<p>I found this sentence striking in comparison to Sanduskys.
No, he is too old to get out on parole, but his behavior was multiple incidents over years to multiple victims, and he was a rich white guy, who chose to put himself in the position to abuse children.</p>
<p>This mom was 22 when she beat her toddler, which I realize was heinous, but it was one incident, and she recieved a sentence of 99 years.</p>
<p>( She also has five kids- at 23. I think that would test the limits of even Mother Teresa at 23)
I don’t know what she did to try and find herself support, but I remember checking myself into the psych ward, because that was more acceptable :rolleyes: than staying with a friend for a couple days when my kids were young & H wasn’t around.</p>
<p>I hope the idea is that we are removing the perpetrators from another opportunity to abuse, permanently. For Sandusky, 30 years may as well be 99. But yeah, I still wish he’d gotten the symbolic 400+ years. </p>
<p>There is no excuse for striking a child. No matter what they do, no matter how taxed a person’s patience, no matter how many children there are or whether it is one time or twenty. No matter whether you have support, or don’t have support. Millions of exasperated parents who are also not rich white guys (and those who are) have made better choices than to chemically burn a little girl and beat her black and blue. The message we send that little girl is important: you are valuable, and grownups can’t treat you like this and get another chance to do it again OR you are just a child, and when grownups say they are really sorry they get to come back, and no one will save you. </p>
<p>If another woman had done this, would we want to excuse it as “only once”? If a teenage boy had done this, would we think 99 years was enough? So I see no reason to give “mom” a lighter sentence.</p>
<p><<“On September 7, 2011, you savagely beat your child to the edge of death,” State District Judge Larry Mitchell said in sentencing 23-year-old Elizabeth Escalona. “For this you must be punished.”>></p>
<p>It sounds like she almost committed a capital crime, in the state of Texas.</p>
<p>I didn’t say it should be excused- but I know there are not m/any support services for parents who need them- not any more in states with high teen pregnancy rates like Texas, than in states with lower rates.</p>
<p>I have compassion for the child, but also for a very young mother with five children.</p>
I don’t, not in this case. There are thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of young women with more kids than they can handle, and not enough help. Only a small fraction commit abuse of any kind, much less this level. This was repeated, imaginative, and punitive. My compassion is reserved for the millions of young mothers who get through without supergluing their kids to the wall and beating them into a coma.</p>
<p>Not likely. The kids are with the grandmother-the same one who admits her husband molested all of her daughters. Not someone I would want to send my young children to live with. Dysfunction is the order of the day with this family. The whole thing is tragic.</p>
<p>Anyone who has spent time reading and commenting on this thread should read this thoughtful piece–
[Why</a> I Resigned the Paterno Chair - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Why I Resigned the Paterno Chair”>Why I Resigned the Paterno Chair)</p>
Did I miss something, or did he never actually answer the title question? I could not find any place where he actually says “this is why I gave up the Paterno chair”.</p>
<p>"…What we do know is that everyone who had any knowledge of the 1998 investigation should have rung every available alarm, and gone to every appropriate authority, after McQueary reported what he saw in 2001. No one in the Penn State leadership did so, and that—not their responses three years earlier, when the district attorney sounded the all-clear—is what is unforgivable.</p>
<p>So there are two institutional failures here. The first, in 1998, is primarily a failure of our police and child-protection authorities. The second, in 2001, is primarily a failure of university governance. In between the first and the second, we now know that a couple of Penn State janitors, too, were aware of Sandusky’s criminal escapades, but told themselves they would lose their jobs if they reported what they saw. The cover-up in 2001 strongly suggests that their fear of a culture of secrecy at Penn State was well founded.</p>
<p>And that is damning enough—to the reputations of the men who never reported Sandusky to the police, and to the reputation of the university that once prided itself on its athletics integrity. That alone is enough to compel me to resign the chair I had once been so honored to hold…"</p>
<p>Cross posted with TT.</p>
<p>And this:</p>
<p>“As the world (even unto Antarctica) now knows, one of Gary Schultz’s 1998 notes reads: “Is this the opening of pandora’s box?” and “Other children?” Yes, Mr. Schultz, there were other children. Yes, it was Pandora’s box. We all wish you had followed up on those questions, and that taking such a step somehow would have prevented Sandusky from gaining access to any more young boys. It’s their lives that should have been everyone’s first concern. Surely, in that light, the fate of the Paterno chair recedes into unimportance.”</p>
<p>Only one problem with otherwise reasonable essay: the biggest “event” for 1998 was not the police investigation, but the child sex trafficking, paid for by the football program, that had Sandusky bring one of his “pets” across state lines to a bowl game.</p>
That is an argument for leaving the university, not resigning the chair. How does resigning that chair in any way address or reflect those complaints? Especially when he spends so much time lauding Paterno’s contributions? It seems like window dressing more than anything else - a desire to keep doing what he is doing, without having to discuss the issue everytime he hands someone a business card.</p>
<p>To put it another way, how can he simultaneously praise Paterno’s academic connection with the university through the endowment of the library, while eschewing Paterno’s academic connection with the university through the endowment of a professorship?</p>
<p>CF, With your logic students who feel the same way (take issue with those in power in a position to do something) should transfer. The Chair has Paterno’s name, PSU does not. He is free to make whatever decision he sees fit regarding the Chair and/or his position in general.</p>
Cosmic, you asked why the author says he resigned the Paterno chair. OhioMom and I found the passage in the article where he explains his reasons. If you dont like his explanation take it up w/ the author, not us.</p>
<p>“So, mini, why are the authorities not pursuing that? (Or why have we not heard that the authorities are pursuing that?)”</p>
<p>They may be (but I doubt it). Mann Act violations are federal, and since the main perpetrator is in jail for life, they can’t go after the accessories (or co-conspirators) unless they think it worthwhile to go after the main actor, or the one who likely authorized the pay out (Paterno). However, all of this could come to light in the civil case brought by Victim #4 (the boy who was trafficked in 1998), which I think the university will spend tens of millions to keep out of court. </p>
<p>I doubt that anyone is pursuing a criminal conspiracy to cover up (under the Rico statutes) from 2001 either.</p>