I was driving home, up the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike this afternoon when Dom Giordano came on the air, on WPHT-AM.  One of the big topics around the Philadelphia area is the story of Professor Tracy McIntosh.  Dr. McIntosh, a prominent professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was director of Penn’s prestigious Head Injury Research Center.  He is also a rapist.

Dr. McIntosh, 52, pleaded no contest to the sexual assault of a now 26 year old woman.  That wouldn’t have made much news, were it not for his position.  What really made the news was the fact that “Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford Means sentenced Tracy McIntosh, 52, to house arrest at his home in Media for 11½ to 23 months.”[1]  Twelve years of probation will follow.

House arrest?  House arrest? Why not jail time?  The Philadelphia Daily News, a tabloid style newspaper (but one owned by the same company which publishes the newspaper-of-record Philadelphia Inquirer) put it this way on its cover: “Too important for jail.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Lynn Abraham has asked Judge Means to reconsider the lenient sentence, and all sorts of people are up in arms about this one.

So, we get back to Mr. Giordano.  He, along with fellow WPHT local talk show host, Michael Smerconish, have been all over this case.  It seems that Penn has had complaints previously about Dr. McIntosh, and if not covered them up, pretty much swept them under the rug.  The rape victim is now suing Dr. McIntosh, along with Penn, claiming that Penn’s burying of complaints against Dr. McIntosh allowed him to continue to prey on young women, and thus allowed her rape to happen; both The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News have said that at least nine other women had been the victims of Dr. McIntosh.[2]

I don’t want to get into the details of Dr. McIntosh’s previous record.  There seems to be a lot more on talk radio than I can find in the Inquirer, and that makes source citations and fact checking a bit more difficult. 

The thought that occurred to me while listening to the radio on my way home was that this was amazingly similar to the clergy sex-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church.

Why?  I hated those scandals (I’m Catholic myself), but underneath everything, I could see a reason that wasn’t being discussed much.  Institutions, whether the University of Pennsylvania or the Catholic Church or any of thousands and thousands of businesses out there take care of their own; I’ve seen it happen myself.  Institutions which ought to know better (and who would one think would know better than to protect someone repeatedly accused of sexual harassment than a major university?) very often protect the person who is guilty rather than take the proper action to prevent him from offending again.

Why?  Because Penn liked Dr. McIntosh.  Because the bishops liked their fellow priests.  The victims, even though they were the people the university and the Church were there to serve, were outsiders.  The institutions (and institutions are simply organizations made up of people, fallible people, people who can take wrong decisions for poor reasons) thought that they could deal with the problems, keep bad publicity down, and take care of their own.  Penn wanted the whole situation to just go away, just like Bernard Cardinal Law wanted the whole situation to just go away.  They weren’t engaged in any conspiracy to help the offenders offend again, they didn’t want the predators to prey again, but, in their lack of appropriate action, they became enablers.

And please, don’t think that these are isolated instances; they are simply the ones which have made the news.  How many companies have had decision-takers, whether CEOs or middle managers, protect a subordinate from the consequences of stupid or criminal action because they liked the guy who did the wrong thing, because they would rather protect someone who was considered a valuable employee (although perhaps they ought to have reconsidered that point) and possibly a personal friend?  I doubt that anyone knows the answer to that rhetorical sounding question, but I, personally, have seen it done, on more than one occasion, and I’m just one man.

Well, the Catholic Church is having to pay, to the tune of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars, for the mistakes made by bishops who should have known better, and I’m betting that Penn will wind up having to pay for the mistake of having mild “interventions,” as Mr. Giordano described them this evening.  And uncounted businesses out there are facing the same problems, even though such stories rarely make the news.

An e-mail friend of mine, when I discussed the clergy sex-abuse scandal with her and brought up this point, thought that I was trying to defend the bishops, especially Cardinal Law.  I wasn’t, and I’m not.  They were the supervisors in charge of what is a huge business, and their decisions have greatly damaged the Church.  But I do believe that I understand from where those bad decisions came, from the desire to help a friend and a valued employee or colleague, and not seeing the big picture.