Joe Paterno's fall from grace came as a shock, but only to those who missed signs of ethical decay in his football regime.Other close observers of Paterno’s world made a connection between sporting success and signs of impunity in the world beyond the field. “Has Penn State’s on-field progress led to off-field problems?” the ESPN program Outside the Lines asked in 2008. As the Nittany Lions won more games, their players more often broke the law. Between 2002 and 2008, 46 Penn State players were charged with a total of 163 crimes; 27 were found guilty. The Daily Beast was not able to obtain information confirming how many of those charged were accused of sex crimes but there were at least four cases of students accused of sex crimes during that period.Penn State is far from the only sports program to have a problem with sex crimes. Nor is the problem limited to college sports. In 2004, with a rape trial for NBA star Kobe Bryant in the news, USA Today combed court records and found that of 168 sexual-assault allegations made against professional and student athletes over a 12-year period, just 22 went to trial, and only six resulted in convictions. Forty-six cases ended in plea agreements, the newspaper found—a stark contrast to the conviction rates for nonathletes.
The rape of a child is, of course, different than the rape of an adult woman—a different crime, punished differently by the law, and with different lasting effects on the victim. But when the crime may have been perpetrated by a person affiliated with a popular sports program some ugly parallels emerge. Incidents can go unreported, perpetrators unpunished—or lightly punished—and the police kept out of things.
“It really is the same thing,” said Delilah Rumburg, who heads the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. “There is this betrayal when someone you know rapes you, whether you’re a child or adult.” Institutions—whether a sports program or, say, the Catholic Church—reflexively protect their own, which allows predators to stay free, Rumburg says. “They build this cloak of secrecy to protect an icon, as well as the institution,” says Rumburg. “It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can’t let someone know that this is happening within our family’—in this case, an institution that happens to be Penn State.”
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/12/joe-paterno-s-troubling-attitude-toward-sex-charges.html