Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing” (Stephens Press). Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.
By STEVEN KALAS
Stephens Media
Joe Paterno is an NCAA football coaching icon. I know that because I’m not even a particular fan of NCAA football, and still I know his name. His legacy. His reputation as a great man. Joe died on Jan. 22.
But as I sit here, typing away, I know that I’ve been thinking of Joe as another sort of icon. Meaning, this column isn’t — in the end — about Joe Paterno. This column is about a pervasive phenomenon in Western civilization: denial.
For weeks and weeks, I’ve been absorbing the horror of child abuse stories that have emerged out of Penn State University, where Paterno built his legacy as a coach. It turns out that a former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, is facing 40 counts of sexually abusing boys during a 15-year period. The stories are awful to read.
But what forced Joe’s firing was mounting criticism that he didn’t do enough to investigate and follow up when he heard that Sandusky had abused a boy in the Penn State football showers in 2002. Joe told university officials about the charge he’d heard, but did not tell the police.
Evidently no one called the police, given that the story took another nine years to break.
So, I’ve waited and waited, sorting out between my heart, my mind and my values, wondering what I want to say about this. And what I want to say is that Joe is an icon; that is, the most recent and most public example of something that has been going on for a long, long time — denial. And thus what I have for Joe Paterno is what I have for countless people over the past century: a criticism shrouded in empathy and inexplicability.
I’ve written before in this space that modern writers in the subject of therapy have speculated greatly about Freud’s “infantile wish theory,” that theory being a child’s sexual feelings and then fantasies about mothers and fathers. Modern scholars wonder if, amongst Freud’s culturally revolutionary and brilliant ideas, this theory wasn’t Freud’s own unwitting denial. It is speculated that when Freud developed the practice of talk therapy, he himself was so overwhelmed by the sheer number of adults reporting childhood sex abuse stories, that he couldn’t comprehend the possibility. So, then, he must be hearing “the infantile wish.”
After all this time, after all the findings and facts, there is something about the charge of child sexual abuse that makes us freeze. It paralyzes us. Normal, good, quality human beings do this. Not bad people. Not people who don’t care. Coaches, teachers, parents, pastors, neighbors just stand there trying to comprehend what is incomprehensible.
This seems impossible, considering the current political climate regarding child sex abuse. Modern insurance companies mandate trainings to Boy Scouts, coaches of minors, church youth workers, or just about anybody who makes a living or volunteers with youth.
Always have a witness. Never drive a kid home alone. Don’t hug or touch. I’ve said before and I’ll say again that these trainings, whatever flowery feel-good titles they have, ought to be called “How Not to Be Accused Of or Sued for Child Abuse.” I’m saying that it doesn’t get to the heart of the real evil at hand.
There isn’t a tougher moment for me as a counselor than to listen, again, to an adult tell me the ghastly story of sexual perpetration by a parent or trusted adult friend. And the second toughest moment is to have a patient thus accused who swears his/her innocence: “The student made up the charges to get back at me. … My ex did this to alienate me from the children or otherwise wreak revenge upon me,” etc.
And, since no counselor has a license to be psychic … you don’t know. You can’t know. All you can do is listen and support. I’ve worked with people who have indeed been falsely accused. Some of them are exonerated, but the social/personal damage is done. Some innocent people go to jail. Some guilty people get away with it. Some are brought to justice.
But nothing explains doing nothing in the face of eye-witnesses and evidence this overwhelming. Except denial. A reflexive, paralyzing, pernicious denial. I’m not singling Joe out as a unique villain. As I said, Joe is an icon of a wider issue. How, after all these years, can we as a culture still be so inept at noticing that we notice the presence of evil?
Childhood sexual abuse is a great evil.
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing” (Stephens Press). Contact him at skalas@reviewjournal.com.