(ESPN) This is not about Joe Paterno. If these boys really were molested, groped and raped by a middle-aged ex-Penn State football coach, then whatever misjudgment Paterno made will be a single lit match compared to the bonfire these boys will walk in for years to come.
Many of them won’t be able to trust. Won’t be able to love. Won’t be able to feel — nor trust or love themselves.
Don’t feel sorry for Paterno. He’s had his life. Feel sorry for these boys, because they may never get one.
Ask former NHL All-Star Theo Fleury, who has reached out on Twitter and radio to the alleged victims of Jerry Sandusky. Fleury was sexually molested once or twice a week for two years by his youth hockey coach, Graham James. It twisted Fleury so inside-out that he numbed himself for years with booze, cocaine and strippers. He blew much of the $50 million he made in the NHL trying to forget. The coach he’d entrusted his hockey dreams to flayed open his soul for his own sexual perversions and left Fleury hollow.
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Remember the Children
By Rick Reilly
ESPN.com
November 2, 2011