The Real Heroes are the Victims
Jerry Sandusky’s ‘Victim 1′ a hero just like
the kid who brought down the Catholic Church
by Lou Rom
Some folks within Penn State and elsewhere want to complicate the growing Jerry Sandusky scandal.
It benefits them to do so.
But the scandal can really be reduced to an old-fashioned case of Good versus Evil.
The problem, though, is that too many of the good people were sitting on the outside looking in. And the evil people hid behind their veil of secrecy and failed to take sufficient action to prevent further abuses at the hands of Sandusky.
There are many who should be commended for their effort to break that silence, to raze the façade of truth and good will put forth by the university and reveal the ugly skeleton of an institution hell-bent on preserving its power and money and caring little about victims.
But the real heroes are the victims who have come forward in the name of protecting others, people like “Victim 1,” who blew the Sandusky case wide open.
And, while the horror story that is Jerry Sandusky and the Second Mile serves as a sad reminder of the sex abuse scandal that once rocked the Catholic Church.
The courage of Victim 1 reminds me of another hero, a young boy named Scott Gastal.
Perhaps no one deserves greater admiration than Scott Gastal, the doe-eyed, sandy-haired 11-year-old boy, who in 1985, told investigators how a disarming Cajun priest named Gilbert Gauthé repeatedly sodomized him and photographed him having sex with other prepubescent boys.
Scott’s willingness to come forward opened the floodgates for countless other victims — those of Gauthé, countless priests from Southwest Louisiana and elsewhere.
It gave them the courage to look past the misplaced guilt and shame that rape victims feel and take a stand against a man who personified evil incarnate yet dared wear a Roman collar. And, ultimately, it gave police and prosecutors enough evidence to put Gauthé in prison.
No more need be said about the unspeakable acts that Gauthé imposed on young Scott.
Today, you need only look in his ice blue eyes, to see his legs and arms constantly shake, to sit through the long silences that come when discussing the impact of his abuse at the hands of Gauthé, to realize that the $1 million a jury awarded him in 1986 could never begin the needed healing.
In 1985, three psychologists examined Scott and described him as irrevocably damaged.
One doctor said Scott felt “guilty” and “unlovable”; that he feared being abandoned by those he loved most. Another observed, “I think he’s going to be wrestling with this throughout his life.”
His mother, Faye Gastal, saw it in his actions.
“He didn’t just run in for no reason and hug and kiss me like he used to … He didn’t sleep at night anymore. He walked the floor. I’d get up all hours of the night and he was up – checking the doors to make sure they were locked, peeping through the windows to see if anyone was driving up or if there was anyone outside,” she told the court.
Scott, then 11, had this to say about the impact of Gauthé’s molestations:
“When (my daddy) hugs me I feel funny.”
Today, it’s evident that Scott continues to wrestle with his demons, most notably Gauthé. He takes several medications to calm his post-traumatic stress disorder, his anxiety disorder and his manic depression. He bounces from job to job – “the stress is just too much,” he says. He has “no friends” and goes days at a time without uttering a single word.
It’s fitting, if not disturbing.
Because words could not describe the horrible acts that Gauthé, gun by his side, forced Scott into. Nor could they describe how it must have felt when a bevy of church lawyers looked into young Scott’s eyes and called him a liar.
Today, Scott wields no weapons. Those eyes, though, are dangerous to those uncomfortable with the truth about sexual abuse.
They speak volumes of the damage absorbed by victims. They speak volumes, too, about the little boy responsible for taking down one of America’s most notorious pedophiles.
Broke, betrayed and beside himself, Scott says he would do it all again if it meant saving one child.
“In a heartbeat,” he says.
No doubt about it, Scott Gastal is every bit a hero.
Lou Rom, an award-winning multimedia journalist is a member of the 2k2 club, having published over 2,000 articles and produced more than 2,000 hours of radio programming. He lives and works in NYC. Contact him at lou@theromreport.com.