I do not consider myself to be a particularly brave person. Fortunately, perhaps, I am also aware that those of us who are particularly introspective and self-critical are neither the best nor the fairest judges of ourselves. Before I begin today’s post, I thought it to be fair and proper to give readers of this blog a warning that this particular entry is going to talk about matters that are deeply personal to me, strike at the core of my identity as a human being, and deal with a tangle of issues like honor, education, and justice that I am even more vehement about than about most matters of interest to me. Therefore, if you are disinterested in dealing with serious and potentially disturbing issues, I suggest you go elsewhere.

When the Jerry Sandusky case came out, before all of the sordid and deeply disturbing elements of that case were exposed in the harsh light of day, I commented on how the institutionalized acceptance of a sexual predator by Penn State’s administration threatened the legacy of all who were a part of that institution, including longtime coach Jo Paterno, who has since died [1]. As a result of the case, we now know that Jo Paterno himself was above board, as was the assistant coach who witnessed one of the rapes occurring in the athletic showers at Penn State University. However, their decency was (tragically) trumped by immensely corrupt superiors who were unwilling to perform their legal duty to protect children from a monstrous sexual predator who, now convicted on nearly all of the counts brought against him, faces more than 400 years in jail. He will be lucky to survive even one percent of that sentence.

An alarmingly large percentage of prisoners have admitted to prior physical and sexual abuse before their criminal history (among women it is particularly dramatic) [2]. This is not a coincidence. A crime as horrible as sexual abuse, which corrupts the natural respect and regard that exists between people of an unequal level of power and uses that power to exploit vulnerable victims, and uses sex as a weapon to humiliate and dominate those who cannot resist and have nowhere to run or hide, is an act of the most gross evil. When institutions deliberately act to protect such abusers, and to enable them (as Penn State’s administration enabled Sandusky) to deliberately target vulnerable children from troubled backgrounds, they share in being guilty of that gross evil as accomplices.

The sole reason that institutions like families, churches, schools, and governments have power and authority granted to them by God in the first place is to serve, guide, teach, and help others. When those institutions cross the line from serving and helping others to abusing those who are under their care, whether we are talking about adults who abuse and neglect their children or other young relatives, or institutions like Jerry Sandusky’s Second Mile that deliberately target and exploit vulnerable young men by using a position as a surrogate father to get close to them, not only do such people commit horrible abominations themselves, but they also make it very difficult for those survivors, now even more burdened than before, to have a proper respect and regard for authorities and institutions that have proven to be deliberately abusive and untrustworthy.

This is a serious matter. When authorities destroy their legitimacy by abuse, they do not only destroy their own legitimacy in the eyes of survivors, but they gravely endanger the legitimacy of any authority, and make it very difficult for people to find trust in relationships in general. This sort of damage can be overcome, with the help of God, but the road is a deeply difficult one, a road I personally know well and am still on. One thing that tends to happen, if such people are not so deeply scarred and corrupted by the evil that they behave likewise (as do so many criminals, many of whom will no doubt we very willing to enforce rough justice on someone like Jerry Sandusky), is that such people are extremely harsh toward even the slightest move toward abuse of power and authority, because such actions by institutions and authorities are so deeply abhorrent and so deeply personal. I cannot bear to watch people bullied, or to even read about abuses against the vulnerable in any place or circumstance without feeling deeply upset. And so my own deeply traumatic life has made me a rather ferociously just defender of the underdogs or the outcasts or the vulnerable, simply because the exploitation of such people is something I view as a personal attack on me, having known all too well what it feels like for myself.

And equally frustrating is that it is the survivors and targets of such abuses that have nowhere to run or hide. Those who commit such abuses have power, whether as adults instead of children, strength instead of weakness, positions of official authority, whether in institutions or in government, and so they do not have to feel terrorized or unsafe even in their own minds. They can pretend as if everything is okay because they do not feel the shame for such actions themselves. Whatever guilt they have is assuaged away in the normal discharge of their duties, which in their minds outweighs whatever lapses that they admit into their own consciences. And institutions over and over again show that they would rather protect abusers than to defend the vulnerable and powerless. In the short term, this protects abusers from scrutiny and allows them to go largely unchecked. In the long term, this collusion between abusers and institutions means that those of us who for our own honor and dignity and duty-bound to do battle with that grave evil of abuse and exploitation now must attack institutions and not only isolated evildoers, because of the way in which evildoers have become so enmeshed in those institutions. And that much graver threat makes the fight against abuses even more dangerous to the powers that be, because of their own inability to judge righteously and to defend and help and protect those under their care.

It is a brave act to speak up against those abuses. The survivors of sexual abuse who bravely faced the questions of lawyers in the Jerry Sandusky case are to be commended. It is an immensely brave act to openly discuss what someone did in front of an audience that will contain some people who will accuse them of making up stories, of trying to gain sympathy or money from others, and other such insults. Sadly, when it comes to such grave sins as sexual abuse, it is more often the survivors than the accused who have to defend their honor to others [3]. And this bravery extends not only to those who speak up about the wrongs committed against them, but speak up against any kind of abuses by people embedded within institutions, even in much less serious matters.

Several years ago, I made a lengthy comment about the plagiarism committed by “Dr.” Martin Luther King Jr. in his doctoral dissertation, which he largely stole, unattributed, from a previous graduate who had been a World War II veteran [4] [5]. I think it, unfortunately, necessary to comment that this politically motivated doctorate, and the ferocity by which people protect ill-gotten legitimacy in the academic world, is a reasonably widespread phenomenon in Thailand as well. Just like MLK, a well-connected Thai “academic,” who is currently the Director of the sustainability-supporting National Innovation Agency, recently had his Ph.D revoked by elite royalist Chulangkorn University after several years of scandal, which included a rather ferocious comment by the prestigious Times Higher Educational about the obvious plagiarism [6].

What was the response of the Thai elite to the exposure of one of their own (and one of their elite universities) to this blatant example of academic fraud? Was it a thorough investigation dedicated to finding the truth and acting accordingly? No. Instead, it forced a Bangkok Post reporter named Erika Fry to flee from Thailand under the threat of a charge for criminal defamation, which in Thailand would have carried years worth of prison. Telling the truth can be a hostile occupation, and we must commend Erika Fry for her immense bravery in telling the truth, which was easier because she had somewhere to run, namely the West, where attitudes toward truthtelling have not yet reached the sordid levels of Thailand. Like many corrupt institutions, Chulangkorn University only revoked the Ph.D (without telling the NIA director, apparently) when it became an international embarrassment, not when the truth was revealed to it.

It is obvious why scoundrels wish to embed themselves in institutions. After all, such institutions give people a legitimacy they would lack based on their own personal character. It is less obvious, and more troubling, why institutions deliberately seek to defend the morally and ethically corrupt people who use them to gain legitimacy in the eyes of others that they do not deserve. Do they not see that granting legitimacy to people who commit gross sexual sin or corrupt plagiarism threaten the legitimacy of those institutions, be they educational or political or religious in nature? Do they not understand that when we take the side of evildoers we share in their sins, and that we make those who are enemies of evil enemies of our own offices and positions and authority?

Why, in a world where institutions are under all kinds of assaults as being corrupt and illegitimate, would the leaders of these institutions go out of their way to shield and protect the openly corrupt? Why do they claim executive privilege, or blame the survivor, or try to shoot the messenger? Are our leaders and elites, all around the world, so irredeemably corrupt that they cannot act on truths that are brought to their attention because they are so insecure and so threatened that they believe it to be impossible to admit past evil in one of their cronies or face the exposure of other unpleasant truths that are still uncovered that would be deeply and personally implicate them? By defending open and flagrant evildoers, institutions like Penn State University and Chulangkorn University threaten their own legitimacy in a world where legitimacy is hard to come by. There are no good answers to the questions I asked, or even about the fact that it is necessary to ask some answers to make sense of the refusal of prestigious institutions to show any concern with morality or ethics whatsoever. How can organizations and institutions that are so unable to defend standards of moral and ethical conduct be trusted to educate, guide, and protect our children?

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/old-school/

[2] bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/parip.pdf

[3] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/on-the-credibility-of-rape-victims/

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/11/us/boston-u-panel-finds-plagiarism-by-dr-king.html

[5] http://nathanalbright.blogspot.com/2006/01/our-nations-favorite-plagiarist-day.html

[6] http://asiancorrespondent.com/84719/influential-people-criminal-defamation-and-a-foreign-reporter-nias-directors-ph-d-revoked/