ZELIENOPLE, Pa. –The virtual epidemic of bullying that has led to a host of tightening of state regulations, special programs in schools and numerous suicides by bullied students has now come front and center in the ongoing Penn State child sexual abuse story: Victim #1 has resigned from high school after being bullied by classmates and fired football coach Joe Paterno has issued a statement, ABC News reports:
The boy who first came forward to accuse former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky of sexual assault has been harassed so intensely that he had to leave high school, prompting ousted coach Joe Paterno to speak out against bullying.
The mother of the alleged victim, who set off the investigation that has rocked the world of college sports and led to 40 counts of child sexual assault against Sandusky, told ABC News that students at her son’s high school blame him for triggering the sex abuse scandal that led to the firing of Paterno, the beloved head coach who oversaw the university’s Nittany Lions football team for 46 years.
Speaking exclusively with “Good Morning America,” the attorney representing Paterno said that the former coach denounces bullying, and called for respect in the name of the school.
“Coach Paterno strongly condemns harassment or bullying of any kind, and he asks anyone who truly cares about Penn State to conduct themselves honorably and with respect for others,” attorney J. Sedgwick Sollers told ABC News.
Paterno had previously called for a prayer for the victims of abuse in the wake of the scandal breaking. He hasn’t spoken publically since his ouster from the school and is reportedly battling lung cancer.
Psychologist Mike Gillum has been counseling the unnamed young man, who is referred to as Victim 1 in the Sandusky case grand jury report, for the past three years while the case was being investigated. He said that scorn and bullying can be a major concern for victims of abuse.
“It’s very scary,” Gillum told “GMA” this morning when discussing the state of mind of someone who’s come forward after being victimized for years.
“You wonder what kind of push-back or what kind of reaction and how far that reaction might go in terms of people in the community. Will people threaten you? How hostile will things become?” he said.
Bullying is a major problem and is NOT an issue because it is “”PC” as some now suggest.
I’m on a national tour that will last until the end of May in my nonblogging incarnation. I left San Diego Sept 4 –and I have since been in two communities where school students who were bullied took their own lives.
Some states such as New Jersey have clamped down on bullying, and school officials at many schools do programs, talk with students and have zero tolerance policies. But the brutality young people face that causes them to quit school or take their own lives is a real issue out there. In some cases, parents of bullies look the other way.
Here’s the ABC News report:
Victim One, the first known alleged victim of abuse by former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, had to leave his school in the middle of his senior year because of bullying, his counselor said Sunday.
Officials at Central Mountain High School in Clinton County weren’t providing guidance for fellow students, who were reacting badly about Joe Paterno’s firing and blaming the 17-year-old, said Mike Gillum, the psychologist helping his family. Those officials were unavailable for comment this weekend.
The name-calling and verbal threats were just too much, he said.
Intense bullying has led to civil lawsuits in some cases where parents feel officials don’t step in or clamp down hard enough on bullying when they spot it or anticipate it and try to prevent it — which may, in the end, be a bigger motivating factor to some than the pain and agony bullied students undergo.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.