deceased, to rioting students, to this. Sports tugged us here. They shouldn?t be indicted, but they most certainly deserve to be examined closely for the ethos they shaped and bent until it was beyond revolting.
?Rot in hell,? someone yelled at Sandusky as he was ferried away late Friday night in the back of a police car, a free man nevermore. The predator seemed stunned, dazed, almost like a robot.
Finally, justly, sports can?t save him.
From SI: Watershed moment for society
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