Law and Order SVU: How Did They Know and When Did They Know It?
What a tragedy. Joe Paterno, fired in disgrace. Joe Paterno, the much admired, the Penn State football coach who embodied integrity, fired, disgraced. “What did he know and when did he know it?” people ask.
What astonishes me is that the situation almost exactly parallels a recent episode of Law and Order SVU about which I recently blogged, in September.
In that episode, a much-admired football coach is reported to be preying on young men in his foundation, young men for whom he gave an opportunity to ‘be someone;’ he trained them, gave them motivation and the possibility of a lot of money, fame and good things for their very poor families. His victims were burdened by a debt of gratitude, combined with the shame of male-on-male sex, which they did not want to become public knowledge. The combination of gratitude and shame kept them silent, until one spoke out. It took a lot of courage, but finally, a big star who had come through this depraved coach’s program went public, appeared before the grand jury, and set the example.
The similarities are eerie. In Law and Order, however, the coach who had preyed on young players in the showers and locker rooms did not bring down a highly regarded top-ranking program director, and a university president.
Joe, we are so sorry this has happened to you, and we hope that posterity will recognize that one poor decision is counter-balanced by a lifetime of integrity. We pray that young men victimized by Defensive Coach Jerry Sandusky will come forward, have their voices heard, and be able to move on with their lives, knowing that Sandusky will be punished. We pray for their families, who had no idea what was happening in their sons’ lives. It’s a sad time all the way around.
And thanks be to God, we live in a society where the trustees made the right decision, they fired the men who looked the other way as Sandusky victimized his young men. Thank God, this dirty laundry was not buried away to be forgotten, but brought forward, the perpetrator arrested and shamed publicly. There are times, in this world, when in the interest of the God of football, or the respect of position, when a scandal victimizing the poor and voiceless is shoved under the table, ignored, the victims sent the message that they don’t matter. As bitter as this pill is, I thank God for it, and for the increasing transparency in our society which begins to equalize justice for rich and poor.
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I am not American, not a sports fan, and had never heard of Joe Paterno, but when I noticed his picture in a headline today, without even knowing what the scandal was about, my immediate first thought was .. “That guy looks just like a guest star I’d seen in an episode of SVU”. (Who, it turns out, is Dan Lauria)
Imagine my surprise as I read the article and recalled the subject of the episode.
I realize that while the episode somewhat mirrors this scandal the Dan Lauria character was more representative of Jerry Sandusky than Joe Paterno, but I have no doubt that he was cast for his eerie similarity to Joe Paterno, presumably the more recognizable face from the real scandal. I’ve noticed a number of L&O “ripped-from-the-headlines” episodes in which the guest star bore striking resemblance to a protagonist from the events that inspired the episode: eg Nick Chinlund in “Embedded” (put a mustache on Chinlund and he IS Geraldo Rivera! š )
LOL, Steve, I had not noticed the physical resemblance, but I thought the plot SO similar that it’s hard to believe it would be a coincidence. You almost have to wonder if the script writers were not tipped off. The episode aired in September; I am betting the grand jury was convened around the same time. I would not be surprised of the ‘coach’ in the SVU episode was not chosen for his similarity to Sandusky.
I guess I feel some compassion for Joe Paterno because he is a man with a solid gold reputation who has lost everything because he did not do enough – he erred by omission. He left undone something he ought to have done. We’ve all been there. He’s paying a heavy price.
Sandusky should have been stopped. It’s tragic. He preyed on young people. The feelings it arouses in me makes me really really glad for gun control laws.
Not only that, there was a recent episode called “Missing Pieces” where a mother left her child in the car and walked into a store only to claim the child had then been abducted. This is exactly what is going on in Bellevue, WA right now with the mother who claimed to run out of gas and leaver her 2 year old son in the car where was was “allegedly” abducted.
I saw that, Brian. And I saw that law officers think maybe it was a copy-cat kind of thing. I feel sorry for the mothers; yes, if a child goes missing, usually it is a parent, but . . . what if it isn’t? In addition to suffering the anguish of wondering where their child is, they have to worry about things they did that seemed normal enough at the time, but later look suspicious. There is the other missing child, the one seemingly taken from her bedroom while her mother was drinking and her dad at work . . . and not a clue as to her fate.
I suspect a minor story will break about how L&O:SVU got the story and so many of the details right.
I will say this first; I am saddened to hear about the Penn state scandle. It is so hard to believe that a coach could do those things to those children for all those years while his superiors ignored it. I understand that the players now as well as some of the schoool community are taking the coaches side, but I can’t be anything but mad that something was not done sooner.
I guess as long as the team keeps winning and the money keeps flowing in then there is never a problem. It is such a sick thing if you really think about it.