When you need groceries, there is usually a selection of grocery stores from which to choose. If you need help in securing provisions, there are usually several agencies or organizations that can help.

When you need clothing, the same is true. In fact, for every basic need in life, there is usually a robust network of suppliers — retail and charitable — to satisfy the need. Occasionally, the choices are few, which encourages some enterprising soul to step forward and open a business or charity to fill the gap. It’s the American way! Free enterprise. Find a need and fill it. These concepts seem to have been turned on their ear with the revelations of alleged child rape and abuse on the grounds of Penn. State.

Parents have long been concerned about proverbial lone child molesters, who surreptitiously grab one child at a time for their nefarious appetites. For many years now, our newspapers and airwaves have been filled with stories about broader rivers of child abuse that range from an increased awareness of familial abusers to perpetrators operating within various church denominations and “retailers” who supply an international clientele with audio-visual child pornography, even travel junkets to destinations where purchasers can satisfy their predilections. All of these developments have shined a light on these activities, revealing their depravity and harm. As a result more and more Americans became aware of the reality, scope and illegality of such activities and the lifelong damage they cause the victims.

Now it appears we have an individual who started his own foundation from which to cull his personally selected victims. And in addition to using the lamb’s clothing of his foundation for cover, he added a layer of enticement and compliance with the glitter and glamorous appeal of a college sports program of renown. And those in areas of leadership and authority at the university who knew about it did nothing or not enough. Some continued to assist the individual by serving on his foundation’s board of directors and helping at fundraisers.

When children need help or the enrichment nonprofit groups can provide, they should be able to trust the organization’s commitment to provide legal and wholesome activities and that its leaders will carry out the nonprofit’s mission with care, compassion and respect for their personhood. The “store” should deliver what it promises.

Our institutions of higher learning should ensure that regardless of their national claim to fame, their prime directive is to educate youth in an environment that isn’t poisoned by criminal activity, that exploitation of anyone using their facilities won’t be tolerated and every faculty member is accountable to see that environment endures and flourishes. If they can’t or won’t do this, they should close their shop and refer their clientele to a more reputable store.