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“Believe your children.”

Those three words, says one local expert, are among the most important lessons to be learned from the unsettling, and still unfolding, sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University.

 “Let your children know they can come to you no matter what,” says Susan Vaughn, a forensic interviewer with the Children’s Advocacy Centers at Family Service of the Piedmont.

Vaughn interviews children who are possible victims of sexual abuse and has handled 12,000 such cases over more than two decades. She encourages parents and others to come forward even if they only suspect abuse. Then let the people who investigate such allegations “sort it out,” she says. “You’ve got to step up and do what you’ve got to do.”

Obviously few “did what they had to do” at Penn State. Accusations alleging sexual abuse by a former assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, were known to administrators for more than a dozen years. Yet they did little to address it.

Sandusky, who insists he is innocent, was arraigned last week on 40 criminal counts, and two Penn State officials have been charged with perjury and failure to report the alleged crimes to the authorities. The scandal also cost the jobs of Penn State President Graham Spanier and legendary football coach Joe Paterno.

Angered at Paterno’s ouster, a crowd of self-centered hooligans reacted with an outpouring of sympathy that escalated into violence. (No one seemed half as bothered about the fate of Spanier, who, after all, hadn’t coached a single football victory.)

So, suddenly the story was about Paterno, not the alleged victims whom Sandusky had befriended through his nonprofit for disadvantaged youth. And not about school officials’ failure to act on one troubling sign after another.

As early as 1998, a boy’s mother raised concerns to university police. Sandusky allegedly admitted, with detectives listening, that he had showered with her son and hugged him. Still, the university seemed determined to look the other way. And the local district attorney decided there wasn’t enough evidence to press charges.

Then came two separate occasions when eyewitnesses said they saw Sandusky having sex with children in school athletics locker rooms — first in 2000, when  a janitor said he saw such an act, then in 2002, when graduate assistant (now Penn State receivers coach) Mike McQueary reported to Paterno that he had seen a similar incident. The school revoked Sandusky’s locker room keys and informed his nonprofit of the incident. Still, the reputation of Penn State (football) and the legacy of Paterno seemed more important. No police investigation was conducted until yet another boy, a teenager, came forward in early 2009.

To be sure, anyone should be presumed innocent until his day in court. But it’s in the best interests of all involved to confront any such accusations directly and urgently. “A lot of times it’s not easy to do the right thing,” Vaughn said. “But we owe it to those who are less able than we are.”

“Keep telling,” she says, “until somebody does something.”