When I was 16, some of my teachers coaxed me into attending American Legion Boys State at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Hundreds of other boys from around Florida were there, as well.

During that week, one of the Boys Staters assaulted a female FSU student. Exactly what happened was unclear, but it was made clear it wasn't consensual. I never learned his identity, and I don't know if campus police were involved. We were told he was sent home.

Whatever did happen prompted the legionnaires, who ran Boys State with a boot camp-like efficiency, to summon us all into an auditorium to address it.

The legionnaire who spoke that day could have delivered a forceful, unequivocal message to a few hundred high school boys. For starters, maybe a clear message about respectfully treating women as equals and not being a sexual predator. No weasel words, no whataboutism.

We got this instead:

The legionnaire stressed that FSU administrators — the people allowing our use of the campus that week — were very upset.

The legionnaire then threw shade on those same administrators. He noted, his voice and anger rising, that the FSU administrators upset over this incident had not been upset when '60s counterculture activist Angela Davis — "a known communist!" — had appeared on campus. Quickly, awkwardly, he pivoted from discussing an incident involving one of us and made it about something totally, ridiculously unrelated. At least once, he addressed us all as "red-blooded American boys."

Where he was going with his remarks was hard to miss: A university allowing Angela Davis on campus was on shaky ground to condemn anything else. And boys — especially "red-blooded American boys" — will be boys. Get over it. Move on.

He quickly whisked us away from considering the victim — there had been a real, flesh-and-blood victim after all — to instead ruminate on a dubious bureaucratic apparatus. And if these administrators couldn't be trusted to protect the campus (and us) from the likes of Angela Davis, could we really trust their condemnation of a red-blooded American boy?

The legionnaire's remarks couldn't have taken more than five minutes. When it was over, most of a previously silent crowd of about 500 high school boys whooped it up like we were at a pep rally.

I'd witnessed firsthand a jarring example of the way power structures bury uncomfortable situations and often further traumatize victims. Deflect to another topic, deflect to a more convenient villain, or just delegitimize the victim or the disciplinary apparatus. This time, it was all about Angela Davis and the commie-loving administrators of FSU.

I was a teenager, admittedly still very much a work in progress. But I knew enough (all credit to my parents) to be disgusted by what I'd just witnessed.

At the end of the week, my parents picked me up in Tallahassee. It had been a largely unremarkable week, save for this incident.

Occasionally, I'll make a mental list of the "Atticus Finch moments" during my formative years, when an adult figure said something with moral clarity and courage and impact that taught me a valuable lesson and made me a better person for having heard it.

But I always remember what I heard one morning nearly 40 years ago in a Florida State auditorium. I come back to it when there's yet another abuse scandal filled with weasel words and deflection and whataboutism.

I wonder what those cheering boys around me filed away for future reference as they grew into manhood.

And I think about a young woman attending Florida State that summer.

Contact John Martin at jmartin@tampabay.com