Predators

This week, Penn State is trying to decide whether the life of a child is more valuable than a football program. I have been walking with another institution, one I grew up in, which is also trying to decide whether the Institution is more valuable that the children and adults who were abused within it. 

A strange fear that reflects our own sense of self-worth and the limits, I suspect, of our religious beliefs. We worry that admission of incompleteness is equivalent to admission of being valueless.  And so we will spend the lives of others without compunction in order to hide the faults lest our good be lost. We don't realize that this is the very thing that erases the good we seek to hold.

Sexual predators destroy all of us.

Their immediate victims are, without saying, the ones destroyed the most. They must live with that destruction for the rest of their lives trying to piece together shattered lives in quiet darkness using whatever tawdry resources they can find. What child knows anything beyond glue and string? What good does contact glue on eggshell do to replacing the sunny yolk and full life potential?

That destruction alone is horrendous. The numbers of people in our society living with this pain is staggering. Hiding or ignoring one predator is telling these brothers and sisters that they are without value, that their pain is irrelevant, that something else - anything else is more important than dealing with their abuse.

But it goes even further. We allow these men and women to poison every day healthy interactions throughout our society. The mistrust that their actions engender cause us to lose the ability to trust and to love in what should be normal ways.

Can I as a teacher give a crying child a hug? Can I as a parent be comfortable knowing that it is okay for my child to talk about sitting on my lap for a story? Can a child talk about crawling into bed with their parent after a nightmare?

Our reactions as parents and caregivers are also damaged. Not all strangers are to be feared. Children, and indeed, ourselves, can learn from and enjoy being with people who are outside their immediate circle of acquaintance.

When we stand up and seek accountability and justice for predators; when we seek redress and healing for victims; when we continue to love and touch others in positive ways we are standing up for ourselves and our children as well. We take back our language of love and purge it from the contaminating misuses of predators and predator protectors.

Institutions and supporters who protect them in the face of dealing with sexual predators are, in the end, destroying themselves. They and their children will be sickened by the poison that they refuse to acknowledge. It is the people who seek redress who are, in actual fact, looking to the health of society.

Today I will take action. I will continue to smile at strangers. I will continue to give my children all the physical contact they need and deserve. I will continue to tell myself and others that we are loveable and loved.

TTYL

BB