In today's Daily Beast, Diane Diamond has written a beautiful piece regarding the unseen victims of the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse and cover-up scandal.
Penn State’s Hidden Victims
As everyone here knows, SwedishJewfish (Rebecca, my sister survivor and co-founder of Tree Climbers) spoke out for the first time about the child sexual abuse she suffered as a child. It was that guttural cry that brought me here - brought us together and started this movement now known as Tree Climbers. As a result of that single post, there have been countless others who have been helped, who have spoken out for the first time, who have sought professional help for a private pain, who have shared their stories and encouraged others to speak.
Thank you for standing up for this little girl...
and for all victims of Child Sexual Abuse. I am proud to work side by side with you on this venture.
Excerpt from Diane's article:
After Sandusky’s arrest in November 2011, Connecticut nurse Rebecca Berry obsessively followed every development. She attended each day of the trial in Bellefonte, Pa., and on June 22, the night the packed courtroom waited to hear the verdict, Berry sat in the back of the room taking in great gulps of air, her face red, tears streaming down it. As a survivor of repeated childhood rapes by her best friend’s stepfather, Berry was fighting a cacophony of emotions. She had never had the occasion to face her abuser in court, she told The Daily Beast, yet she felt compelled to watch what happened to Sandusky. Months earlier, upon hearing platitudes for the late Penn State coach Joe Paterno upon his death, Rebecca’s passion for supporting survivors took hold of her. She penned a caustic and widely read post at the Daily Kos titled, “F@*k Joe Paterno,” which graphically outlined the psychological fate of child-abuse victims (using herself as an example) and condemned the entire Penn State hierarchy for doing nothing to determine precisely why Sandusky had allegedly been taking campus showers with young boys since at least 1998.
“I have no guilt or shame about saying to every single person who knew, who suspected, who was outright told and passed the buck on to someone else while children were being raped by grown men ... Fuck you for not doing your goddamn job or fulfilling your most basic moral obligation as an adult to protect children who were being harmed.” Berry’s post prompted thousands of comments and immediately went viral between survivors and their support sites.
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