A Time for Healing

Teddy Bear. Photo by Callen Harty.

The Jerry Sandusky trial is over.  The guilty verdicts have been delivered.  If the news trucks have not all packed up and gone already they will soon.  It is time for them to move on to the next story.

It is time for others to begin the process of healing.

The horrible reality of this crime is that everyone involved was left devastated.

The perpetrator has lost his freedom.  One can hope that the bondage of prison releases him from the bondage of his actions, because now he will at least be prevented from committing these acts upon any other children.  The horrible thoughts that brought him to do these things may still be there, but he will not be able to act out.  He will have the rest of his life to reflect on what he has done and on who he is at his core, to find some spiritual resolution, and hopefully to take responsibility in his own heart for all that he has done and all that he has destroyed.

Sandusky’s family, too, was victimized, as were all his friends and associates.  At some point they will have to realize that the preponderance of evidence was not because of some plot, but because of the actions committed by the man they loved and thought they knew.  Whether that is accepted or not their lives have been permanently and unalterably changed.  His wife’s twilight years, that she may have imagined spending with her husband in peaceful retirement, will now be spent missing him, wondering where it all went wrong, and, very likely, what she could have done differently.

The boys who were victimized, who are now all young men, must find a way to healing and somehow move on with their lives.  They were not left with scars from what happened to them–they were left with open wounds.  Scars imply the healing has already happened and left a reminder.  The likelihood is that at best the healing for these boys has only begun.  It may take years and for some of them they may never be able to fully recover and move past it.

What I learned from my own abuse is that a man can compartmentalize things, ignore things, and find many ways of not dealing with the issue at hand.  I drank myself into a stupor, I did other drugs, I contemplated and attempted suicide, I put walls around myself, and none of it stopped the interior pain that was my constant companion.  It was only when I quit drinking and quit trying to avoid the issue that I was able to begin any kind of healing at all.  I had to look at myself in the mirror and look deeply into my soul.

And then, after many, many years more what I finally realized was that healing begins in forgiveness.

I understood that as long as I held onto hatred, as long as I could not let go of it, my perpetrator still held power over me.  Once I let it go a burden was lifted, a lightness came to me, and I took the power over my life back from him.  This does not mean that all my pain went away in one magical instant.  In fact, I still have moments where my wound is reopened and brings forth all sorts of horrible memories–the Sandusky trial was one of those things that triggered me.  But for the most part I have been able to let it go and move on with my life, contributing to society instead of acting as a drain on it.

The way I see it the boys who were abused by Sandusky have two choices–to dwell in their pain and suffer in it as victims, or to find some kind of forgiveness and the ability to let it go, becoming survivors.  I believe Sandusky and his family have the same choices.  He can either take responsibility for his actions, acknowledge what he did, and forgive himself, or he can pretend it didn’t happen, that he’s innocent, and play the part of the victim who was wrongly accused and convicted.  His family will have the same choice–to admit what he did and forgive him for it, or feel victimized by the boys and the judicial system.

Understand that forgiveness doesn’t imply that the abuse was okay.  It is more a letting go, a release of the negative energies of hate and retribution.  It is an acceptance that the past is what it is and cannot be changed–it can either serve to burden a person with its weight or serve a person as a tool for growth.  One can’t find love or compassion, especially for oneself, if mired in hatred and negativity.  Forgiveness is the gift that leads to healing, through unburdening oneself of hatred and the discovery of self-love, and now that the trial is over it is a time for healing to begin.