SYRACUSE -- It's long been a staple on Saturday Night Live -- poking fun of current events.
But this past weekend, some say cast members crossed the line when they made a skit about alleged child sex abuse, referencing the scandals at Penn State and Syracuse University.
"I didn't find any part of the skit funny," said Kerri Raissian, of the McMahon Ryan Child Advocacy Center. "In fact, I found it troubling."
The skit is centered around the fictitious "Central University", where the basketball coach calls a press conference to talk about child sex abuse. In the skit, the coach said he wanted to make sure none of his coaches were abusing children -- conducting an investigation on an assistant coach, who, "has the tall-tale signs of a pedophile."
The skit portrays this idea that there's this mold, this idea of what a sex offender is or what a sex offender looks like," said Raissian. "That's just not true. If spotting a child abuse perpetrator was really easy then this whole problem would be a lot easier to take care of."
At one point in the skit, a character jokes that he couldn't stand listening to the assistant coach's music and said he would have rather been molested then continue listening. Randi Bregman, the Executive Director of the Vera House, said these sort of jokes significantly downplay the severity of child sex abuse and have an adverse effect on victims.
"Although they are trying to be funny, I don't think the creators of SNL realize how painful those messages can be for victims and survivors who have felt blamed and shamed by people who they've gone to or thought about going to in the past," Bregman said.
What do you think? Did the SNL cross the line?
