Tag Archives: Child Abuse

Ukraine: What Would Leo and Fyodor Do?

Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s novels work as indictments of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Lit for Survivors Lost in a Dark Wood

Monday Commonweal recently published a heartfelt article by West Point visiting English professor Cassandra Nelson on how literature can help trauma survivors recover. Nelson begins with an angry comment about a University of Chicago dean’s facile dismissal of  trigger warnings, even though she herself opposes them. She, however, speaks from the vantage point of one […]

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Peterson and Literary Child Thrashings

Adrian Peterson’s mistreatment of his four-year-old son has echoes of the caning described by Rudyard Kipling.

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Fired by Happy Valley, JoPa Is No Aeneas

Just as Rasselas questions Samuel Johnson’s Happy Valley, so do Penn State students find themselves questioning their own Happy Valley after the child abuse scandal. Coach Joe Paterno admired Aeneas, and many feel abandoned like Queen Dido.

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Paterno’s Rapist Associate and Mr. Hyde

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” warns us that we are in danger of becoming monsters ourselves if we don’t hold on to our humanity when responding to monsters like alleged child molester Jerry Sandusky, close associate of Coach Joe Paterno.

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Poems for Abuse Victims

Lucille Clifton Having attended a memorial ceremony for the recently departed poet Lucille Clifton this past Saturday (see yesterday’s post), today I commemorate her by putting some of her poems to good use. Catholic priest molestation has been in the news recently (less the molestation, which tragically occurs in all walks of life, than the […]

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Chaucer’s Answer to Catholic Corruption

Like many, I have been appalled at the non-stop stories of abuse coming out of the Catholic Church and depressed by the Church’s response.  The latest egregious example of the latter is the pope’s personal preacher comparing newspaper accusations of the pope to the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust. Calling Geoffrey Chaucer, to […]

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