The pedophile nobody suspects

Frank Bruni

The New York Times

Most pedophiles do not wear trench coats or lurk in parks, said Frank Bruni. They’re more likely to be really nice guys who work as coaches, teachers, counselors, priests, or some other position where they have access to minors. Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, 67, is the latest widely respected “do-gooder’’ charged with molesting kids; Sandusky is accused of using his charity for troubled kids to gain a special position of trust and access to young boys.

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This is how it usually works. In most molestation cases, the predators have true affection for kids, and seek a role as their champions. Their affinity for kids “just happens to have a sexual element, the satisfaction of which they’ve convinced themselves isn’t such a big, harmful deal.’’

Most adults who work with children are, of course, not pedophiles. But parents should be on alert for warning signs, such as adults who give kids gifts and treat them with a creepy attentiveness. As the abuse scandals involving the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and now Penn State have shown, “institutions do an awful job of policing themselves.’’