Get ready for your mouth to drop to the floor:
Attorney: Sandusky may have been teaching kids to shower
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) -
A Carlisle attorney who has joined Jerry Sandusky’s defense team says the former Penn State assistant football coach may have showered with young boys because the children lacked basic hygiene skills.
Sandusky is accused of molesting ten boys he met through The Second Mile charity he founded for troubled youth.
“Some of these kids don’t have basic hygiene skills,” attorney Karl Rominger said. “Teaching a person to shower at the age of 12 or 14 sounds strange to some people, but people who work with troubled youth will tell you there are a lot of juvenile delinquents and people who are dependent who have to be taught basic life skills like how to put soap on their body.”
Rominger, who spoke with abc27 News Tuesday, added that his college cross country coach often showered with the team.
First off, I don’t buy it. Why didn’t Sandusky himself trot it out when this story first broke? I think it’s all a matter of throwing something against a wall to see if it sticks.
However, I get the sneaking feeling in my bones that some people are going to buy it. Here again, we have the phrases “troubled youth” and “juvenile delinquents” to go with other words and phrases from the GJ report, all of them are code words for black. If the defense lawyers are going to ride this hygiene hypothesis hobby horse, what they’re really saying is that the young black men from the ghetto are so bereft of basic social and life skills that they don’t even know how to shower, and it was left to the Penn State football team defensive coordinator to show them how, personally and hands on.
I’m hardly an apologist for our African-American population, as you can tell. But I think by that age, they have mastered the fine art of the shower. Besides, Rominger is saying “age of 12 or 14,” when some of the alleged victims ages were in the single digits. Still, even around eight or nine, they know. Taking showers isn’t rocket science.
Although I will say, remember the “shower discipline” line from Derek Dooley?
One more thing, about Rominger’s college C/C coach showering with his team: While it’s not the worst thing in the world, nor illegal, nor blatantly immoral, it’s considered bad form for adult coaches of adult athletes to use the same locker rooms and showers as the athletes at the same time. Big time pro coaching staffs, and college coaching staffs in the more lucrative sports at the big schools, have separate locker rooms and showers from the players. If we’re talking about a cross country team at a smaller college, or any high school level athletic discipline, neither a small college or any high school can’t be expected to have those kind of lavish facilities, the coaches will wait out the players then shower by themselves. It’s the whole chain of command slash Weberian thing — Do military officers, non-coms and enlisted men share the same social space, barracks, locker rooms and showers? No, they don’t, and for a good reason.
