Penn State Child Abuse Scandal; and Football Culture.

[Sriracha]

The boys were around age 10. It just makes me absolutely sick. Most kids these age know little about sex, good touches, bad touches and have not been educated to say no or tell anyone. It is easy for perpetrators to manipulate them, with even a simple statement of "if you tell anyone I'll have your family killed." Children this age who look up to someone just want to please and be accepted by them. Anyone who is in a position that works around children are normally always mandated reporters. Each mandated reporter has a responsibility to protect children. I'll take my thought to the extreme degree that I believe EVERYONE has a duty to protect children from abuse. They don't have a voice, they are afraid and they don't know better. At the same time, the parents need to "listen" to their children. So often they display signs of trouble and parents don't take the time to investigate.

I read part of the reports against Sandusky that included a statement from a janitor, and it seemed as though the janitor was doing everything he could. It's absolutely ridiculous how celebrity's or powerful figure's actions become fastidiously excused.

 

[this is only temporary]

The boys were around age 10. It just makes me absolutely sick. Most kids these age know little about sex, good touches, bad touches and have not been educated to say no or tell anyone. It is easy for perpetrators to manipulate them, with even a simple statement of "if you tell anyone I'll have your family killed." Children this age who look up to someone just want to please and be accepted by them. Anyone who is in a position that works around children are normally always mandated reporters. Each mandated reporter has a responsibility to protect children. I'll take my thought to the extreme degree that I believe EVERYONE has a duty to protect children from abuse. They don't have a voice, they are afraid and they don't know better. At the same time, the parents need to "listen" to their children. So often they display signs of trouble and parents don't take the time to investigate.

I read part of the reports against Sandusky that included a statement from a janitor, and it seemed as though the janitor was doing everything he could. It's absolutely ridiculous how celebrity's or powerful figure's actions become fastidiously excused.

I couldn't agree more. I would thoroughly enjoy watching Sandusky suffer horribly for a really long time.

Side note -- there are groups that work with children who are taking proactive measures to educate parents and children about child abuse and how to protect children from it. There are also parents who do educate their children about molestation, etc. and groups that have been unwittingly victimized by child abusers (ex. the Boy Scouts) who are aggressively trying to prevent it from ever happening again. So it is becoming more talked about than in years past. These groups who try to deal with it proactively talk about it, they do not minimize it, and they mandate and enforce training and background checks for adult caregivers, and they train people on ways to protect children (example number 1: don't leave a child one-on-one with an adult IN THE SHOWER. Jeeze.). There really is no excuse for ignoring this stuff, and I have no patience with organizations that take it lightly.

 

[Faye]

Interesting. From what I'd seen Paterno is hailed as an exceptional coach, but I don't know that Penn State by itself is famous (....not American >_>)
Sure, if you may. at the very least it can give me an idea of what some people think.

[MENTION=4680]this is only temporary[/MENTION] got the basics.

There are huge social events centered around these sorts of things. In addition to the cheerleaders and football players themselves, marching bands in the U.S. perform on the fields as well as dancers (not just cheerleaders but just dancers). Social events are organized by and around people participating in these sorts of things; drinking, sex, huge frat parties, etc. Being in college football is like double majoring in football is terms of time consumption. I know at my parents school when they were young, they told stories about how one of the professors made the answers to the tests in his class the names of plays that the football team knew so that they could figure out the play and just put the answers (as opposed to having to study a lot, because they were so busy with practice that they couldn't study). One of my relatives is flying across the country to watch a football game soon of his old school because they are doing so well (2nd in the nation atm, you can figure out who).

Joe Pa wasn't just good either, he was the best, and he had been there for decades. He had the most wins ever out of any football coach. I know people who are obsessed with Penn State and always set aside time to watch the games, and they will practically fight over a chance to go to one of the games, especially the white outs.

Colleges use this to attract people to their schools, and there are athletic scholarships for good high school athletes that can pay their tuition.

And yeah, people are crazy about it, as in people from one school might go and tour the neighborhoods of the opposing school and bash out the car windows of the people in those neighborhoods (especially cars with bumper stickers or parking tags from the targeted school). That happened to my family; the police had to come at 3am, but the guys who did it were gone by the time the police got there. The fact that those Penn State students behaved the way they did does not surprise me at all, but I'm sure most of the students at the school aren't happy about it.

Like mentioned earlier, the students can virtually become heroes, even at the high school level, for being really good. For me, however, whenever I hear that someone is on a school's football team (and I've had to argue this before), that is immediately a bad mark against him. I know some of the guys are alright, but a lot of them aren't. The football team at my school has been particularly good at crashing parties and degrading women (some of whom can't seem to get enough of it), and I know it is a similar story other places. They wouldn't be so fat if they didn't drink so much, too, and then maybe they'd win a bit more.