Updated

If there is one image from the Penn State scandal that should haunt our American memory, it's not Joe Paterno's fall, Jerry Sandusky's grinning face or the specter of what former assistant football coach Mike McQueary saw.

It's the little boys who came out to the game with them with hair combed and jerseys on, sitting in the stands, filled with excitement, hope and trust.

These boys are only the latest to suffer. For centuries, adults who preyed on children hid in the shadows. For every sexual predator witnessed in the act by an outsider such as McQueary, there were thousands who walked among us unsuspected and untouched.

Then the advent of the Internet dramatically changed this. Individuals with a sexual attraction to children began surfacing en masse, as they went online to do what millions of their fellow Americans were doing: accessing sexual content.

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Grier Weeks is executive director of the National Association to Protect Children.