The VCU community has been shocked by the arrest of the school's police chief, Willie Fuller, on charges of soliciting sex with a minor. And for good reason. History's scrolls are replete with the names of public officials and prominent citizens tainted or taken down by scandal, from the most well-known (Bill Clinton) to those in the middle ranks (Eliot Spitzer) to those of only minor fame (former Richmond Mayor Leonidas Young, and others too numerous to name). But Fuller's arrest induces greater shock and sorrow because of the nature of the crime alleged, and because of his chosen work.
Officers of the law are sworn to serve and protect. When one of them goes astray, it resonates all the more deeply than the sins of those who have not sworn an oath to -- as Tennyson wrote -- ride abroad redressing human wrongs. Fuller's colleagues surely must be wondering what drove him to it . . . and here we note for the record that arrest does not equal conviction; Fuller remains innocent until proven guilty. But if he did what he is accused of having done, then surely he must have known lawmen posing as minors routinely troll the depths of cyberspace -- waiting for online predators to strike, setting the hook, and then reeling them in. A popular series on "Dateline" even filmed would-be molesters showing up at a meeting place for their assignations, where camera crews would confront them with their ruination before an audience of millions.
Yet much the same might be said of the many others who succumbed to their baser urges. Clinton was a lawyer who knew better than to give false testimony under oath; Spitzer was a prosecutor who had broken up a prostitution ring; Young, who served time for influence-peddling and defrauding his flock, was a pastor, a man of God -- as were the countless Catholic priests whose pederasty has tarnished the reputation of the church. They knew what they did was wrong -- and did it anyway.
This makes the offense worse in some ways than the crimes of the morally untaught -- those unreflective, almost feral members of the human race who rob and kill because they have never learned to question their primal instincts. Mad dogs must be kept in cages. Yet so must those who are not mad, but cunning in the calculated commission of their crimes. It is a good thing that no man is above the law. Because, as we have learned time and again, worldly prominence provides no immunity against the festering cancer of the soul.
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