Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

Just over a month ago, I was blogging, as was pretty much every other blogger out there, about the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. I wrote about how hard it is to know what you don't want to know and see what you don't want to see. I wrote about breaking the silence and creating a world where things like this didn't happen and children knew they'd be believed and supported if they did.

Today brings us a story that I would like to offer as exhibit A in my argument that this is a cultural phenomenon and that we as a society need to create a cultural context that does not allow it. At Rosemount High School in Minnesota they held a "pepfest" last week. During this, and organized by school officials, Captains of various teams were blindfolded and told they were going to get a kiss from "someone very special" and they had to guess who. Then each of their opposite-sex parents came out and started to kiss them.

Now, apparently this is a not uncommon prank, and generally mom comes out and gives sonny boy a peck on the cheek, and he thinks it's some girl, and he's embarrassed in front of his schoolmates. We can argue about whether that's a good idea, but it's not inherently evil. But that's not what happened here. In a video that has gone viral, we see the parents lock lips in passionate, make-out kisses. One parent rolls with their child on the floor. A mom can clearly be seen placing her son's hand on her rear end.

The most common reaction I've seen to this is something along the lines of "What the heck were they thinking?!?!" and I certainly echo that sentiment. But I want to put something of a closer focus on what is wrong here.

This "prank" involves parents doing something with their children that, if we saw them do in any other context at all, we would not only think was inappropriate, we would feel obligated to intervene. If one of these children told us that their parent had done this to them in any other context, those of us in education or human services would be obligated, by law, to report it to child protection authorities. If a teacher did this, they'd be fired.

Consider this. Statistics tell us that at least 5% of the boys and 15% of the girls attending this assembly have been or are being sexually molested. Some of them are being molested by a parent. They already feel like they can't tell, like no one will believe them, like no one will protect them. Then they go to pepfest, and see this, arranged by adults, condoned by adults and performed by adults. Can you imagine any stronger message that no one is going to help them or care what they're going through? And God forbid that one of the Captains is being molested at home. Now they got to have it happen in front of the whole school.

As long as we think that adults sexualizing teenagers is OK, or even funny, we are not going to be effective at protecting them from sexual predators. Saying that pedophelia is bad is not the same as stopping it. Child sexual abuse is about failure to respect boundaries between adults and children. We have to show our kids and our adults that we will enforce those boundaries every day in every way, period. If it's going to stop, it stops not just when a rape is in progress. It stops at pepfest, too.

By now, you probably know what happened. At least eight young boys were allegedly sexually assaulted and/or raped in State College, Pennsylvania over the course of 15 years. The alleged perpetrator was an assistant coach for the Penn State football team, which, let's face it, is the only reason those of us outside of the area even know about it.

If the allegations aren't enough to outrage you, throw in the fact that two administrators were also arrested for allegedly covering it up and lying about it to the grand jury. They never even bothered to find out the name of the kid they knew had been assaulted. Joe Paterno, the head football coach, has lost his job for knowing about it, reporting it, but never questioning why nothing was done. The President of the college is out, too, for knowing something was up and not bothering to find out what.

If you have a strong stomach, you might want to read the grand jury report in its entirety (linked here). It gives you an understanding that "eight boys were molested" fails to capture. Two different people actually witnessed boys being raped and reported it, and nothing was done. The question in my mind, and probably a lot of yours, is not just how you can witness that and not stop it, but how you can sit back, knowing you've reported this, and, when nothing ever happens about it just keep it to yourself.

We're glued to this story because it's Penn State football. We're also glued to it because we want so badly to know that this couldn't happen if we were around. If we had seen it, if we had known, we would have stopped it. If it were our coworker, we would have stood up. If it had been our kid . . . it couldn't be our kid.

But let's look at the statistics. Estimates are that between 5% and 15% of men and between 15% and 25% of women were sexually abused as children. If you think about your circle of friends and acquaintances, however, it's unlikely you can think of that many who you know are survivors. That's because this is a crime of shame. Sexual assault -- on adults as well as on children -- is a crime that leaves the person who has been assaulted believing that there is something wrong with them. It is a crime of humiliation and degradation. So people don't tell.

We like to think, however, that telling is enough, and that's part of why the Penn State situation is so disturbing. If the secrecy is what let's this crime go on, then someone knowing about it should make it stop.

And yet, it can be a fine line. There are people who are creepy and inappropriate, who may well be abusers, but we don't have proof, or they're not abusers yet. And you can't ruin someone's life for being creepy. Being creepy is not a crime. Those cases, I know from personal experience, are agonizing.

In this case, though, it wasn't a fine line at all. People saw it happen. But the fact of the matter is, this situation -- that someone knew and nothing was done -- is far from an isolated incident.

I work with a lot of sexual abuse survivors. Whether by temperament or by training, I can listen to their stories with empathy without usually being traumatized myself. It doesn't generally get to me. But what gets to me, what I struggle with, is their stories about what happened when they tried to tell:

My mother told me to tell my father, but he was asleep so that was it.
My grandmother asked me what I did to make it happen?
My dad said I must have wanted it.
My pastor said I was going to hell for talking about sex.
My mom slapped my face and told me never to lie again.
My mother let him do it to me so he wouldn't go after my little brother and sister.
My mother put me in foster care because she didn't want to leave him.

Time after time after time, people tell me that their safety was sacrificed for family cohesion, reputation, the safety of others or simply someone else would not have to deal with the unthinkable.

And is what happened at Penn State so different? People knew but did not want to know. They played a gigantic round of the game "telephone," downplaying a little more as the report went on, to the point that they convinced themselves not to do anything. They sacrificed the safety of young boys for the reputation of the University, its athletic program and its coaches.

We, all of us, need to know that not only can this happen in our neighborhoods, it is happening in each of our neighborhoods, and we can stop it. We need to believe that no reputation or family togetherness or peace of mind is more important than the life of a child. Let us all look back on this incident, on this week, and say that this was the time the silence and complicity ended, not just at Penn State, but everywhere.

I have written in this space before about the low crime rate in Ann Arbor and environs. People around here do not expect this kind of thing to happen. This is a pretty safe town.

Over the weekend, the local media ran a story about crime in Ann Arbor in light of the recent attacks. It turns out the number of major crimes in all categories is actually down in Ann Arbor this year. That's right. Rape is down. Last year, there were 30 rapes reported between January 1 and July 30. This year there have been 23.

There are two aspects of this statistic that catch most of us by surprise, whether they should or not. The first, of course, is that rape is down at a time when women are very concerned for their safety. The second is that there have 23 rapes this year, 21 of which did not make the news. Why? Because the vast majority of rapes, like the vast majority of other crimes, happen between people who know each other. They are not the stranger in the dark alley, they are the friend or acquaintance in the living room, or the ex-boyfriend, or the estranged husband, or the current boyfriend or husband.

Someone really has been lurking in dark alleys in Ann Arbor, and that really is bad, don't get me wrong. Right now, the risk of being raped at random is elevated. But the reason it's news is because it's a stranger in a dark alley. When this guy is caught, it will barely put a dent in the sexual assault rate in this town. We'll still be a town where 21 rapes occur, instead of 23.

And yet that other town, the one with 21 attacks, felt so much safer. By about the third attack, I was sitting down with my teenage daughter and talking frankly about the attacks and about her safety. I told her that we generally trust her common sense not to do something obviously dangerous, and we didn't let her walk around downtown alone at night anyway. But until this guy is caught, I told her, she needed to regard some things that common sense might say was safe as not being safe, including getting into an elevator with one other person at any time of day downtown.

Last Friday afternoon, I drove to an appointment downtown in the mid-afternoon. I drive to this area often and feel quite secure. But on Friday, I noticed myself having feeling very anxious about where I was going to park. Even as I got more nervous as I approached my destination, I was also aware that this made no sense. I always find parking. If there's nothing on the street, there's something in the structure half a block away. That's when it hit me. I wasn't nervous about finding a spot. I was afraid to park in the structure.

As soon as I realized this, I got mad. Mad that someone out there is singlehandedly holding me and every other woman in this community hostage. Mad that men in our society are so much less likely to be sexually assaulted, certainly by a stranger. Mad at a society that fails to see this as an issue that is, at its core, about sexism.
 
A week later, this guy has still not been caught. I'm still mad. I hope, however, that when he is caught I still remember to feel mad on behalf of those other 21 women, and that I'm not just relieved that I can go back to believing that this is something that happens to other people.


Note: I make it a usual practice never to post the picture of the perpetrator of a crime so as not to give them any "glory." However, since this one is still out there, and somebody must know who he is, I have posted the composite sketches above. Please, if you recognize him, call the AAPD at 734-794-6939.