My wife, Rebecca Durst, owns Rinaldo’s Barbershop located in downtown State College. Perhaps her name rings a bell since she has been quoted in media outlets far and wide as reporters have swarmed the area covering the alleged Penn State child molestation scandal.

For those of you for whom this is front page news every day, please bear with me while I offer a short summary for the more than 25% of readers in my Linked-in network living in Europe or Asia. In a nutshell, a state grand jury issued a twenty-three page report earlier this month documenting 40 counts of sexual abuse against young boys by a former Penn State football coach. The one receiving the most attention is reported to have occurred in 2002 when a then graduate assistant football coach is alleged to have witnessed the former coach sodomizing a young boy in a shower at the football facilities.

Acknowledging my bias, my wife is not only the prettiest barber you have ever seen, she is also a great manager. She owns the open admiration from her seven chair team that covers both genders and ranges in age from twenty years her junior to twenty years her senior.

She made a compelling observation which I pass on for your reflection and comment. Becky asserts that, had just one person in the five link chain of command been a woman, they would have done the right thing. The five links included a graduate assistant coach (male) who reported a young boy being sodomized in a shower to the head football coach, also male. The coach, in turn reported to the athletic director (male) who conferred with the vice president of business (male) who oversaw campus police. Finally, the vp for business reported the incident to the university president, also male.

Reportedly, no one asked about the victim to determine his welfare or what kind of help could have been provided. No one asked the alleged perpetrator to explain why he was alone in a shower with a young boy (a fact he does not dispute) around 10 pm on a Friday evening. And finally, no one contacted the authorities as is required by law.

What is your opinion? Would there have been a different outcome had just one of the five links in that chain been a woman?