Our View: Sexual Abuse of Youngsters Exacts Huge Cost

Erie Times-News
June 9, 2012

http://www.goerie.com/article/20120610/OPINION01/306109996/Our-view%3A-Sexual-abuse-of-youngsters-exacts-huge-cost

Erie Times-News

The Erie County Courthouse at 140 W. Sixth St. and the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte are about 200 miles apart. The Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, in turn, is approximately 200 miles from Bellefonte. But long distances don't matter. Throughout Pennsylvania, many eyes are focused on high-profile courtroom cases alleging sexual abuse of youngsters, and the price that is paid when such travesties occur.

On June 1, a federal jury in U.S. District Court in Erie awarded $8,654,769 to Kenny Bryan, 20, who sued two Erie County Office of Children and Youth social workers. The lawsuit claimed that Bryan's civil rights were violated when the social workers place a sexually aggressive 14-year-old foster child with the family that adopted Bryan, a former foster child. This lawsuit was about the "very broken child-welfare system" that harmed Bryan, said his adoptive mother, Bonnie Bryan, after the verdict.

Nevertheless, those who followed this trial learned disturbing, graphic details about the abuse Bryan suffered at age 9 and the problems he endures today. Witnesses, including Kenny Bryan, testified that the unnamed 14-year-old raped Bryan repeatedly, causing him to lose progress he had made in healing from previous abuse.

When he told his mother that he had been molested, "He just kept saying, 'I don't want you to stop loving me,'" Bonnie Bryan testified. Jurors said they awarded a large sum to Bryan to cover past medical bills from repeated hospitalizations, lost earnings and his emotional suffering.

The case in the Centre County Courtroom involves 52 criminal charges against Jerry Sandusky, 67, a former Penn State assistant football coach and founder of a charity for at-risk youth. Sandusky's trial starts Monday; the men who will be called to testify are still "alleged" victims.

But financial costs related to the Sandusky case are adding up. Pennsylvania State University is paying two public relations firms $208,000 a month for public relations and crisis management. The university donated $1.5 million to the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and $1.1 million to the Center for the Protection of Children at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital to train more doctors to treat sexual abuse victims.

The Associated Press reported that the Philadelphia archdiocese spent $11.6 million in legal fees in the last two fiscal years, most of it on priest abuse sex cases. Additional money has been spent on a criminal case in which one priest was charged with raping a 14-year-old boy and another was charged with helping to cover up sexual assaults of children. "It's a great sadness that people were hurt and that the costs have been so great for the people of Philadelphia," Archbishop Charles Chaput said.

For victims, families and society, the true toll of sexual abuse can never be measured in dollars spent in the courtroom. We can only hope that these high-profile cases raise awareness about sexual abuse, perhaps preventing such trauma from occurring in the first place, and then also helping professionals learn how to help victims heal.