Doyel: Punish adults who leave children at risk
INDIANAPOLIS – USA Gymnastics wasn’t the first group of adults to put its interests, fueled by denial and not much else, above the safety of children. That’s the horrible part of this story.
Here’s the heartbreaking part: USA Gymnastics won’t be the last.
It was Penn State with Jerry Sandusky. The Catholic church with hundreds of priests. IPS with a guidance counselor, allegedly.
Who will it be next? Someone, somewhere. That’s the pattern here, a pattern that starts with the predator but eventually winds its way to the top, to supervisors who had to choose between the predator and the victim. And who through inaction chose the predator.
What happened at USA Gymnastics was nauseating, and not just the behavior of pedophiles masquerading as coaches. According to an IndyStar report by colleagues Marisa Kwiatkowski, Mark Alesia and Tim Evans, this is what leaders of USA Gymnastics did an untold number of times when they received a complaint of a potential pedophile in their midst: started a dossier on that coach and then hid it —sorry, filed it — in a drawer in an office in Indianapolis.
It’s Denial 101. USA Gymnastics reported cases of possible abuse to authorities only if the complaints came directly from an athlete or an athlete’s parent: That can’t be happening here, not in our organization. Therefore, it’s not happening. No need to alert authorities.
That’s why it will keep happening, unless the punishment fits the crime. What would a fitting punishment look like? Well, you tell me. Let’s say your kid is a gymnast. After receiving a complaint — or multiple complaints — USA Gymnastics compiles a dossier on a coach alleged to be a pedophile. USA Gymnastics doesn’t report the allegations. USA Gymnastics files the dossier in a drawer in Indianapolis.
The coach abuses another child.
Your child.
A blind eye to sex abuse: How USA Gymnastics failed to report cases
What punishment fits that? Something more than probation, a typical sentence for the misdemeanor crime of failing to report accusations of child abuse in Indiana.
A felony charge should be an option, meted out on a case-by-case basis. The IPS case, for example, might not rise to felony charges.
At least seven IPS employees knew about the child seduction allegations against guidance counselor Shana Taylor before they were reported six days later. Six days isn’t an eternity, no, but it’s six days too long. Only two of the seven IPS employees were charged, and were able to plea bargain away jail time. In six months they can seek to have the charges expunged from their record.
USA Gymnastics sat on complaints for years. So did top Penn State officials with Sandusky, and Catholic church leaders when confronted with complaints about priests.
Here’s some nonsense: After a wide-ranging pedophile scandal that rocked the church nationwide and beyond, it was 2012 before even one U.S. bishop was found guilty of failing to report an accusation of child abuse. And after being found guilty, Robert Finn led his diocese in Kansas City, Mo., for three more years. Because it’s not seen as that big a deal, apparently, when one adult keeps quiet about another adult accused of hurting a child.
It needs to become a big deal. Pedophiles should never be allowed out of prison again, but failing to report an accusation has to be treated so severely — prison time of some sort — that the next adult who hears such an accusation reports it out of self-preservation fear if nothing else.
Instead we have toothless misdemeanor punishments, which allow an organization like USA Gymnastics to rationalize its inaction, saying the information it had didn’t meet the legal threshold to be reported. That harkens back to the excuses from Penn State leaders, who insisted they did the legal minimum when they learned of allegations against Sandusky … and then sat by while Sandusky remained free, using Penn State facilities to abuse multiple kids.
How did that legal minimum work out for those kids victimized in Happy Valley?
How did that legal threshold work out for kids abused by coaches representing USA Gymnastics?
Facing the unthinkable within their midst, adults sleep at night on a bed of denial. That can’t be happening here.
Sometimes it is. And more children get hurt. An abomination is an abomination, but an avoidable abomination is a crime. And it shouldn’t automatically be categorized as this word, which under the circumstances strikes me as an obscenity:
Misdemeanor.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.