What if Jerry Sandusky had been a priest?
By John Gilbert
The aftermath of the Penn State scandal surrounding assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual molestation of at least 10 young boys over a 15-year period, continues. Sandusky is in prison, for life, we assume. Penn State’s president, vice president, and athletic director are dismissed in disgrace for agreeing to suppress the reporting of Sandusky’s hideous trail of the worst criminal conduct. And coach Joe Paterno was fired, and died, but continues to be disgraced because he promoted covering up the scandal for the sake of the Nittany Lions reputation.
It is absolute overkill how vindictive the American public and sports media have been in trying to heap disgrace and punishment on Penn State’s football program. We can all agree that the law says anyone who knows anything, or suspects anything, about child molestation must report it to authorities or is guilty of violating the law as well, and at Penn State, they blew it.
With that in mind, let’s reread a story on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently. It was well-written by Abby Simons, and told the story of Jim Keenan, 45, who claimed he had repressed memories about being sexually abused and molested by a former Catholic priest, Thomas Adamson, in 1980 or 1981, when Adamson was serving at Church of the Risen Savior in Burnsville, MN. Adamson was defrocked in 1984.
Keenan filed a lawsuit six years ago against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and the Diocese of Winona, claiming church officials there knew of the sexual abuses and covered it up. The church’s defense was that the six-year statute of limitations had run out, and Ramsey District Judge Gregg Johnson agreed, dismissing the case in 2010 with the ruling that the repressed-memory stance was unreliable. A Minnesota Court of Appeals, however, ruled in favor of Keenan and his attorney, Jeff Anderson, and reversed that ruling a year ago, leading the case on to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled 4-2 that there was no concrete evidence the repressed memory condition was reliable, and overturned the Court of Appeals decision in July of 2012.
In the course of the litigation, the Star Tribune article says, Anderson obtained an archdiocesan list it had compiled showing 33 priests who had been accused of sexual abuse involving minors, and the Diocese of Winona has a similar list of 13 more such abusers. That’s not separate cases, but 46 total priests who have been accused of sexually molesting children.
The Ramsey district judge ruled those lists should be sealed, pending the outcome of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s decision on the case. However, when the Minnesota Supreme Court threw out the lawsuit by a 4-2 vote, with the majority saying repressed memory is not scientifically established, the verdict also left permanently sealed the list of those 33 priests in the Twin Cities and 13 more in the Winona Diocese.
How can that be? If it is a law that anyone knowing or suspecting child sexual abuse must report it, how can the Catholic Church and its regional hierarchy justify putting together a list of priests accused of sexual abuse of youngsters, and not have to report it to authorities or make it public? How can they be innocent while knowingly suppressing this information?
Where are the protests demanding dismissals, trials, and prison sentences for the succession of priests, bishops, cardinals, on up to the Pope, who presumably knew of the abuse charges of some or all of the 46 abusers? Where are all those righteous, anti-Penn State columnists and editorialists who rightfully ripped Jerry Sandusky for using his power as a football assistant coach to abuse kids, and why aren’t they reacting similarly to the dozens of cases of child sexual abuse by priests right here in Minnesota? Is it reprehensible for an assistant college football coach to be a pedophile, but it’s apparently tolerated and allowed to be covered up when similar acts are done by priests?
In Rochester, Minnesota, former priest Thomas Adamson, age 79, is living his life in his own manner, because despite being named in multiple lawsuits, he has never faced criminal charges. Maybe he feels lucky to have gotten away from all but his own conscience. We can only wonder what he was thinking about as he watched, listened to, and read the avalanche of venom aimed at Jerry Sandusky during his trial, and Penn State in the aftermath. Maybe he sympathizes with Jerry Sandusky. And maybe he realizes that Sandusky would have been much better off if, instead of being an assistant football coach, he had been a priest.
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About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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