I’ve been trying to gather my thoughts about why I’ve been so deeply disturbed by what happened at Penn State. I mean, sure, being disturbed is the normal human reaction to the sexual assault of children, but I can’t shake it. I can’t stop thinking about it or reading about it. Over and over in my head, all I hear is the sad drumbeat of repeating words: those poor kids, those poor kids, those poor kids.
I thought at first maybe my extreme reaction is because I am a new(ish) mom. I can’t handle it when my little boy bumps his head. When I think about someone hurting my kid the way those kids were hurt, my stomach contracts and my eyes involuntarily slam shut. My entire body clenches and nausea sweeps it and I turn to the inanity of twitter to think about something less destructive. My husband tells that the only reason Jerry Sandusky is still alive is because those kids hadn’t told their fathers. Before I had a child, I’d have replied that that isn’t the way to solve anything. Now, I’m the cliche who thinks maybe my husband is right.
But that’s not it.
And so then I thought it was maybe because I grew in Pennsylvania. I could probably off the top of my head name 25 friends and family members who went to Penn State. Our kid got two PSU onesies as baby gifts even though I have no direct ties to the school. There’s a paper cutout of Joe Paterno in my parents’ basement – my mom used to take it to her school and do funny mock interviews with it over the student news channel. If you grew up where I did, the one enduring story in PA sports was the inherent goodness of the Penn State football program, the mythology of Joe Paterno’s clean, pure approach to shaping the lives of young men. While culpability should most certainly be spread around to everyone who thought inaction was the right action, if we’re talking specifically about the actions of authority figures at Penn State, Paterno’s bother me the most. He’s the one I know. There are no cardboard cutouts of the school’s president in my parents’ basement. I couldn’t pick an athletic director or assistant coach out of a lineup. But Joe Paterno? I know him. The problem with mythology is that sometimes, our collective beliefs don’t hold up to scrutiny. There’s a part of me that’s pretty sure that he had the power to do something far beyond the choice he made, and he simply didn’t. (And if you don’t agree with this, that’s ok. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind here or argue facts – I’ve learned today that people on opposite sides of this argument are not going to find middle ground at the moment.)
But that’s not it either.
While I was rocking my little boy to sleep, praying to the universe to keep him safe as I do every night, I finally realized why I’m so shaken. It’s because of a girl named Amber. A story I’ve never told anyone, something I pushed the back of my head and never thought about, something that’s clawed its way to the front of my consciousness today, pleading with me to write about it.
Amber (not her real name) was one of my last students before I quit teaching. It was a tough year for me, and I was pretty wrapped up in my own misery and health problems and hatred of a job I had once loved. Amber was in my homeroom that year, one of my special ed English classes, and wound up in my photojournalism class. Amber was tall and awkward, wore hand-me-downs, and sat in the front row. She never made eye contact. Her clothing was always inappropriate to the season, and for some reason, I have a clear mental image of the cheap canvas slipons she wore, regardless of the weather. 9th graders are brutal, and she was bullied because she was incredibly poor, very different, didn’t really talk, sat in the corner humming, doodling and writing furiously on notebook paper I had to give her with pencils from my purse because she never had any of her own. Hygiene seemed to be an issue, so I spoke with her guidance counselor, who bought her toiletries because she reported that she had none at home. One day, I put my hand on her back to get her attention, as she was lost in her own world – the bell rang and it was time to stop writing and go to her next class. I tapped her shoulder. She jumped three feet in the air and ran out the door.
She tore at my heart. Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’d had poor students before, students whose poverty stood out among their more privileged peers, but that wasn’t what struck me about Amber. She was so withdrawn, so afraid to make any sort of personal contact. Her outlet seemed to be writing, and while she often rambled and didn’t make a lot of sense, neither did most of my freshmen. The year went on. In a series of unprompted actions that gave me hope for the future, one of the other girls in our daily journalism class, a shy freshman with glasses and braces and freckles who wore very high-waisted pants and velcro sneakers, reached out daily to Amber and they forged some semblance of a friendship. The two of them formed an uneasy wall against the other students who ridiculed them daily in the lunchroom.
Then one day, the class was assigned an essay talking about their goals for the future. Amber had one goal: to run away and get a job far away, a place of her own where she could sleep as much as she wanted, and never come home. I thought that was odd, referred it to her counselor, and they spoke about it, but she could not get much out of her other than Amber reporting that she made it all up. Calls home to her dad went unanswered. We decided to keep a close eye on her and her counselor started meeting with her on a regular basis.
A few weeks later, I was wolfing down half of a sandwich during my 20 minute lunch break while frantically editing yearbook photos. A pale, freckled face peered around my half-open door.
“Mrs. J, I need to talk to you about something weird.”
“Ok, sweetie, but make it fast, I have lunch duty in ten minutes.”
Lunch duty. I was worried about lunch duty.
“Well, we had gym today. And we were changing in the locker room and I saw something.”
Freckles hesitated. I (nicely) told her to please, spit it out, because I had places to go.
“I think something’s wrong with Amber. She had these weird bruises on her back that she tried to hide, and I’ve seen them before and didn’t say anything but I just saw them again and I think something is wrong but she won’t tell me and she never invites me to her house and I’m worried and we need talk to the resource officer.”
So many puzzling pieces made sense now. Someone WAS hurting Amber and I felt like an idiot for not seeing it, for needing actual bruises to thrust me into action. But the second I heard the words “has weird bruises,” I leapt into action. I went immediately to the school resource officer after sending Freckles on her way, promising that I’d take care of it. Amber’s guidance counselor was called in, and, as she informed me later (after reporting what I knew, I was asked to leave) the resource officer called in a female social worker and parts of Amber’s story slowly tumbled out after her initial panic. I will not repeat those things here, but they were not good things. She was removed from her father’s home and went to live with an aunt in another state. I hope she gets to sleep as late as she wants and never has to come home.
I will never understand how a 14-year-old child understood inherently that when she saw her friend had been hurt, she needed to tell a police officer, but a bunch of adults at Penn State didn’t know what action to take when someone reported being a physical witness to a child being raped. It wasn’t a weird essay. It wasn’t a kid acting strange or being withdrawn. Someone saw a kid being raped and they told their boss, and their boss told his boss and then, I just don’t know what happened. Some of the parents didn’t report their suspicions. That is why I am so disturbed. Because is this endemic? Is this what adults think should happen, that we should follow protocol and wait around for someone with some kind of amorphous authority to do something? What more authority do we need than “You are an adult, do something?” What other kids are being hurt because someone isn’t acting on the moral absolute that you help a child in danger? I’m terrified.
Child abuse, sexual abuse, is the Other. It is silent and insidious, hidden away in the cracks. A scary stranger doesn’t show up at the door in a black hat and proceed to harm a random kid – most children know their abusers and the abusers don’t look like bad guys. They look like bus drivers and cub scout leaders and friendly football coaches. If someone at PSU had witnessed a shooting or a man assaulting a woman or a robbery or a brutal beating happening, I absolutely believe they would have immediately either tried to intervene or call the police. They would not have waited to talk to their boss. But they did. They waited, they embraced inaction because it was technically the approved thing to do, and I don’t understand why. And I’m scared that other people are doing same thing in other places – so how do we help our kids stand up for themselves? How do we make sure our kids are safe if the adults don’t know what to do?