Over in the USA an extraordinary and horrible trial has ended with a cascade of Guilty verdicts for Penn State University’s former football coach Jerry Sandusky on 45 separate accounts of abusing young boys. 

As Sandusky trudges off to what may not be a happy rest of his life in prison, a vast new legal front opens up for the victims as they take on Penn State University for its role in doing next to nothing about those crimes.

Here is an eloquent summary by Ray Ratto of CBS Sports of that basket of issues:

That, though, is a separate issue that only obscures the central point, which is that Sandusky brought a hideous problem to the university, and the university did so little that it could be confused with being nothing at all.

For that, there is a price tag. And Penn State will have to decide whether it can pay it, or whether it is worth fighting with the victims over the concept of "protecting the brand." And then there is the price it has to pay after the checks clear.

The obvious answer to the first is, pay the money without complaint, apologize profusely, and offer the psychological support denied earlier.

The lawyer’s answer is, "Not so fast there. We need to determine with mailed fists how much abuse is actually the legal responsibility of the school and its representatives." It’s the part of the law that makes everyone want to wash the skin off their hands.

For those without law degrees, ambiguities and tricks of the language are not endured well. Their math is simple: Children were abused by someone connected with the school, sometimes on school grounds. People in a position to know may actually have known. They are, in the immortal phrase of the jury at the end of The Producers, "incredibly guilty."

He ends superbly:

… silence in the face of evil is an evil of its own. It is a separate and free-standing evil that cannot be defended with arguments of relativism or comparative guilt. And the payment for that crime should exceed check-writing hand cramp.

The pain should serve as a reminder that the brand so many people take pains to defend must constantly re-earn that level of devotion. The brand is only as worthwhile as the acts done in its name, and even if Jerry Sandusky’s crimes were not done in the name of the school, the name of the school demanded that those crimes be stopped by those who could do so.

The Penn State brand failed the children here, because those most responsible for burnishing it put the brand first. And it isn’t a matter of arguing whether Sandusky’s acts were worse than the school’s silence. They are two separate acts, and the perpetrators must pay their different prices for doing so.

Sandusky will pay his, in prison and perpetual ignominy. The school must pay its cost, too, by remembering constantly in thought and deed that an institution is defined by the acts of its people, not the other way around.

As they say in the USA, a teaching moment.