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	Editorial: Act on Abuse Reports Providence Journal April 16, 2011 http://www.projo.com/opinion/editorials/content/ED_abuse16_04-16-11_0JNF1IH_v39.1f406b3.html Few folks want to hear about the sexual abuse of children, including those who supervise people who might be engaging in it. And institutions have great fear of the legal and economic implications of public revelations of abuse. Consider the religiously based summer camp called Camp Good News, in Sandwich, on Cape Cod. There have recently been claims of sexual-molestation assertions regarding staffers there, most famously from U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, now 51. The junior senator from Massachusetts has described in somewhat clinical detail how he was molested when he was 10. He has not yet disclosed the name of his abuser. We wish he would. And now we have the suicide, at 43, of longtime staffer Charles Devita, whose mother just last week said that she had told camp officials long ago that she suspected he was abusing boys there. (She herself has worked in sexual-abuse cases in New York City social services, an experience that, she noted, has given her more expertise than most people have in spotting such problems.) Her son’s suicide came long after a counselor had told the police, in 2002, that he had found child pornography on Mr. Devita’s computer. Nothing was done, and Mr. Devita continued to be employed by the camp. Those who run schools, camps and other youth-oriented institutions have an obligation to promptly report suspicions of abuse. And people who say they have been abused, such as Senator Brown, should come forward to the authorities with such information. There will always be sick people who will try to abuse children; but we have psychological, medical, legal and other knowledge available these days that make it much easier to spot and prevent this crime than a few decades ago. But, all too often, institutions still fail to act.
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