Individual Crimes, Institutional Sins: Guilty All

By Ruth Ann Dailey
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
June 26, 2012

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/ruth-ann-dailey/individual-crimes-institutional-sins-guilty-all-641802/

Two adult men, Monsignor William Lynn and Jerry Sandusky, were convicted Friday of, simply put, hurting children.

One is a high-ranking priest, the other a respected football coach. Both harmed society's most vulnerable members.

Both men are, or were, part of great institutions whose reputations -- and whose other innocent members -- have been damaged by their crimes.

But there the likeness ends, because Mr. Sandusky is a predator, and Monsignor Lynn is an enabler of predators.

Their relationship to the institutions they've harmed is therefore different, too: The priest committed his crimes to protect an institution, the Roman Catholic Church, while the coach committed his crimes under an institution's cover, using Penn State as both trysting spot and gift store.

However different their roles and positions were, what mattered -- what matters -- most to the rest of us is their victims' welfare. We care more about blameless individuals than about big-time institutions.

And the little guys won. They were little -- both young and powerless -- when they were abused, but Friday they won some measure of justice, some moral affirmation that can help assuage terrible wrongs.

They won, and society won, and both the individuals and the institutions that did the wrong thing lost.

It doesn't always turn out this way, but our outrage when it doesn't, and our satisfaction when it does, reminds us this is the way it's supposed to be.

If we know it as individuals, why do we forget it -- or ignore it -- when we become part of a large group?

Archbishops, corporate honchos, university bigwigs and public officials from City Hall to the White House forget this: You don't double down on evil. The more you try to hide it, the more it will come back to bite your collective backside.

And you'll deserve it -- because the failure to root out evil allows it to thrive and creates more victims.

Make no mistake: It was an individual -- a priest, a coach -- who committed these crimes against children. But both men belonged to huge enterprises whose leaders at some point became aware of the crime and either chose to look the other way or to actively hide the truth, evade justice and enable more crime. How could they think this would turn out well?

The failure of a church to eradicate abusers from its ranks is an unparalleled betrayal. The church exists to bring hope and healing into people's lives. When instead it brings abuse and despair, it has utterly betrayed its mission.

What is Penn State's mission? No matter whether it is to educate young adults and mold their character, or to win football games and make money, it's impossible to comprehend why the university's leaders thought investigating an alleged pedophile in their midst would cause more harm to the institution than failing to would.

They should consider the case against Monsignor Lynn. He was not accused of harming anyone himself, but the jury found him guilty of child endangerment because he failed to prevent abuse when he could have. A priest whom Monsignor Lynn deemed guilty of such wrongdoing in 1994 and for whom he arranged inpatient treatment was nonetheless assigned to another parish where in 1999 he assaulted an altar boy.

The Monsignor Lynns of Penn State have yet to answer for their failure. University police learned through their own investigation in 1998 that Mr. Sandusky's conduct with an 11-year-old boy fit a "likely pedophile's pattern," but officials did nothing until 2001, when grad assistant Mike McQueary reported he saw Mr. Sandusky assaulting a boy in locker room showers.

And all they did then was take away Mr. Sandusky's keys.

The trial that ended Friday capped an investigation begun in 2009 into yet another boy's allegation of four years of abuse. How many children were violated between 1998's ignored investigation and 2012's horrifying trial?

A church is finally being held accountable. Will a university?

Institutions, no matter what business they're in, prosper only when they champion and protect the blameless -- inside their ranks and in society at large -- because our moral compass compels us to root for the innocent and the underdog, not the powerful and the corrupt.

Even Mr. Sandusky's defense attorney tried to twist this truth to his advantage. His client, he said, was an innocent man being railroaded by "the system," whose accusers were coached and manipulated by a government eager for a big trophy.

The jury, on our behalf, didn't believe it. We saw who had the power and who did not, and we sided with the powerless. The powerful -- both individuals and the institutions that shield them -- will be paying, in many ways, for a long time.