Jury finds Jerry Sandusky guilty on dozens of child sex abuse charges

I am torn over this too, Greg.  Not torn about the evil of the crimes.

I’ve watched Sandusky and it appears that he does not believe that he did anything wrong—which boggles my mind but also fills me with horror.

It’s not like he’s sinned, knows he’s sinned, and doesn’t care. He doesn’t know how grotesquely he sinned. That’s the kind of person that Peck writes about in his book People of the Lie—people like that lie and don’t know they’re lying—to themselves and to others.

I would like nothing more than for Sandusky to spend his remaining years—in prison of course—as a person who throws himself on the mercy of Christ, who is so much more merciful than people like me or you. But you can’t throw yourself on the mercy of Christ if you aren’t able to acknowledge what you need the mercy for.

In the meantime, there are people out there who were once poor kids, who wanted to be involved in sports, who came from tough broken families, and who thought they got a chance with a well-known, well-respected, generous fatherly man like Sandusky . . . only to find out that the whole “chance” was a horrible breach of trust and power and control and manipulation by a man who assaulted them in a grotesque way.

God help them.

I wish this were a unique situation. But, homosexual pedophilia is lamentably nothing new. What he did, and the way he was protected, follows the usual, stereotyped pattern. The parallels between this and the Roman Catholic priest scandal are not amazing; they simply reflect a pattern.

There would have to be more victims who haven’t come forward. Thank God for those who did, or it would have continued, with his wife and Penn State officials still looking the other way, pretending that there was nothing wrong.

In prison, Sandusky will be separated from all of this, and he may well have some time to open his eyes and ears, and to receive God’s grace, enabling him to recognize the gravity of these sins, to repent, and to receive forgiveness. I certainly hope so. Those who allowed this to go on for so many years also have a lot of spiritual work to do.

Sexual attraction is a powerful inner force, and as far as I can tell, science cannot explain why some people develop attraction other than the normative male-female type. But, we do know why people act on sexual attraction. It’s a conscious decision, every time.

If there’s any good news here, it’s that the Sandusky case might convince other sexual abuse victims in other places and situations to come forward.

“Do I take pleasure in the death of the wicked?”

There is no joy or delight to be found in the events of last night.  We should be content that justice was served to a criminal; that vindication has come to victims of his crimes.  But it is not for us to rejoice as this man disappears into the jaws of the Criminal Justice System knowing beyond reasonable doubt that he will never return.  Sandusky faces a terrible and terrifying future.  If he survives, he knows he must increasingly face that future by himself.  Visitors will stop.  Family members will turn away.  They will erase him from their lives as best they are able.  Sandusky is alive this morning - a sentient creature who at this very moment sits in a cell ponders a future with no hope and no succor. 

The Officer of the Law is responsible to impose these punishments.  He is not to turn the other cheek, but to wield the rod of authority.  That Sandusky should find himself now under the charge of the officer is good and proper.  He will never be released until the debt he owes is paid in full, and we say “It is just,”  Indeed it is.  Indeed he can never repay his debt.  He will die in prison.  But we should all see in Sandusky’s fate a mirror that reflects our own standing.  For no matter the magnitude of Sandusky’s guilt before the state, we each of us bear infinitely more guilt before God.  And if God were to hold us to account the way Sandusky was held to account, then He would throw each of us into an infinitely more terrible prison.  And the Angels would call Him Just for doing so. 

Sandusky may be the man who owes 100 denarii, but we are each the man who owes 10,000 talents.  We should each of us be turned over to the officer until the unpayable debt be paid in full.  Look then to the shadows of this man’s fate, and see some measure of your own guilt.  Comprehend some portion of the great deliverance that has been provided for you.  See what it means to say that “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  In the eyes of God we are each as guilty as Sandusky times seven times seventy.  We each deserve Sandusky’s punishment times seven times seventy. Even the ‘best’ of us.  Even the most ‘righteous’ of us. 

Do not look on this man and rejoice.  Look on this man, and fear.  And weep.  And give thanks that you have received what you do not deserve.

carl

I agree with Sarah, I’m not entirely sure Sandusky understands he did something evil.  I think he knows he’s done something illegal or he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to conceal it, but I believe he sees what he’s done as something harmless or even affectionate and is baffled that, now that he’s had a chance to show the world how much he cared for these boys, the world still recoils in revulsion.

There aren’t any winners here.  The boys are still scarred,  families are still devastated and Sandusky’s life will end in a claustrophobic cell, as justice demands.  Joe Paterno died a pariah instead of a revered hero and Penn State has a shadow over it that will not easily or quickly be disspated.  Just a lose-lose, any way one looks at it.  As the Prince laments at the end of Romeo and Juliet, “All are punished.”

t I believe he sees what he’s done as something harmless or even affectionate and is baffled that, now that he’s had a chance to show the world how much he cared for these boys, the world still recoils in revulsion.

#4 He may have convinced himself that what he did was harmless, but I don’t see how he can be baffled by what happened once he was discovered. One of the few remaining aspects of this culture that still shows forth decency is the fact that abuse of this kind, especially against children, is still regarded as intolerable and inexcusable. This isn’t ancient Greece. He must have known that what he was committing is acknowledged by virtually everybody to be harmful and evil, something that can never be made up for because its effect can never be undone.

He described what he did as “horsing around”, but surely he knows the difference. What else can disingenuous language like that be, but a sign that he knows he did in fact do evil? He’s probably a sociopath. But although sociopaths lack empathic emotions, I doubt they lack knowledge of good and evil (else, as you say, why go to such lengths to conceal things?)

Understand the comments regarding redemption and Jesus dying for each of us, but understand that Jesus also said this:  “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”  (Matthew 18:6)

They replayed his interview with Costas last night.  Costas asked him point-blank if he was a pedephile.  He also asked if memory serves if anything sexual had taken place.  Sandusky nade denials both times.  He said his one regret was “taking the kids to the shower.” 

So he was making a distinction between showering with his victims, and doing something sexual with them. 

I think he lied. I think he knew he was lying.

I think we’re in substantial agreement, #5.  Sandusky internalized his vile urges to the point that they were validated in his mind.  I think there was a part of him that is convinced that, if people knew his true heart, they’d know he’s not an evil man who hurt kids.

I mean, look at the mass delusions that have overtaken TEC on a very similar subject and you’ll see how prevalent the phenomenon is.

Sorry, Carl, but I can’t agree .... “Look then to the shadows of this man’s fate, and see some measure of your own guilt.”  As a survivor myself, it is a struggle to see the man’s humanity, let alone relate to him.  What he has done is corrosive to the very souls of his victims, including friends and family who have been deceived.  I say this as one who has seen justice done, which is indeed a healing thing.  Crimes against children deserve a special kind of hell.

In response to number 3 above, I feel that one of the greatest, most profound gifts of the teaching that Christianity gives the world is the concept of innocence.  Jesus was innocent.  He lived as an innocent.  He died as an innocent.

And we follow him. 

In short, Christianity gives the world the beauty of black-and-white.  What is not evil is just that, not evil.  A man who does not sexually molest children is just that, a man who is not evil.

Evil is what brings harm into life.  Those who do not bring harm into this life are innocent.  Perhaps not as innocent as Jesus, certainly not.  But if there is evil in this world, then surely there is also good.

It is the concept of forgiveness that can cause a man to hesitate, as in this case, to stumble, to require the support of Jesus, himself, to accomplish.

carl:

See what it means to say that “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  In the eyes of God we are each as guilty as Sandusky times seven times seventy.  We each deserve Sandusky’s punishment times seven times seventy. Even the ‘best’ of us.  Even the most ‘righteous’ of us.

I agree with that completely.  So did John Henry Newman:

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.

#8 yes we agree, the human power to rationalize is amazing. It’s just very hard to grant even this to him, given the nature of the crime. I hope someday he sheds that layer of rationalization and owns what he has done.

Julia

Evil is what brings harm into life.

Evil proceeds from the heart of man, and the heart of man - every man - is desperately wicked.

A man who does not sexually molest children is just that, a man who is not evil.

There is no man who is not evil.  Even the good he does originates in evil.  As it is written “All our righteousness is as filthy rags.”  The fact that man does not commit a particular sin does not purchase him any credit with God.  He who breaks the law in one part is guilty of breaking the whole law.  And we have all broken the law in some part.

carl

[3][9]  “This is, I think, somewhat difficult for many people to accept.  We have a hard time acknowledging that particular individuals are shameless by their nature, and the rest of us not so, due in part to what I refer to as the “shadow theory” of human nature.  Shadow theory—the simple and probably accurate notion that we all have a “shadow side” not necessarily apparent from our usual behavior—maintains in its most extreme form that anything doable or feel able by one human being is potentially doable or feelable by all.  In other words, under certain circumstances (though they are circumstances we are hard-pressed to imagine) anyone at all could be, for example, a death-camp commandant.  Ironically, good and kindhearted people are often the most willing to subscribe to this theory in the radical form that proposes they could, in some bizarre situation, be mass murderers.  It feels more democratic and less condemnatory (and somehow less alarming) to believe that everyone is a little shady than to accept that a few human beings live in a permanent and absolute moral nighttime.  To admit that some people literally have no conscience is not technically the same as saying that some human beings are evil, but it is disturbingly close.  And good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil.”
—Dr. Martha Stout _The Sociopath Next Door_

It’s irresponsible and seductive to diagnose individuals from a distance, so let me say that I have no idea what Jerry S’s character structure is (and don’t really care).  That said, in terms of pure danger to those around him, sociopathy is an apt comparison.  It certainly raises the possibility of an alien moral consciousness.  As for his moral status vis a vis anyone else, that’s up to God so far as I’m concerned.

In so far as this guy is still human, I hope he like anyone else turns to Jesus, but I’m not getting sucked into his world or mind.  I’m certainly not significantly investing in changing him without his permission… just like anyone else.

God bless us all especially his victims.  And kudos to them and the justice system for putting an end to this madness.

From the publicized facts, it appears an appropriate verdict.  He will likely die in prison. God help his victims.

It is painful to contemplate these types of offenses, and the impact on the children and teenagers under his care and dominion.  I can’t imagine the type of tangled, distorted compulsion that results in this type of behavior.

In describing Nicodemus’ encounter with Jesus, MLK once said: “Jesus didn’t say, ‘Now, Nicodemus, you must stop lying’. He didn’t say, ‘Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that’. He didn’t say, ‘Nicodemus, now you must not commit adultery.’ He didn’t say, ‘Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.’ He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic – that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.”

The “lie, steal, kill” continuum has always haunted me.  What is the difference between me and those that worked in the German concentration camps?  Or those on death row?  Jesus save us all.

Ah, Plantagenets, I also read “The Sociopath Next Door.”  The author’s political speculations were bizarre, but her handling of actual clinical characteristics of sociopaths and their effects on those around them were right on.  Dr. Stout could not answer the question of whether such individuals are formed by early events in their own lives, or if they are simply “bad seed.”  It makes little difference in the lives they harm, and fortunately God is their judge, not us.  But I know from painful experience that the individual offender doesn’t show any sign of understanding or caring about the effects of his acts on others.

Sarah,  except that when the mother of victim #6(or was it #7) secretly and probably illegally taped him and that conversation without his consent (a la Linda Tripp) he said he wanted to die and that no one would forgive him.  That information was not in the trial or given to the jury because it was illegal but it was in the news media here and there.  It made me wonder if he knows but that was not the public image his lawyers wanted to portray of him so any counter narratives were ignored and ignored by the media as well because the media was focused largely on the trial not other information people had about him but that was inadmissible in court. A few journalists sought out those stories.  And although I am generally not in favor ef encouraging people to commit crimes, good for the mother that taped him, because you know any district attorney that would dare to prosecute such a case would not survive reelection.  And the statute of limitation has probably passed anyway.

Interesting comment, Plantaganets.

I personally think that quote is a bit muddled in coherence, though:

Shadow theory—the simple and probably accurate notion that we all have a “shadow side” not necessarily apparent from our usual behavior—maintains in its most extreme form that anything doable or feel able by one human being is potentially doable or feelable by all.  In other words, under certain circumstances (though they are circumstances we are hard-pressed to imagine) anyone at all could be, for example, a death-camp commandant.

Now see . . . I think that’s probably correct.  I think most people—perhaps all—under particular circumstances have that kind of gross and public and all-encompassing and highly and pervasively effective evil in them. I think the difference is that most of us set our sights a sight lower!  We don’t have as much ambition to control and hurt a larger portion of the population.

RE: “Ironically, good and kindhearted people are often the most willing to subscribe to this theory in the radical form that proposes they could, in some bizarre situation, be mass murderers.”

I’m not particularly a good and kindhearted person.

RE: “It feels more democratic and less condemnatory (and somehow less alarming) to believe that everyone is a little shady than to accept that a few human beings live in a permanent and absolute moral nighttime.”

I do think that the potential for evil is “democratic” but I find that far more alarming then less alarming.  In fact, I’d put the shoe on the other foot—I think that people who try to pretend as if the potential for evil only applies to a select subset of rare individuals are merely trying to, er, cope with the existence of evil and to boundary it off somehow behind fences so that they can’t be contaminated by it.  I think that’s delusory.

RE: “To admit that some people literally have no conscience is not technically the same as saying that some human beings are evil, but it is disturbingly close.  And good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil.”

I think it is perfectly reasonable to believe in the personification of evil—and the potential of “personification of evil” for all of us—while at the same time acknowledging that people make choices every day and that some make choices that allow them to gradually descend and deteriorate, and others make different choices [note that I also believe, as a Reformed person, that those choices are influenced by the participation of the Holy Spirit in sanctification of the redeemed, as well as the first choice of God to regenerate certain human beings—but I also recognize that even the non-regenerate make choices away from particular evil actions, by the common grace of God].

At any rate, I do not grant a dichotomy between the existence of the personification of evil, of the decisions by some to leap over the edge into the abyss, and the potential of all human beings to make those choices.  I don’t think that’s less alarming—I believe that is utterly terrifying, but for the grace of God.

I’m with CS Lewis:

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilites, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - These are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

First things first.  Eleanor and Katherine, peace be with you.  I’m sorry to see that you’ve tangled with such tough stuff.  I’ve some bad experiences myself with a certified borderline personality and an almost certain narcissist (at the time I knew them, maybe they’re better now).  But hopefully, we take our lumps and keep moving.

Sarah, Carl, and others you’re making me think.  Justice is very much a matter of proportion and balance.  Self-righteousness is clearly alienating and false in a world where goodness comes from God.  It’s a primary danger you’re right to oppose.  Stout maybe dips into it while trying to highlight very real differences between sociopaths and mature adults.  Part of her argument can be rehabilitated by saying that the slippery slope takes time.  Maybe, the average American could have been a war criminal, but she probably would have had to do some serious moral damage to the point of becoming a substantially different person first.  Maybe, you could have been a sociopath, maybe you could have been an adult illiterate.  But if you’re not, you should probably focus less on not being diabolical and more on the harder challenge of resisting complacency.  Hopefully, we’re all on the same page there.

But to go the other way into scrupulousness can also be grandiose.  Most of the time we lack not only the ambition but the power to be super criminals.  I would argue that scrupulosity locks into the kind of legalism described below as the product of a persecutory superego.  Here we regard the danger of the “evil that resides in the gaze.”

The principal claimants to universal power at the beginning of the third millennium, thinks Zizek (in essential agreement with Eagleton and Badiou), are liberal democracy (in politics) and the market (in economics). These will, if you let them, define you exhaustively by your choices as a consumer and will permit you only a political life ordered by a set of formal rights and duties—to vote, to maintain privacy, to be left alone, to purchase, to consume, phantasmatically (a favorite Zizekian word) to imagine meanings in the privacy of your chamber. This claim to universal power can only be resisted by the self-sacrificial gesture of renunciation most clearly evident, thinks Zizek, in Christ’s acceptance of death on the cross. Gestures like these maintain agency: they do not abandon the self to the principalities and powers by accepting the division between the ethical and the political offered by those powers, but they also pay the inevitable price for this refusal, which is to have the agent’s identity radically changed—killed and resurrected. Here is a typically overheated Zizekian way of putting this:

The Christian answer is that, precisely, the tension between the pacifying Law and the excessive superego is not the ultimate horizon of our experience: it is possible to step out of this domain, not into the fake imaginary bliss, but into the Real of an act; it is possible to cut the Gordian knot of transgression and guilt.

“The Real of an act”—elsewhere, Zizek calls this “the breakout” in the sense of a jailbreak. The jail in question is constituted by the “vicious dialectic” of the Law (Zizek’s upper-casing of “Law” is self-consciously Pauline) and its “obscene supplement,” which is the transgressive desire inevitably generated by the law, together with the superego’s necessarily failed attempts to constrain and cancel that transgressive desire. There is, thinks Zizek, only one way out of this prison, and that is to suspend the dialectic that constitutes it, and to do so by means of love. Love does not actively rebel against the Law’s demand by revolution or violence: to do so would be transgressive, falsely heroic. Neither does love accept its submission to and definition by the Law by projecting fantasies of escape into some ideal realm beyond politics (genetic or surgical immortality; heaven as utopia). No, instead one simply removes oneself from the dialectic by renouncing it: like Medea or Sethe (in Toni Morrison’s Beloved) or Abraham, one kills (or shows one’s willingness to kill) the precious thing that keeps one subject to the dialectic, and one does so out of fidelity to and love for what one kills; or, like Christ, one fulfills the Law by accepting death, and in so doing gives “birth to a new subject no longer rooted in a particular substance, redeemed of all particular links.” Zizek’s interest here (and this he takes from Lacan) is in the self-referential gesture that appears to destroy or damage the one making it, but in fact transforms him by liberating him from what seemed an impossible dilemma. This self-referential gesture is “the Real of an act,” and its ideal type is Christ’s crucifixion.

It may seem from all this that Zizek is Christian in all but name. But that would be far from the truth. What interests him about Christianity (as it also interests Badiou) is the conceptual resources it offers for the depiction of a community of those free from political and economic domination. This community, as he says, is constituted by the Holy Spirit, and its members live as though their lives have been given to them as an excessive gift that can only be redeemed by living furiously (this is Chesterton’s language) but at the same time by living as though it were a matter of complete indifference whether life continues at all. Put differently: the Holy Spirit brings into being a community of love, which is to say a community fully within the Law without any possibility of transgression, because transgression is possible only for those still subject to the superego’s obscene supplement to the Law. Zizek might have quoted (though he doesn’t, so far as I can tell) Augustine’s “ama et fac quod vis”—love and do what you will. A Zizekian reading of this would say that loving action removes the Law’s obscene supplement. And this, so far as it goes, is indeed a thoroughly Christian reading.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/christ-and-critical-theory-37

This is a fascinating lecture at the Seton Hall Seminary on the prison repentance and conversion of Rudolf Hoss, the commander of Auschwitz.  Some of the steps on his descent strike me as frighteningly relatable, others like his war experiences less so.  Note how youthful piety backfired:

http://www.shu.edu/academics/theology/upload/mass-murderer-repents.pdf

Sorry for the obnoxious triple post, but I just went back and looked at the paragraphs above and below the one I posted from _The Sociopath Next Door_ and in fairness to Dr. Stout wanted to add them.  My apologies for not providing more context earlier.  My sense is Dr. Stout is a Harvard professor, probably writing for a secular audience less comfortable with the concept of original sin.

“Certainly, the very worst of the unthinkable deeds we read about in our newspapers and tacitly ascribe to “human nature”—though the events shock us as normal human beings—are not reflective of normal human nature at all, and we insult and demoralize ourselves when we assume so.  Mainstream human nature, though far from perfect, is very much governed by a disciplining sense of interconnectedness, and the genuine horrors we see on television, and sometimes endure in our personal lives, do not reflect typical humankind.  Instead, they are made possible by something quite alien to our nature—the cold and complete absence of conscience…

...Of course, though not everyone could be a death-camp commandant, many if not most people are capable of overlooking the horrific activities of such a person, owing to the viscosity of psychological denial, moral exclusion, and blind obedience to authority.  Asked about our sense that we are not safe in the world, Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

It’s hard to demonstrate this clearly, but as the past victim of crime, I’d say I learned that extreme humility heals.  Trying to defend delusions of power or security hurts.  And finding some shared humanity and sinfulness before Jesus and the cross with one’s aggressor helps open the door to forgiveness.  But it’s also very important not to take seriously or identify with any of the crazy assumptions behind evil words or behavior or to feel personally tainted by things beyond one’s control.  Overlooking the real differences between aggressors and victims can at worst lead to tragic stuff like Stockholm Syndrome where victims identify with their aggressors in order to survive and feel strong.  I don’t think it’s prideful to recognize or thank God for real differences between one’s darkest potential and reality or to radically dis-identify with someone, particularly after attempted Biblical reconciliation.  To those sent to Hell, Jesus says “I never knew you.  Depart from me.”  Matthew 7:23

Is evil a malicious consciousness and/or the absence of good?  Kantian diabolicalness or mere hollowness?  I don’t know…  But this discussion makes me grateful for whatever parts of my health or upbringing give me some empathy however limited and flawed.  Appreciate your power to do good and accept the pathetic misguidedness of all your worst instincts.  Have self-compassion but trust God’s judgment thankfully!

RE: “Most of the time we lack not only the ambition but the power to be super criminals.”

I agree—that’s what I meant when I said that most of us set our sights a sight lower!  We are mostly lazy and incompetent and also have better more interesting things to do.  ; > )

I agree that there is a grandiosity to constantly pronouncing on the evil and darkness of man—there really aren’t a whole lot of people who end up like Darth Vader.

But I’m still going to persist in recognizing that given the right circumstances, any of us can make the choices that lead inexorably to “immortal horrors.”

It’s interesting to read about the people in camps in North Korea—they make horrible and quite wicked choices as a matter of course, including turning in their own parents.  We would, I suspect, “cut them some slack” because of their context. But reading *merely the book review* of one survivor impressed me with how dead to a sense of wrongdoing he was, and how he had to *learn* a sense of good and evil from others, later on.

Fair enough, Sarah, fair enough.