Sexual abuse of children can take place in supposedly "safe" institutions, and the administrators of those institutions may act slowly, or not at all, in response.
Sports, particularly college sports, is an entertainment industry, run by bureaucrats charged with protecting their school's brand - sometimes at great cost.
Karen Schrock, a freelance blogger in Bellefonte, Pa., about 10 miles from State College, was an early observer of the emotional outpouring that followed Paterno's firing in November.
After students protested his dismissal, Schrock titled a Nov. 10, 2011, blog for Scientific American "Why Penn State Students Rioted - They Deify Joe Paterno." Research on the mentality of group membership suggests that "all of us have a tendency to stick up for our idols and leaders even in the face of serious wrongdoing," she wrote.
In an e-mail, Schrock says that "to me, it's obvious that the story would capture everyone's attention because it involved a truly sordid crime and implicated a living legend. Add in the local community's reaction of defensiveness when they were told their beloved founding father might not have done enough to protect their children - inspiring disbelief and outrage in everyone outside the community - and you have even more fuel for the fire."
Did media coverage fan the fire - or was this a story that would have burst into flame no matter what?
Christopher Harper is an associate professor of journalism at Temple University. He also was with ABC's 20/20 in 1989, when the show did an exposé of child-abuse charges against Catholic priests. He thinks the long, continuing shadow of that scandal falls right across the Paterno story.
