Of Angels, A Stranger, and an Absent Father

“Though we share so many secrets, there are some we never tell.” William Martin (Billy) JoelHe called it “The Stranger” and titled a 1977 masterpiece after it.   In my business we sometimes refer to it as the “third persona” with a nod to Jungian psychology.  A persona is simply a mask, the figurative one we put on to interact with others as we go about our lives.  Most of us wear several of them. Our first persona, generally, is what we show to the viewing world. A second may be what we show a lover or a trusted friend, sometimes intermittently and whether we want to or not.  But the third is a dark animal indeed. It’s the face we show to no one. It’s the side of ourselves we seek to conceal at all costs.  We all have these shadows of ourselves, these Strangers, inside of us.  As the song says, they are not always evil, and they are not always wrong.  But whether our third persona is harmless or not, a wicked trick of the mind is that we almost always to fail to recognize that it exists in others. We assume, tragically at times, that we can fully know people around us because of the personas they reveal to us. We tell ourselves that we can sense, we can see, we can discern.We can’t. The Stranger remains, hidden and invisible.Jerry Sandusky is no exception. He was charitable. He was hard working. He was skilled, admired, and accomplished. He was also, according to eye-witness testimony, a child rapist.  His third persona was apparently demonic, and regardless of how ugly and evil, his closest relatives, his wife, his co-workers and his legendary boss would not have detected it based on what he chose to show them. Thus reveals the one merciful thing that can perhaps be said about the group of men who, from all appearances at this point, conspired to protect Jerry Sandusky at the expense of so much. They didn’t understand the third persona, and believed they knew a man because of accomplishments and attributes that say nothing about what he is capable of otherwise.But mercy for men like Paterno, Curley, Schultz and others in the Institution that is Penn State evaporates with the reality that Sandusky’s persona was exposed at crucial times.  There were revelations- a smaller word will not suffice- that vomited a glimpse of it to the great Institution and to its “sainted” mastodon at different points on a long timeline.  These revelations are sometimes the only indications an otherwise decent community will receive that a predator stalks its children. The child victims themselves, God bless them, are often the last who will reveal the Stranger in the man; it’s just a bridge too far most of the time.Those without faith will call these revelations nothing more than dumb luck, inattention on Sandusky’s part, or the blind weight of circumstances.  But my own framework of faith suggests to me that these brief flashes of light in the darkness- the anal rape Mike McQueary saw in 2002, for instance, or the oral rape the janitor before him saw in 2000- represent the extremities of desperate and semi-potent angels, using whatever cosmic power they can summon to poke momentary holes in the darkness, thereby alerting the powerful to what the powerless cannot utter.When these extremities reached Joseph Paterno in March of 2002, the angels must have shouted with joy.  A more powerful man, one with more credibility, perceived decency and moral authority, could not possibly have been reached in the community in which Sandusky apparently hunted.  Ironically enough, a recognized origin of the name Paterno is a shortening of the Latin Pater Noster, or Our Father, the first two words of the only prayer Jesus allegedly taught his disciples.  The great man, the father figure, “St. Joe” himself now knew, and the Stranger in Sandusky would be exposed.But alas, there was an Institution to protect as well, and in the end it won out.  An all-too human Paterno responded as feebly as he legally could.  The two officials he went to responded by restricting Sandusky’s  access to facilities and his ability to bring boys onto campus.  The Institution was protected. The community that surrounded it, and its wide-eyed, star struck boys, could be damned.Perhaps these men can be forgiven for not knowing what I know; that the eight victims Sandusky is alleged to have abused is probably more like 80 or even much, much more than that.  That the after-effects of child sexual abuse result in a panoply of emotional, psychological and physical disorders that literally truncate lives, poison future relationships, stunt potential and shred hope itself like shrapnel.  That the “loss of innocence” suffered by boys abused in the way Sandusky is believed to have done so is almost trivial compared to the bleak, mental torture that follows. That the only way out is through, and that many simply never make it through.  That the morally bankrupt and cynical decisions made in 1998, 2000, and 2002, as well as before and after, allowed a man to further manufacture misery, betrayal and violence that will haunt lifetimes in its wake.Perhaps.  But at the end of the day, in 2002 and God only knows how many times before and after, these men bet an Institution and its football program over their community and the tender lives of its children.  While the victims themselves have paid most dearly for this terrible wager, their fate is tied inextricably to that of the community.  Now the suffering of both will echo louder than the joyful sound of the throngs in the stadium, and longer than the legacy of victories under fall skies.And the angels wept bitterly.