The sports world is no stranger to scandals. In recent years, Major League Baseball endured the Steroid Era, the NBA had its referee point-shaving scandal, and an assortment of recruiting and pay-for-play controversies have hit major college sports programs.

Those scandals engendered appropriate disgust from the public, but the misdeeds and sordid details could not match the horrors of the alleged child molestation crimes that dominated sports media in the final months of 2011.

The first and most notorious sex abuse charges were those filed against Jerry Sandusky at Pennsylvania State University. Sandusky, a longtime defensive coordinator for legendary head coach Joe Paterno, was accused of molesting 10 boys over a span of 15 years and using his charitable organization as a vehicle for the abuse.

Sandusky retired from Penn State in 1999 but was still allowed to use campus facilities. In 2002, graduate assistant Mike McQueary allegedly witnessed Sandusky sexually assaulting a young boy in the team showers. McQueary testified in court that he reported the incident to Paterno, who waited a day before informing superiors at the university.

Paterno did not report the incident to police, and neither did his superiors, athletic director Tim Curley and Vice President of Business and Finance Gary Schultz. When Sandusky was formally charged in November of 2011, the fallout at Penn State led to the resignation of university president Graham Spanier, the charging of Curley and Schultz with perjury and failure to report McQueary’s eyewitness account to police, and the ignominious end to Paterno’s 46-year run as head football coach.

Paterno, the winningest coach in college football history, was fired over the phone by Penn State’s Board of Trustees in the middle of the season, and he died of lung cancer on Jan. 22.

In the aftermath of the Penn State scandal, reports surfaced that Bernie Fine, an assistant coach for another powerhouse Division I program, Syracuse University basketball, had sexually abused two team ball boys from the late 1970s to 1990s. Syracuse fired Fine, and two more men came forward with allegations against the coach.

In another case filled with nauseating twists, one of the accusers later retracted his charge of sexual abuse, claiming that he made the accusation out of anger that Fine did not help him challenge a criminal conviction. It has also been revealed that Fine’s wife allegedly slept with players on the Syracuse basketball team, although that story has been deemed irrelevant to the case against the ex-coach.

Finally, the president and chief executive officer of the Amateur Athletic Union, Robert “Bobby” Dodd, was relieved of his duties after claims by two former athletes that Dodd sexually abused them in the 1980s.

The string of scandals has shocked the public into caution and awareness that seemingly benevolent figures can be using their authority for the most malevolent causes.

In the case of Paterno, hopefully we have learned that standing idly by is as heinous an offense as the actual abuse.

But sadly, it could also weaken the bonds of trust parents have with coaches and neighborhood mentors for their kids. As Phil Taylor wrote in the Jan. 9 issue of Sports Illustrated, “the Sandusky effect” has made him leery of doing anything that may be perceived with a skeptical eye in his role as a junior varsity basketball coach.

Taylor used to grow close with the kids by driving them home from practice, but he does so no longer.