Crises at Penn State, The Citadel Prompt More Child Sex Crime Reports

As child sex abuse cases at Penn State and closer to home in the Lowcountry fill headlines, long-silent victims alleging abuse by other predators are coming forward with their stories of abuse.

It's not surprising that victims are reporting these cases considering what they're reading in the papers, said Hanahan Police Lt. Michael Fowler.

"I'd be willing to bet this is going on all over the place," he said.

The nightly news has carried shock and riots from Penn State. Football coach Jerry Sandusky has been accused of molesting eight boys over a 15-year period. Meanwhile, headlines in Charleston focus on Louis “Skip” ReVille, a private school administrator and youth-sports fixture in the Mt. Pleasant area.

The stories have led others to come forward with their own stories of abuse. On air last week, popular Upstate sports radio personality .

"I don't know why — I have no way of explaining it — for some reason the Penn State story just kind of triggered something, and then when I interviewed Gene Sapakoff from the Charleston Post and Courier about the Skip Reville story, that just drove it home," Scott told Patch.

Hanahan is dealing with its own investigation of ReVille — he lived in the small bedroom community for several years. But the community also has two entirely different cases of abuse that have arose — with different victims and different suspects — since the ReVille and Sandusky stories broke and continued to unfold.

Investigators are interviewing the subjects in the cases and trying to corroborate the stories. In one case, a man told police his coach molested him three decades ago at the coaches home and on a team trip. In the second case, a young man said his female teacher sexually assaulted him five years ago.

'They see that victims are being taken seriously'

As many as 60 percent of child sex victims don't tell anyone until much later in life, says Cindy McElhinney, program director for Darkness to Light, a nonprofit based in Charleston that focuses on empowering adults to recognize signs of abuse.

"Maybe they've been intimidated or groomed or threatened into keeping silent," McElhinney said of victims. "They may not think they will be believed."

For those people, these crimes can cause shame, embarrassment, secrecy and guilt, says Shauna Galloway-Williams, executive director of the Greenville-based Julie Valentine Center, a nonprofit that works with recovering abuse victims.

These high-profile headlines have an impact on those years of silence. "They start seeing that people are being responsive," said Galloway-Williams. "They see that victims are being taken seriously."

Another important motivator may be the circumstances of the cases against Sandusky and ReVille — in both instances there were warning signs of illegal or inappropriate behavior that would have warranted investigation and possible charges years ago.

It has spurred and raised questions in Washington about why schools aren't taking these claims seriously.

In the case of Sandusky, witnesses aired their concerns to his superiors at Penn State, but no action was taken until a victim came forward recently with direct claims.

Meanwhile, , where the accused had been a camp counselor in a program that was eventually disbanded after an unrelated abuse scandal.

A young man came forward in 2007 to report alleged inappropriate behavior by ReVille in 2002. The accusations were quietly investigated by Citadel staff and dropped.

Victims in the Sandusky and ReVille cases coming forward now may be preventing further abuse in the future, as well as alerting communities around them so people begin to avoid the circumstances that lead to abuse.

Beyond interviews with law enforcement, Galloway-Williams said these victims often need further help as they routinely struggle with building and managing relationships and understanding healthy boundaries with their partners and their own families.

"These people have to follow up reporting with treatment," she said.