Sandusky in court.

Trigger Warning:
This blog will touch on the Penn State child rape, again, as Jerry Sandusky is getting ready to get into court. Again, I'm sarcastic, and angry; again, I'm pissed off. Not so much profanity, though.

These three numbers and URLs I'm including, again. I think it's important to keep these not just for ourselves, but for people we know who might need them. Someone always knows if abuse is going on, and it's up to us, to be that someone who helps. 

If you've been hurt, are being abused, or know someone who is being abused, please, call SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) or 1.877.SNAPHEALS , or RAINN(Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network)  or 1.800.656.HOPE; The Trevor Project is also a beautiful resource for LGBTQI teens, 1.866.488.7386

Finally, here is a list of state, toll-free numbers (some have web pages, too) where you can call and report suspected child abuse. I got it from the national child protective services page.

There are people out there who care; we care so much! And we want to help. So please, don't feel alone. We are out there.

I've been kinda busy this week, and haven't had time to write. I don't have a mental backlog of shit I need to say, so that hasn't been a bad thing, nor has it hurt my mental-scape, like a backlog would. Mostly I've been fighting with allergies, but that's something I have to deal with in the Spring, and so I take a Benadryl and go through the day in a fog, but I can breathe!

I woke up this morning feeling like I had not slept at all. That Annie Lennox,  song, "Into the West", from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. It's a lovely song, and if you get it stuck in your head you won't be angry! I figured if I didn't sleep well, at least I didn't have a happy, bouncy "earworm". "Into the West" is such a beautiful song, almost a requiem, and I tear up every time I hear it, so it fit this morning.

Then, as I opened my G+ home page/iGoogle I saw a headline that made me stop short: Sandusky due in court as defense seeks to dismiss charges 

There went my happy song. There went my vague morning feeling, that usually take half a pot of tea, and four hours to get rid of. There went my faith in humanity-- although in all fairness my faith in humanity ebbs and flows with hideous regularity.

According to the first three paragraphs from the CNN article, "Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky will be in a Pennsylvania courtroom Thursday as his lawyers argue that child sex abuse charges against him be dismissed.
Sandusky, 68, a longtime defensive coordinator for the Nittany Lions, faces more than 52 counts involving sexual acts with 10 boys, dating back to 1994. Prosecutors allege he met some of his accusers through a charity he created for underprivileged children.
Sandusky has pleaded not guilty, and remains under house arrest until his trial begins June 5."

Looks like they've taken a page from the Roman Catholic Church's Guide To Evading Prison Time For Raping Children (tm): "Deny, ask for dismissal, deny, ask for dismissal, and pretend we don't know what we're doing!" 

The lawyers for the defence filed 95 pages of motions, so they've been working over-time getting lame reasons together explaining why it's OK for Sandusky to rape children, oh, sorry, "allegedly rape children". They claim that the allegations "are so vague and non-specific" they can't get up a proper defence; they claim the statute of limitations has run out; they're also claiming prosecutorial misconduct (as in "they didn't tell us everything, they're mean!") Of course, they threw in the "eh, just throw it all out because we asked you to".

I understand, yes, they need to make sure they mount up the best defence they can possibly do; otherwise they would be derelict in their duties. I also know that according to the Constitution he deserves due process. Regardless of how I feel about the crime of child rape, and I've made it abundantly clear that it's beyond reprehensible, he ought to have a good defence, and fair trial. 

See, it doesn't matter to me what they say at trail. Even if the jury goes RCC-sympathiser on Sandusky and acquits him, or finds him guilty of lesser charges, in the Court of Public Opinion (tm) he's guilty of raping countless boys and deserves to rot in hell. He'll never work again; his sons will be able to get orders of protection for their own children (something that's been in the works with at least one grandchild for some time now. I can't remember how that one is going, however.) Sandusky won't work again, and will have to forfeit his pension/retirement and all sorts of goodies he would have otherwise gotten from Penn State. I'm hoping that money goes into a fund for the victims, so they can get some help, therapy and otherwise.

It's enough for me that he's finished as a human. His race to death is done, he just has to lie down and get on with it. He's not a mentor, no longer a "man to look up to!" He's not someone worth aspiring to be; he isn't "that awesome man who selflessly poured his heart and soul into that charity for under-privileged kids".

Nope, he's a rapist. He's someone who anally raped small boys. Boys who looked up to him, boys who didn't have a way to refuse, who did not know they could say no. He used his position over them as a mentor and friend to harm them in ways that might never heal. He hurt them, stripped their innocence away, used them like fuck-dolls and when they got older, he threw them away like used condoms.

From what I've read so far, his wife knew, and colluded. Not necessarily helped, but looked the other way, closed her eyes to the abuse, the weird noises, the strange actions. She gave her consent and support when she didn't speak out against it. Joe Paterno did the same thing-- even in death, he can't escape the evil that he did. Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, two school officials charged with perjury and "failure to report" helped as well. Every single person who didn't speak out, who "tattled to the rent-a-cops" and walked away, who knew something wasn't right and didn't shout for help to everyone around them is guilty of every single act of rape, just as if they had done it themselves.

I'm a big proponent of personal-responsibility. Not in the Teabagging "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps you worthless piece of poor shit, you should have prayed harder and not been born into that family" kind of way; in the "I did this, and now I Have to face the consequences, good or bad" kind of way. I believe that everything we do comes back to us, three times harder.

This can be wonderful when you have a good-Karmic/Dharmic debt and are repaid by the Universal Balancer! You find yourself with a sudden, unexpected blessing, of epic proportions! It's an "out of nowhere" Wow! And I think it's great.

It can be pretty bad when you have a bad-Karmic/Dharmic debt, though. The so-called "reckoning" is usually losing everything you value, everything that means anything to you, is gone. For people like Sandusky, that's the prestige, the money, the coaching jobs; it's the mentoring, the free-all you can assault- buffet; it's the esteem of his peers, and being "that special guy". It's all gone, all of it. Poof, gone, melted away, burned off by his egregious behaviour.*

I don't think it's punishment enough, though. I want him to die in prison. Not be killed by Pennsylvania, (not even sure they have capitol punishment, to be honest). I want him to die in prison, after spending how ever many days of life he has left. To borrow a phrase that I honestly loathe, "until his natural death".

He's 68, he could live another twenty years or more. He's not an old man, I don't think-- but I'm sure I have a twisted view of "old". He has lived outside prison, raping the bodies, and pillaging the futures of only the Gods know how many boys-- he can live the rest of his days in a small, concrete box.

Like I wrote in my Trigger Warning; someone always knows, some one outside, when abuse is going on. Some one knows every time there's a kid being raped, molested or harmed. Some one knows. You can feel it in your guts, see it with your eyes, your spirit/mind tells you "something isn't right here". It can be as simple as "that guy is creeping me out, I don't like the way he's touching the little kid with him" or as complex as "why is that teacher having her students over to her house all the time? Isn't that a little inappropriate, and weird?"

Now, the thing is, are you that someone, and if so, are you going to talk? Are you going to make that call to your local Child Protective Services? Are you going to make that anonymous call to tip off the authorities that "some thing isn't right, these kids need help"? Or are you going to turn your face away, pretend you didn't see that, hear that, know that? Are you going to act like everything is fine and normal, when your guts are screaming at you "Some Thing Is WRONG!"

It doesn't take a brave person to make that telephone call. It doesn't take courage, or heroism. It takes humanity. It take empathy, and it takes enough care for someone else that you're willing to speak. In other words, it's part and parcel of being a human being. We are the community, every one of us; it's up to us, together, to stand up for those being abused, and neglected, raped and tormented. If we don't, who will?

In my opinion there are something that cannot be forgiven. This is one of them. The actions of Paterno, the other coaching staff, their wives, the deans of the U, and everyone in a position to know and act-- but didn't. They have done the unforgivable: they sacrificed children on the altar of football and money.

That's a crime of the highest order. There is no forgiveness for that.



*I don't think every single person who ever gets shit on by the Universe is a bad person. Everyone has bad times-- well, almost everyone, silver-spooners don't actually have them. Often the best people are the ones who cannot catch a break; everything that can go wrong for them, does-- conversely, the people who end up in good standing, the ones looked up to by the community, who seem to get everything handed to them are sometimes the worst people. Therefore, assuming that everyone who has a hard life is bad, and everyone who has it easy is good, is a fallacy, and ought to be discarded, immediately.

The Cosmos is random, shit happens. It is, what it is. We have to remember, that, too.

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