McKenna on "The Cruel Lesson of Penn State"

(Orin Kerr)

Over at Slate, law professor Mark McKenna has a courageous essay on the abuse allegations at Penn State — and how they have encouraged him to speak out for the first time about his own victimization. An excerpt:

A student raised his hand in my torts class last week and asked whether Joe Paterno might be exposed to liability for failing to tell the police about Jerry Sandusky's alleged sexual assault of a young boy in the Penn State locker room. It was a perfectly legitimate question—we had been studying tort law's general reluctance to impose liability for omitting to act. And it didn't come as a surprise—I have always encouraged students to bring current events to class, and the Penn State situation was nearly impossible to avoid last week. Still, I had prayed no one would ask about it because I was not sure I could make it through any sort of answer. As I'd feared, the question stopped me cold.

I have spent the better part of my life working to cover wounds from my own childhood abuse, about which I have never spoken publicly. In fact, I've hardly talked about it at all; I can count on two hands the number of people who know anything about it. Some of my siblings will learn of it from this article.

. . . [A]s the story has remained in the headlines and the uncomfortable conversations have continued, I haven't been able to shake an overwhelming feeling that I failed Sandusky's victims and, by extension, far too many other boys. Abuse thrives on silence. In some cases, as the Penn State situation makes clear, the silence of third parties gives perpetrators license. But victims' silence also plays a huge role. This is true in the immediate aftermath of the abuse, where victims' inability to speak out puts them (and others) at further risk. It's also true much more generally. Several of my friends, for example, were shocked when Rick Reilly reported that, according to a 1998 study on child sexual abuse by Boston University Medical School, one in six boys in America will be abused by age 16. For girls, it's one in four by the age of 14. They were shocked, no doubt, because concrete examples of abuse are not as available to them as the statistics suggest. Most people don't think they know any abuse victims.

But they do know victims. They just don't realize it, because so many of us have been unable to reveal ourselves. This breeds a false sense of security, with too many adults believing abuse is someone else's problem.

. . . So here it is: I am a victim of sexual abuse.

I say this now, at age 36, in the hopes it can make a small difference to those currently suffering in silence. You know them, I promise. They are your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers, and, painfully, your children. Be a safe place for these people. If you are one of them, I am sorry. Know you are not alone.

Thanks, Mark, for writing this.