Who Enables Sexual Predators?
Who led the many teenage girls into Larry Nasser's closed-door office where he examined and treated them, unchaperoned, by inserting his ungloved finger into their vagina?
Predator-enablers cannot be viewed as accessories to Nasser's many hundred crimes. But they were abettors. How many coaches and athletes saw Jerry Sandusky flitting around prepubescent boys, many of whom he sodomized in the showers of Penn State Athletic buildings. Abettors also.What about the parents of the two prepubescent boys who were allowed to spend days and nights and weeks alone with Michael Jackson while he played penis and butt? Abettors also.
Sexual Abuse and Institutions
When the scandal about Catholic priests in Boston abusing children burst onto the front page all over America, an outrage against certain institutions began fomenting. Immersed in the world of the psyche, I have wondered about how institutions, unwittingly, provide opportunities for predators, and even indirectly promote predation within their own ranks. I also wonder about the predator. Do they enter institutions with the aim of using them to provide access to victims? Or is there a mysterious systemic complicity that induces or releases predatory behavior within the stated mission of the institution, whether religious worship, education, sports training, artistic enterprise, or summer camp?