Organizational reputation defense overrides legal obligation to report child abuse

Evidence

With eyewitness evidence of a child rape, the university officials faced a choice of protecting children or safeguarding the reputation of the university and its renowned football program. They chose to shelter the university image. President Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz, and Athletic Director Tim Curley decided to report the incident to the Department of Public Welfare rather than to law-enforcement officials. … Apparently shielding the football program superseded child safety. Curley recommended that the incident be handled secretly by urging Sandusky to seek professional help and to refrain from bringing “guests” to the football locker room. President Spanier signed off on this plan, reasoning that it was the “humane” thing to do. However, he had legal misgivings. “The only downside for us is if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it” (Belson, 2012). A few months later Sandusky raped another child in the shower and was arrested. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 577

Categorization

• XREF: Institutional rationalization framing child protection as ‘humane’ while prioritizing public image parallels the Penn State officials’ moral disengagement mechanisms, and connects to the vault’s authoritarianism and social-conservatism claims about how in-groups shield their own.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 577