DID MY CHOICE HELP MASSA?
Bob Lonsberry comments- 3-10-2010
I have a son who is 25. He is an intern in a state legislature.

I thought of him yesterday afternoon when I read that Eric Massa is suspected of sexually groping several young men who worked on his congressional staff.

I thought that the victims in this matter were probably young men like my son, starting out in life, thrilled at the opportunity to serve and learn at the seat of power. They went to Washington to do something great.

And something evil was done to them.

They were violated, not just in body, but in mind and spirit.

And thinking about that, I felt guilty. Sick-to-my-stomach guilty. Wish-I-could-go-back-in-time-and-do-things-differently guilty.

Guilty because, though I knew almost four years ago of Eric Massa’s alleged penchant for sexually assaulting younger and subordinate males, I said nothing about it. Thinking I was doing the better thing, I didn’t report what I knew. I didn’t stop him.

Which makes me partially responsible for his new victims.

That’s what I thought about yesterday.

Shortly after Eric Massa came to New York to run for Congress, I was contacted by a former shipmate of his, a naval officer who told me that while Massa was in the Navy he made unwanted sexual advances on two lower-ranking male officers.

That was incendiary information and I sought to verify it. I was not able to contact the alleged victims. But I did find two more former Navy officers who had served with Massa and remembered hearing about the incidents, though they did not have any first-hand information.

They knew enough, however, to lead me to believe that the first officer was telling the truth and that his claims were genuine.

But I did not report the story.

The charges were almost 15 years old, Massa had a wife and two children at home, no formal complaints had ever been filed, I had no information of recent occurrences. I didn’t think it was pertinent to the political contest at hand.

And I don’t like scandal.

I will fight people on the issues, but I will not destroy them personally. I know what it is like to have your own bad choices put you on the front page. I know what it is like to be disgraced, and I know what that does to innocent family members.

And I am reluctant to do that to anyone.

So I was silent about Massa. I argued against his politics, I wrote about a court case he was involved in. But I didn’t write about his alleged sexual aggression and abuse.

I considered it from the standpoint of journalism, and I considered it from the standpoint of politics and personal considerations.

But I didn’t think about future victims.

It never occurred to me.

And unwittingly I protected Massa instead of protecting them.

And I knew better.

I have thought about this issue often, and written about it. About the importance of reporting sexual crimes, about the importance of speaking up if you are a victim. Reporting what was done to you is a way to keep others from facing what you have faced.

I have written that church and school leaders must never sweep abuse under the carpet, that they must root out criminal conduct so that innocent children are protected from it.

I know that many of these people don’t reform, and that they depend on silence and fear to allow them to continue to force themselves on victims.

I knew all that.

And I knew it from experience.

I was molested as a little boy, by a man who molested little boys before and after me. In an odd horror, my investigation of Eric Massa’s staff indicates that there is a good chance the man who molested me later molested someone who grew up to work for Eric Massa.

If someone molested before me had told, I would have been spared. If I had told, the staff member would have been spared.

That kind of eats at you.

And yet the real danger of Eric Massa never occurred to me. I kept my mouth shut. And Eric Massa got elected. And now it seems there are new victims.

And I feel like an unwitting accomplice.

Last night as I watched him on Glenn Beck, he had the bug eyes of a liar, the manic BS of a conman. He was as genuine as a knock-off purse.

But I wasn’t thinking about him.

I was thinking about the staffers, the ones the “Washington Post” said he essentially sexually assaulted. I thought of them as young men like my son, in Washington for a dream job, faced with a dispiriting evil.

A lot of attention has focused on Eric Massa and his writhing dance of deception.

But I choose to think about his alleged new victims, and the one who had the courage to say something. That young man, and another congressional staffer, did what many others of us have failed to do.

He stopped Eric Massa.

Not Eric Massa the congressman.

But Eric Massa the predator.