UNITED STATES
Washington Post

By Paul Mones
May 1

Paul Mones is a Los Angeles lawyer who represents victims of sexual abuse.

After decades of representing victims of sexual abuse, I was convinced that Jerry Sandusky’s arrest at Penn State in 2011 would put to rest the belief that child molesters are slovenly, leering guys wearing dirty raincoats and lurking outside playgrounds. But when word leaked last year that former Republican House speaker J. Dennis Hastert had paid hush money to a high school student he had allegedly sexually abused decades earlier, while he was a high school wrestling coach, the reaction by many in his home town of Yorkville, Ill., in Congress and elsewhere proved that the myth was alive and well. Not Denny Hastert, the beloved coach. Impossible!

The enduring fantasy that nice guys don’t molest children provides dangerous cover to perpetrators and engenders abject hopelessness…