While I don't have inside knowledge of State College, or Penn State, I do know a few things about small towns. I'm from one. And while sports in my hometown never brought in millions of dollars and 100,000 fans every weekend, they apparently were still worth more than the safety, self-esteem, and dignity of young girls. This is the message that was made clear to all the kids in my hometown when the school district failed to investigate, discipline or remove the wrestling coach that took our tiny high school to 14 league championships, 10 district championships, seven regional championships and a state title after countless girls and their parents reported his inappropriate behavior, touching, and comments towards girls as young as 6 and 7 over a period of over 15 years.
Yesterday, I read this article on Jezebel titled "What if Penn State's Coach Had Victimized Girls?" That is a question I don't have to wonder too much about the answer to, it's a reality I grew up watching unfold. In this series from the Seattle Times, "Coaches Who Prey", my former elementary school gym and music teacher, Randy Deming, was featured prominently.
By the late 1970s, Deming had established a top-notch wrestling program at Blaine High School that would bring pride to the border town.
But complaints kept coming. Staheli and half a dozen other mothers complained en masse to the School Board that the coach had groped girls. "They were just stony-faced," Staheli recalled of the elected officials. "They were all sports jocks. They said these complaints were ridiculous. He was a fine person and we were a bunch of women's libbers."
Deming continued to offend, his file shows. In 1985, the district reprimanded him after he admitted asking a girl at the school if she had any nude photos of herself. Two weeks later, he was reprimanded for massaging a girl in the boys locker room.
In 1987, Deming was investigated by police for touching a 10-year-old near her genitals, but no charges were filed.
Superintendent Robert Gilden wrote to him later that year: "Based on your employment history at Blaine, it is apparent that something is seriously wrong."
But Deming kept his job, in large part because he was a local coaching hero, parents and victims said. During his career, Deming took the Blaine wrestlers — the Borderites — to 14 league championships, 10 district championships, seven regional championships and a state title.
In 1990 — the same year he won state coach-of-the-year honors — Deming was charged with first-degree child molestation after another 10-year-old reported that he rubbed her breasts and touched her near her genitals.
District officials suspended the coach, and the town revolted.
"He was a big celebrity up in Blaine," said James Hoogestraat, a lawyer representing the 10-year-old victim in an ongoing lawsuit against the district. "People circulated petitions asking that the school not terminate him."
Deming kept his job until March 1991, when Whatcom County Deputy Prosecutor Mac Setter offered a deal: Setter would dismiss charges if Deming resigned and never taught again. Charges were dropped, and Deming resigned. But it didn't take long before he was teaching again.I can speak a little about how the culture of sports and winning keeps people quiet when something is wrong because I feel hesitant, as an adult living 3000+ miles away from where I grew up, typing this blog entry. I wonder how people will react to me making the comparison between their beloved coach and wrestling program and what's happening in the news right now. I was in Randy Deming's classes, he was my gym, health and, even for a short time, my music teacher, in elementary school in the early 1980's. I heard the comments described in the legal complaints against him, how girls were inferior and comments made about their bodies - 7, 8, 9, 10 year old girls. I saw him give back and shoulder massages to girls, sit them on his lap, and smack them on the butt or even kiss them, I heard him make comments when their bodies began to develop. None of this was hidden, it was simply accepted as normal. No matter how much I hated going to his classes, how wrong it felt, no adults said it was wrong so it must have been okay. This is what you think when you're a kid, no matter how many times you hear it's wrong when you see it going on all around you and no other adults are doing or saying anything, you assume you must be the one who is wrong. Finding out many years later how many adults did know and did nothing doesn't do much to change that view.
I think about how this played out in front of me as a kid because of a successful wrestling program in a tiny town and then I try and magnify that thousands, millions of times and imagine the protective halo over the Penn State football program. In those terms, it is not in any way surprising to see how someone with the power of Jerry Sandusky could terrorize young boys for years, for decades, in Pennsylvania untouched by parents, university officials or law enforcement.
To say it is a tragedy is an understatement, there are really no words that can describe the suffering and the damage when the trust a child puts in an adult is broken in this way. This ESPN article where other athletes describe the aftermath of sexual assault at the hands of a coach does not paint an optimistic picture of what the victims go through even after the abuse stops. How many lives have been ruined by Jerry Sandusky and the culture that kept him working for a program and a charity that gave him an endless supply of victims? How do you put a price on some one's suffering, on their life? Is the suffering of even one child worth the success of an athletic program at any level? For every rational person that answers no to that question, there are countless others who have suffered in silence believing their lives were not as important as their abusers, or worse, came forward only to be victimized all over again when their stories are not taken seriously and investigated or even reported to law enforcement. It is sickening.
Sadly I fear that as horrifying as the details we already know about the allegations against Jerry Sandusky are, that we have yet to know the full depth of his actions. I have a hard time believing the time he was allegedly caught in a shower with a young boy in 1998 would have been the first time he had done something like that and I'm sick to my stomach thinking about the numbers of children he was in contact with throughout his career. And while the focus needs to stay on him and the victims in this case, any adults that knew or suspected something was wrong and didn't come forward need to be held responsible for their lack of action. It is the only way to try and preserve some sense of dignity and justice in this horrible story. Let this serve as a lesson to those who hurt children that they can not and will not get away with it and let this serve as a lesson to children that they will be believed when they speak out about abuse and perhaps most importantly, that there are adults willing to stand up for them and punish those who hurt them. That is what should be the focus right now, not the exit of a coward who preached excellence and responsibility then refused to show any when given an opportunity to stop a monster.
