"So foul and fair. . .

. . . a day I have not seen."  These are Macbeth's first words in Shakespeare's tragedy, a play that captures the contradictions in human nature.  I thought of this line on Friday night when I learned that Jerry Sandusky was found guilty on 45 counts of sexual abuse charges.  So foul a day--of such unspeakable crimes--and so fair a day--of long-overdue justice.

It's been a hard journey, our willingness to believe that adults--especially those who look and behave like the rest of us--can harm children in such heinous ways.  And though the abuse of boys is no more heinous than the abuse of girls, we've had an especially tough time facing it.  But finally we have on file a jury that believed the words of children--young men, yes, but children stuck forever in a hell that never should have come their way.

Let's go forward now and resolve to believe the words of children, even--and especially--when they tell us something that's hard to believe.  Let's resolve to teach children to speak up when something's wrong and to speak up ourselves when something's wrong.

And let's resolve to make Penn State a watershed moment, a time in our collective humanity when we committed ourselves to a higher level of protection for our children.