In the Mind of Jerry Sandusky

People are saying he’s a monster. I don’t completely agree, although he has done monstrous things that damage people’s lives.

We ask ourselves how he couldn’t know the effect he was having and, if he did, we ask ourselves why he continued doing it. Those are good questions, and we can never know the answers. These questions have been on my mind for several years, and I have a few thoughts that are far from being answers—but they are on my mind a great deal right now.

I want for us to understand how this happens. At what point does something like this begin, and how on earth can we interfere with the process once it starts? I admit a certain amount of compassion for the Jerry Sandusky’s of the world. I can’t imagine that someone lives this live without having experienced a major snafu in his own development. I wonder how much a person can really admit to himself about what he’s doing, and I wonder what that does to someone’s sense of soul and life to be so constantly deluding himself.

I keep thinking about what leads to the first instance of something as horrific as child sexual abuse. I’ve spent time with friends and family members who are all too familiar with child sexual abuse. I’ve known people who have been survivors as well as those who crossed those boundaries and engaged in sexual behavior (or behavior that is potentially sexual) with people they shouldn’t have.

One person I know always referred to himself as a late bloomer, not really aware or interested sexually until late middle school. At that time, he realized he was interested in the guys rather than the girls. Now, for most of us, middle school is a time when we can practice what it means to be romantic and sexual. We might flirt, talk with our friends about our crushes, enjoy daydreaming about that first kiss, and so on. And we are constantly surrounded by it at school. We see others learning the dance of romance, and our relationship skills develop right alongside all the other things we are learning to navigate as future adults.

So imagine someone who realizes that there is a different attraction. If he is surrounded by heterosexual conversation and activity and if it isn’t okay to talk about his real love interests at home or with friends, then perhaps this part of his self becomes stunted and delayed. Maybe it takes him years to come to terms with his sexual orientation. And by the time this happens, his relationship self can only then go back to where he was in middle school, when it all started. And his attraction picks up just where it left off—with middle school aged boys. Or maybe a woman grows up in a very sheltered home. By the time she is out on her own and finally allows herself to begin thinking about having romantic relationships, her attraction is to those who are high school age, just as she was when she first had a romantic interest in anyone.

Imagine someone who had an inappropriate or unhealthy introduction to sexual desire—maybe it involved pain or betrayal or happened at a too-young age. For many of us, when there is pain, we try to heal. And, sadly, sometimes we do this by repeating the behavior until it turns out right. Illogical, but true. But I’ve seen it happen far too many times. One of my long-time-ago friends had this thing for bad boys. She dated guys who’d been in jail, guys who did drugs, guys who somehow were always living life on the edge. Every single time, she got hurt. The logical response would be for her to say, “Oops. Bad choice. I better try something different next time.” Instead, she would think, “Wow. Not again. I’m such a failure because I could make pattern xyz work. In order to prove myself worthy, I need to tackle xyz again until I figure out how to do it right.” And that’s exactly what she did, again and again and again. One effort resulted in a 15-year marriage that ended in divorce. And the last time I talked with her, she called me, drunk on appletinis, to cry about how she was such a failure with guys after the first post-divorce bad boy dumped her. It is hard to break a habit, even a bad one.

From all accounts I’ve read, Jerry Sandusky’s perception was that he was in a relationship with each of the boys he assaulted. It sounds sick to us from the outside to think that a 60-something man would actually think he was in a real relationship with a young teen. But if his mind was stuck in a constant rewind of his own young teen years, then from his perspective, he was just trying to pick up where he left off—and when it didn’t work, he got stuck in the cycle of constant do-overs.

Perhaps in the case of person who has molested multiple children, each time it is an attempt to tap into a purity he has been missing for so long. Each time is an attempt to recreate something that had gone wrong and hope for a better ending this time around.

It’s hard to admit that we’ve done something wrong—and each time, it gets harder and harder. The darker the image, the harder it is to truly see what is staring at us in the mirror. Serial attempts at getting it right, each leading to seeing pain and distrust in the young person’s eyes…how many of us would have the courage to shake ourselves free of this obsession, the obsession to finally get it right? Each time we dig the hole, it gets harder and harder to climb out of. And denial is a powerful thing.

Somehow, somewhere, Jerry Sandusky started something wrong. Did it start with someone doing something wrong to him? Did it begin with a repressed homosexual desire in his own youth? Was he molested at some point?

It certainly is easier to draw black and white lines all over the place. We name someone a monster or predator, because it makes him “other” and allows us to feel disconnected from this person who has caused so much horrific pain. But people are complex creatures, and there’s a lot more grey area. Did he set out with the goal of causing pain to boys? Or did he set out with the goal of trying to connect with boys to have the relationships he craved in his life?

People say he’s a predator. But in some way, aren’t we all? In our quest for relationships and an effort to feel healed and whole, we do many things that can seem predatory. The man who calls a woman to ask for a date. The woman who parks her car next to her co-worker so they can just “happen” to run into each other after work.  The girl who texts a boy she likes.  The human who sees another soul—one that reminds him of his inner self, the one that needs to heal—and tries to help that other soul see a connection. The woman who finds herself alone with a person and yearns for her first kiss and takes it from someone she feels is more than a friend—even though the person has not yet crossed into the age of adulthood.

We need to work harder at understanding how these things happen so we can work on healing and making it stop. Are the courageous Sandusky survivors being provided with counseling, to help be sure they have healthy development? Are there others who try to tell us in some way that they have an attraction that crosses boundaries in an unhealthy way, and do we have systems in place to protect children as well as to protect these individuals from themselves?

I feel great compassion and heartache for those who have survived child sexual abuse. That does not mean that I am not able to also feel compassion for Sandusky and for others who have done these monstrous things to children and teenagers.  Compassion for all starts with trying to understand the perpetrators, from their own point of view. Only when we speak their language can we begin to talk them down off the ledge and prevent them from damaging so many other lives.