Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story
Sandusky with Richeal
2000
Submitter: Hello, I’m a librarian in [NY] and a huge college football fan. Shortly after the sex abuse scandal at Penn State I decided to look on amazon and in our library catalog to see if we had anything by or about Jerry Sandusky. There are 14 copies of his unfortunately titled autobiography, Touched, floating about according to WorldCat.
Penn State University Library owns a copy of Touched and it looks like they put the book in protective custody in “nocirc” archives. http://cat.libraries.psu.edu/
I think the autobiography of an accused child molester called “Touched” qualifies as an awful library book.
Holly: Ohhhh, that’s a really unfortunate title. There is probably new interest in this book now, too, so owning libraries can’t just weed it because of its title. No one knew, at the time this book was written and titled, what Mr. Sandusky knew…making this a very, very creepy title.
You mean the Joe Paterno Library at Penn State, right?
The questionable Google ad bar was displaying some lame “How safe are YOUR children” banner in response to this book. I’m liking that adbar less and less v. the actual literary ones.
I’m not sure if I should smile or weep at the description of noncirc as “protective custody”.
The book was published two years after the initial police investigation of the allegations involving the child now known as Victim 6. Lot’s of people knew.
None of them CARED.
He’s just one more example of one of our fallen “heroes”. It makes me wonder how many child molesters, rapists , abusers of spouse, parent etc. we currently admire with no knowledge of what they hide.
I see no reason to withdraw this book if it’s still being checked out. Why not allow people to read it if they’re interested in Sandusky’s past?
Considering what’s happening, Mara, the title is creepy. It’s not really a weeder until one including all the information regarding his raping little boys comes out. But the title just makes one go “EW!”
Just a heads up, these are currently going for $50+ on eBay. Morbid fascination I guess. But any library with copies of this just should be aware that it would be a theft possibility (maybe that’s a good thing LOL).
Not a good idea to keep this one on the shelves where children would have access to this book. Would you want your kid coming home with the desire to go to a Sandusky camp?
At least the tp doesn’t say Touched / by Jerry Sandusky.
Too soon !