Child Rape: It's Personal!

Finally the whole nation is talking about it. It doesn't surprise me that this time it's big time college football that gives us another opportunity to get it right. Oddly, I don't have much hope we will. We've been here before. Only when it's boys, and only when it's all male institutions and all male institutions we revere out of all proportion to the horror to the crime they have committed, serially, creating many, many victims, over decades, leaving lifetimes of wreckage that will ripple out into the lives of others when we stop and look in horror and wait. Will we just look and move on this time again? I was a raped child. The wreckage lives on in me. It's personal!

The perpetrators of these crimes have lived like heros, gods among men, rewarded with riches and fame, and honors.  Are we shaken enough to stop for a moment and gasp? What have we done! Will we hold them accountable?  Will we charge them all (and there are many) with the crime of child rape? Will we fully investigate?  Will we find all the victims? Will we pay them reparations for their injured lives, the therapy they'll need, the emotional support they will continue to need? Are we willing to keep our eyes focused on the worst within what we thought was our best?  If we're asking men who worship sports heroes and famous coaches to do that job for us, I fear we'll be let down.