In 2016, Larry Nassar was arrested on charges of sexual abuse and possession of child pornography. This was after 30 years of working as the athletics trainer for the USA National Gymnastics Team, 19 as the athletic physician at Michigan State University (MSU), 24 as an alleged sexual abuser, damaging the lives of 150 gymnasts.
But this wasn’t just an individual, stand-alone case of sexual misconduct. This was simply a reflection of the many ways in which our institutions have systematically failed to protect our students.
We live in a society that makes it much more convenient for universities to keep the middle-aged, white molester on the payroll than to report a crime against a young woman and risk tarnishing a carefully crafted reputation.
This is the result of two main factors. First, our society has given too much influence to its powerful members. For centuries, we have been telling children that to speak up against an adult — parent, teacher, school athletic trainer — is to question authority and thus to question the fundamental structures of society. It is for this reason that children are often shocked into silence when they experience something as jarring as sexual abuse, because the very decision to speak up about abuse from a respected authority seems unnatural.
Second, our patriarchical rape culture shames victims and favors perpetrators. If we look at any sexual abuse scandal in recent years, we’ll find that in a large majority of them, be it Jerry Sandusky at Penn State or Harvey Weinstein at Miramax (who has denied the allegations against him), most victims chose not to immediately report the crime to authorities. It often takes years, and too many victims, to reach the critical mass that encourages victims to step forward and tell their stories. This is because narratives of male sexual entitlement are still pervasive. For the victims, these narratives make it seem as if being raped was their own fault, that they dressed too liberally and were “asking for it.” These narratives make victims feel disgusting and ashamed instead of disgusted and angry.
Not only do victim-blaming accounts of sexual abuse deter victims from speaking up, they also often deter schools frrom addressing allegations and empower perpetrators. Untrained school administrators’ first reaction to hearing a complaint about sexual assault can be much like the victim’s — they choose to cover up instead of speak up, contributing to the culture of silence.
Fortunately, there is no better place to change society’s mindsets than in schools. Two things must be changed about the way we teach sexual abuse, in both primary education and universities. First, it must be taught that authorities are not always right. We must teach values like respect as something to be given to actions and not to people. Children should respect teachers for the education they are providing, not simply because their teacher is their teacher.
Second, children must also be taught the full extent of what rape is at a young age. Too many rape victims happen to be children, because without a full sexual education, they are too easy to prey on. Children need to be taught that rape can happen anywhere, that rapists can be anyone, and that in a sexual assault case, it is the perpetrator, not the victim, that has committed a shameful crime.
Last, since changing narratives is a long process, schools like Michigan State need to implement better systems and checks against sexual abusers. Even though Nassar was ultimately given a life sentence, and MSU was fined a record $4.5 million for failure to handle the situation, all these measures were reactive at best. No amount of jail-time or money can take away a traumatic, haunting experience.
Colleges must implement stricter proactive background checks on all job applicants and more effective monitoring systems that require doors to be open and hands to be visible during medical consultations. Furthermore, schools must make it much easier for victims to report a crime. In every college and school, there should be trained committees in charge of handling all sexual abuse cases. These committees should follow protocols that favor the victims and suspect the perpetrators instead of the other way around, because asking a victim brave enough to step forward for “proof of their assault” only furthers rape culture.
Additionally, there must be immediacy in solutions. An accused predator should never be allowed to continue to interact with students.
