"Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but it won't taste good." Joe Paterno

I've spent a good deal of my life trying to make sense of child sexual abuse. In 1978, 26 sets of boys' bones were exhumed from serial killer John Wayne Gacy's crawl space. Three other bodies were found elsewhere on his Chicago property. I have been haunted ever since by the reality that a sick, dangerous man did unthinkable things to boys while I played hopscotch on my driveway just minutes away.

A couple of years after Gacy was found out, clergy abuse in the Catholic Church surfaced. Although I, nor anyone I knew in our local church and school where I grew up, experienced sexual abuse by the priests in our parish, evil seemed to strike dangerously close to home again. Was there nowhere a child could be safe?

Last week when the Penn State scandal broke and the Grand Jury report released graphic details of Jerry Sandusky's alleged rape of a young boy and other incidents of abuse, memories of Gacy I'd fought to suppress reemerged. And learning about the cover-up by college officials reminded me anew of the double-injury inflicted when our trusted institutions fail in their duty to report allegations of child sexual abuse.

Paterno's unseasoned dish

When Penn State's legendary (now former) head football coach Joe Paterno set out to conduct what has become known as his "grand experiment"—dubbed "Success with Honor"— his goal was to challenge his players to success both on the field and in the classroom. The program became the hallmark of Penn State's football program, as well as its entire athletics department: "Success with Honor is a daily, active goal, not an end result, and achieving that goal is defined not solely by how much you win, but moreover how you win."

If success is measured by Paterno's original rubric, his experiment was a grand success. In 2010, the Nittany Lions posted an 89 percent graduation rate, the highest of any team ranked in the final AP Top 25. Additionally, Paterno led his Lions through 46 seasons, most of which were winning ones. Until last week's game against Nebraska, Penn State was on track for an undefeated season in 2011. This is the stuff legacies are made of.

But today Paterno knows better than anyone how bad success without honor tastes. For all of his wins on the field and good performances in the classroom with his student-players, the one grand experiment that mattered most—his own ability to live up to success with honor—has failed.

As details have emerged over the past week, 84-year-old Paterno has gone from revered head coach to accomplice in a cover-up that led to the tragic abuses of at least eight young boys. When presented with information that Sandusky had been caught sexually abusing a boy while in Penn State's locker room, Paterno ran the information up the chain. When nothing resulted from his reporting, he failed to follow through to ensure that Sandusky would never have access to young boys again. This was Paterno's game-changing moment—the moment he could have stopped the clock and taken Sandusky out.

Last week, years after his decision not to protect innocent boys was revealed, Paterno said he regretted this decision. "This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."

Not doing more will be his legacy. The wins on the field will mean little compared to this one big loss. The meal of a lifetime will fail to satisfy this man hungry for success with honor.

Ironically, because Paterno will be remembered for what he didn't do—adequately report child abuse—his "great sorrow" may do more to change the world than his entire 46-year record as Penn State's head football coach. Because of his reputation, the world will always remember Paterno as the man who failed to report child abuse. For the 33 victims of Gacy and those who escaped with their lives, and the thousands of children who have been victims of clergy abuse and those who continue to suffer in silence, and the millions of children who have been abused and the millions more who will be, Penn State's scandal is a moment in history that has changed everything.

Because of Paterno, we all now know that we have an obligation to protect kids by speaking up to legal authorities when we learn—or even suspect—that abuse has occurred. Speaking to students at Penn State's chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ, Tom Henderson called Paterno and his colleagues' failure to intervene a deficiency of love. Now they're paying a career price for their silence. Perhaps their lesson will spare the rest of us from keeping quiet if we see a child in harm's way.

This week, the Big Ten announced that it was taking Paterno's name off the trophy for the conference champion. The statue on Penn State's campus may come down too, and some day they will probably remove his name from the library.

Even without all these visual reminders of who JoePa was, his is a legacy worth remembering.

Marian V. Liautaud is author of "Sex Offenders in the Pew," (CT, 2010) and editor of Reducing the Risk: Keeping Your Ministry Safe from Child Sexual Abuse. She serves as editor of church management resources and GiftedforLeadership.com at Christianity Today.