Why do we stay silent?

Lance Armstrong was a hero to many thousands for having won the Tour de France 7 successive times from 1999-2005 after conquering testicular cancer in 1996. There were allegations that he took performance enhancing drugs but these were never proved until Floyd Landis, who had been a member of his team, made specific allegations in 2010. Landis won the Tour de France in 2006 but was found to have altered ratio of testosterone and epitestosterone in stage 7 of the race and was stripped of the title. Armstrong has been stripped of all his 7 titles and has even been accused of donating $100,000 to the International Cycling Union to cover up a dope test in 2002. TOI, 17 October. Jerry Sandusky was an immensely respected Assistant Coach for football at Pennsylvania State University from 1969-1999 when he retired. He started a charity called The Second Mile in 1977 to help underprivileged boys. In 2011 he was charged with sexual abuse of young boys that he met through his charity work. On 22 June 2012 he was found guilty of 45 of 48 charges of sexual abuse and sentenced to 30-60 years in prison. Since he is 68 years old he is likely to die in prison. At his trial his wife spoke in his defense saying that she had never seen anything untoward and even blaming some of the boys for his conduct. Jimmy Saville was a household name in Britain for decades. He was a DJ on BBC radio, an anchor of a TV program called the Top of the Pops and had his own program called Jim'll Fix It in which he made a child's wish come true. He was known for his eccentricities and for raising millions of pounds for hospitals such as Stoke Mandeville Hospital, known for its spinal unit, Leeds General Infirmary and Broadmoor Hospital for psychiatric patients. He was awarded the OBE in 1971 and a knighthood in 1990 for his work. On 12 October 2012 ITV broadcast a documentary called Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Saville in which several women said that they had been sexually abused when they were just 14 or 15 years old by Saville. This opened the floodgates and now the police are investigating more than 300 charges from over 60 women of similar abuse when they were girls. Saville died last year aged 84 years and so will not go to prison but his family has removed the headstones from his grave and he now suffers the ignominy of lying in an unmarked grave. We have every sympathy for Armstrong. Who knows his state of mind after recovering from an aggressive form of cancer? Maybe he thought he should make a name for himself before the disease returned to kill him. But what of Sandusky and Saville? How could they get away with their abuse of children for decades? Children are innocent and have poor appreciation of risks. But what of the adults? Why did no one object? This explains why politicians always find people to help them in their crimes and cover up for them. It is not true that we deserve the scoundrels we get.