By Pat Stacey
The Penn State sexual abuse scandal has become a textbook
study on how not to handle an organizational crisis.
That sounds kind of sterile so let's say this
case was handled so poorly, at so many levels, it is hard to find a
beginning. But the overriding theme is
that people made choices – wrong choices – and put the mighty Penn State
football program, and admittedly their own careers at risk, over the well being
of some very innocent probable victims.
People
in all levels of the organization made the decision to pass the responsibility
on to someone else, hoping that the problem would go away, when in actuality,
they probably helped the alleged violations continue.
Joe Paterno, one of the greatest college
football coaches has his career permanently blemished and his legacy will
continue to decay because he did not do what he should have as a human
being. He knew the allegations and also
knew when nothing was done. And that is
where he failed.
It happened at Penn
State but the same set of wrong decisions could happen anywhere, in any
organization. People cannot put fear or self interest over the interest of
victims of crimes and for that matter we can't put that self interest over even
so called victimless crimes.
There will
be continued fallout from the Penn State tragedy but perhaps it will be publicized
enough to make others with knowledge of crimes, step forward, boldly, knowing
they are doing the right thing and it will make for a Better East Texas.
All content © Copyright 2000 - 2013 WorldNow and KLTV, a Raycom Media Station.
