Note: There are some details of alleged sexual activity with minors in this post.
There's a story unfolding in Charleston, S.C., that sounds depressingly similar to the scandal that has rocked Penn State University.
Officials at The Citadel, "the military college of South Carolina," are admitting they did not do enough after learning that a man in custody in Mount Pleasant, S.C., who has been accused of sexually abusing at least five boys in recent years, was brought to the school's attention in 2007. Then, school officials were told, he had engaged in inappropriate sexual activities with boys during a summer camp at the college in 2002. An internal investigation was done, but police were never informed.
"As an institution responsible for delivering tomorrow's leaders, we hold The Citadel to a higher standard," Citadel President Gen. John Rosa said Monday. "We tell cadets to go beyond enforcing rules – to do what's right. We are confronted with an investigation from 2007 in which I do not believe we met that standard."
The school has retained outside consultants "to review the procedures that the college followed in this matter and recommend how we can improve our capacity to protect those living, learning, and working at The Citadel," Rosa added.
Louis "Skip" ReVille, 32, a Citadel alum, is accused of sexually abusing boys he coached in Mount Pleasant. In 2007, as Charleston's Post and Courier reports, Citadel officials were told by a suspected victim that five years earlier ReVille had invited him and other boys to a dorm room on campus. ReVille, the boy said, showed them pornography and encouraged them to masturbate. The boy was 14 years old at the time.
ReVille went on to become a school principal and coach in Mount Pleasant. Local WCSC-TV reports that investigators say he now has "confessed to charges he sexually molested teen boys, aged 13 to 15."
At Penn State, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been accused of sexually abusing at least eight boys over more than a decade, sometimes on campus. And school officials have been accused of not informing authorities, even though they had been warned by witnesses of Sandusky's alleged crimes. Sandusky says he's innocent.
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