Are Institutions of men the problem?

Matt Tompkins

After the guilty verdicts were handed down to Jerry Sandusky, I felt relief that justice had come to those innocent people who were so hurt by his horrific actions; however, I didn’t feel fully satisfied as to the result. 

I began to think about how this could happen and why it did happen.  I realize that there are those individuals who are sick and twisted, those who are purely evil in their intentions.  Even with the harsh reality that there are those who only intend to hurt others, even if they are insane or delusional to their vicious actions, there has to be an explanation as to what caused this and why it seems to run to rampid through our society.

The one connection I keep coming back to is the involvement of men and fear of the institutions they vastly dominate.

Before I continue, please know that in each of these institutions the majority of men are good and decent.  I don’t like to paint with broad strokes and would never want to give the impression that simply by being a part of an organization someone is in the same category as the most evil of men.  This is simply a look at the institutions we hold so high and trying to understand why these horrific sex crimes run so heavily throughout them. Having participated in these different institutions myself, I know that the vast majority who participate are the most commendable of people with honorable intentions.

Sports.  Sports, ranging from football to baseball to bowling is an institution dominated by men.  Not just on the collegiate level but also on the professional, men vastly dominate it as players, coaches and in the media who cover it.  Sadly, sex crimes run rampant in sports.  Not every case is as severely cruel as that of Jerry Sandusky, but that doesn’t make the abuse of women through sexual assault and harassment or date rapes any less significant.  These sex crimes go unreported for the most part due to the fear of the institutions these men are a part of. 

The Military.  Another area where sex crimes have been, for a large part, ignored is the military.  The cases of women being raped by their fellow soldiers and officers is alarming as more and more of these women are finding the courage to come forward today.  It is once again fear that keeps women silent; fear of being dishonored or kicked out of their unit, fear of not finding any justice or (as ridiculous as it sounds) even fear of being punished for speaking out about the crimes committed against them. These women follow the chain of command which means there have been many cases where they have to report the sex crime to the person who  committed the sex crime, something almost as offensive as the act itself.  It is hard to know how far back these crimes have been happening, but recently it looks more like an epidemic than just the occasional horror story.

The Church. Perhaps the most infamous sex crimes in the modern age are those involving the Catholic Church.  These priests have betrayed the most sacred of relationships, abusing the most innocent and unknowing in the children we all wish to protect.  The church is more feared than any other organization on the planet, in fact it is often considered a compliment to have “the fear of God” in you.  Once again this fear made it difficult for victims to come forward and seek justice for the sex crimes committed against them, and it wasn’t until recent years that anyone in the church even acknowledged a problem; though there are still those criminals who have sought sanction in the church and who have never faced punishment for their crimes.

The commonalities of these institutions are the sex crimes, the fear and power they command on our society and the fact that they are widely dominated by men. 

I don’t really have an answer as to why this is, but I hope that we have come far enough along in our evolution as a society to acknowledge that there are these striking similarities between them and work to fix the root of the problem destroying so many innocent lives.

Today I see nothing but rage toward Jerry Sandusky, and justly so, however I hope that we channel this form of passion into fixing our most powerful institutions instead of letting it die with the criminals they have protected for so many years.

I won’t go so far as to claim that these institutions are responsible for producing these sex criminals, but just as the University of Penn State is responsible for letting such horrific crimes committed by Jerry Sandusky go on for decades longer than they should have (leading to more child victims 10 years after they had found out about him), as a society we should not stand idly by and allow these most powerful institutions ignore the sex crimes committed against the innocent.

When we don’t speak up for the innocent who do not have a voice, we are no better than those who committed the crime in the first place.