Whether this community understands it or not, people around the country continue to be interested in the events that unfolded here in November 2011.
Three and a half years later and hundreds of miles away, Charleston, South Carolina-based Darkness To Light, a national child sexual abuse prevention group, hosted an event to increase awareness about these issues.
The event featured a screening of “Happy Valley; The Story Behind The Penn State Scandal”.
After the film, I joined a panel discussion that included former United States Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, Cindy McIlhenny from Darkness to Light and Howard Long from the Centre County YMCA. The Medical University of South Carolina, The Citadel and Paul Vannatta, a Penn State graduate living in Charleston, helped make the event a reality.
This was the Charleston audience’s first chance to see the film. Afterwards the panel focused on the steps that have since been taken in our community. The Centre County YMCA partnered with Darkness to Light to train facilitators. They’ve spread this mission to 23 other YMCAs in Pennsylvania. Penn State students have held events to raise money and awareness.
Howard Long and others were also active in helping launch The Children’s Advocacy Center which dramatically increased this community’s ability to respond to abuse. Mount Nittany Health’s support was critical in making the center a reality despite push back from other groups advocating their ability to handle these services. Fortunately the right approach won out.
Stepping back, it’s important for people who have not seen the film to understand what Happy Valley got wrong about our community and the issues of abuse. In the film attorney Andrew Shubin repeatedly portrayed this community in a way that was as inaccurate as it was irresponsible.
Shubin, who represented several of Jerry Sandusky’s child sex abuse victims, stated: “The justice system has punished the person responsible and that’s enough. The wholesomeness and the values of Penn State football survive this and that would be a dangerous position to take.
“In another place in another city or another area where football didn’t get the pass that it got here, I don’t think that would’ve been done. I have to believe people would have been much more discriminating and much more suspicious.”
It is simply untrue but more importantly a dangerous perception to promote. Arguing that these crimes only happened under the cover of a “football culture” allows people around the country to look at us, point the finger and say “It could never happen here”. The false football culture narrative distracts attention from the predators that live in every town and often are just down the street or around the corner. It threatens the welfare of children.
The people of Charleston certainly knew this to be true, having weathered a child sexual abuse case at The Citadel.
In the film, Shubin also states: “The tougher stuff is the self-examination, what we did as a community to enable this and I think the grappling with that really began with the Freeh Report.”
Unfortunately the film was made too quickly. It relied on the now discredited Freeh Report to make the case that this was an issue that was allowed to happen because of a football obsessed community.
During the panel discussion we also talked about the Freeh Report’s faults, among them the recommendation that university facilities be open to one faculty/staff member and only one guest. The experts were taken aback; the standard for best practices is always a minimum of three people in those situations. Even in surgeon general Regina Benjamin’s medical practice it is policy for another medical professional to be with doctors when they examine children.
All that aside, statements made in the film advance an idea that the people in this community knew but remained silent. It labels everyone as enablers. It is simply not true.
The awareness that should be raised about child sex abuse is that these crimes occur in the shadows of ignorance. Offenders neither seek nor do they want enablers. Labeling an entire community as enabling advances the ignorance of the root causes of these crimes.
What has happened in this community over the past few years is that people have taken up the cause to make a dent in this issue and protect children. Community leaders have stepped to the front realizing that this is a societal problem. They understand the truth here, understand the real causes of these issues and have taken to attacking them.
That is the real story of this Happy Valley, the true message about this community that should emerge from this and be an example to other communities.
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