Posted on 06/25/2012 9:14:26 PM PDT by FlJoePa
Editorial by John Ziegler Things Most People Still Don't "Get" About the Jerry Sandusky Scandal
6/24/2012
One of the most interesting phenomenon about the biggest news stories of the modern age is that the larger a story is, the bigger the gap seems to be between what people think they know about what happened and what really occurred (this is how most Americans think Bill Clinton was impeached for having oral sex with an intern) .
Having communicated, from a contrarian point of view, with literally hundreds of people about the Jerry Sandusky case, I have been struck by how true this is regarding the horrific narrative which has captivated the sports world since last November. Because at one point I was preparing to produce a documentary on it for a major network (one that will be made, but without my participation) I have made it my business to know all of the facts about this case.
In my experience there are many important elements which, thanks in large part to poor media coverage, are not just lost on the general public, but which the average person simply refuses to accept as reality, even when they are directly told about them. Most incredibly, I have found that this is even true with a lot of Penn State supporters who, seemingly out of guilt and fear of being seen as not accepting reality, have bought into largely suspect narratives.
To be clear, I am totally convinced that Sandusky was guilty and that the verdicts were, for the most part, completely justified (though the process was clearly rushed). I just strongly believe that many people have come to unfair conclusions about the now deceased Joe Paterno because they simply don’t have a clear picture of all the facts.
Here are the most important things that, at least in my experience, most people just don’t "get" about the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
Without a doubt, the number one item on this list is that there is no known victim from the episode witnessed by Mike McQueary, which got so much of the media coverage and which ultimately resulted in Paterno’s firing. When I tell people this fact they think that I am either joking or that I simply mean that the victim just doesn’t want to be identified.
Neither is true. Despite worldwide media coverage and the likelihood of a huge civil case paycheck, no one has ever come forward in any way to say that they were raped or abused by Sandusky in the Penn State showers on the day McQueary says he saw something awful. This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but it should have at least raised important questions which were mostly never asked.
Not only is there no known victim from the McQueary episode, incredibly, the only known witness to the event got the date it happened wrong. McQueary didn’t just get the day of this seemingly momentous incident wrong. He also got the month wrong. And the even the year! The only thing more remarkable than this inexplicable lapse in memory (how do you forget the year in which something like that happened unless you only thought it was extremely significant years later?), was that the very same media which covered the initial McQueary allegation as if it was a presidential assassination, barely even mentioned this startling revelation which came to light just before the trial.
Two other facts about McQueary, which have been lost in the avalanche of information about the case, are that he told a doctor friend that he never saw any sex and that he went out of his way to participate in at least two events hosted by Sandusky after the scene in the shower. Both of these issues came up at trial (the jury even asked to have the doctor’s testimony read back during deliberations) and probably played a role in one of the verdicts.
Now that the verdicts are in, also making the list of things most people don’t realize about the Sandusky case is the significance of one of the three not guilty judgments. It turns out that, after all of the coverage of the McQueary allegation and the resulting ignominious ending of a 60 year era at Penn State football and the death of a legend, Sandusky was actually acquitted of the rape charge from that allegation.
This was hardly ever mentioned on any of the television coverage of the verdict and is more than just an interesting and ironic footnote to the trial. The reality is that this verdict proves that the grand jury report should never have described what McQueary witnessed as an “anal rape.” That one phrase dramatically altered the narrative of the entire saga. Without it, I honestly believe that media firestorm is greatly diminished (no one to my knowledge has ever pointed out that the first edition of Sports Illustrated after the grand jury report came out had exactly zero hard news stories on the scandal), Paterno and Penn State are not the only focus, and Paterno at least survives long enough to get the hearing he deserved.
Most people, even in the news media, are also unaware that there was only one other allegation of actual rape (interestingly the mother of that victim does not blame Penn State or Paterno at all) in the grand jury report, which is probably why the prosecutors stretched too far on the McQueary incident. All of the other most egregious allegations came about because new victims came forward after all of the initial publicity. All of the many accusers at trial created the misimpression that there was a mountain of evidence at the time of Paterno’s firing. This just wasn’t the case.
Similarly, people I speak to have a very difficult time separating what we now know about what a monster Sandusky is and what information Paterno apparently had at the time when he decided all that he had to do was notify his superiors. Based on the current evidence, all Paterno knew was that a graduate assistant had sort of witnessed Sandusky engaging in highly inappropriate contact of a sexual nature in a Penn State shower. There is no existing proof that Paterno knew of any other allegations and certainly didn’t have the full context of Sandusky’s actions we all unfortunately have now.
This leads to the next misunderstanding surrounding how easy it would have been for Paterno or anyone else to pin a child molester label on Sandsky. Not only were there no other concurrent allegations (as far as we currently know, Penn State football was unaware of the 1998 investigation into an incident which prosecutors deemed unchargeable), but Sandusky was a local hero and ran a huge charity on which thousands of people relied. A false charge of child molester would have been devastating to many people and irreversible. It has been presumed that Paterno and others at Penn State looked the other way on Sandusky out of fear of damaging their precious program, but there are other rational interpretations of their hesitancy to go public.
It is also important to point out that, while he didn’t go public with McQueary’s story, contrary to widespread perception, Paterno did indeed go to the police (the head of the campus police) and his superior, just as the law required him to do so. Most people are as unaware of the basic fact as they are that Sandusky was a FORMER Penn State assistant at the time McQueary came to him. In Paterno’s mind Sandusky was no longer his responsibility.
Most people I speak to about this presume that Paterno took part in a cover up and placed the reputation of his football team over the well being of defenseless children. But just to be clear, as of today, there is zero evidence to back up this allegation. While numerous email are being made public which indicate other Penn State officials may have participated in a cover up, there is not even one relevant mention of Joe Paterno.
If people still want to think that the crimes of Jerry Sandusky were really the fault of Joe Paterno or someone else, that is fine with me. People are entitled to their own opinions. They just should have all the facts before they come to their conclusions. Unfortunately, in this case, very few people, even in the news media, are aware of all of them.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. I guess we agree.
I don’t understand how anyone could make excuses for not protecting the child. Using “it’s not my job” to explain why he didn’t report a rape is indefensible.
Yes it is good to sort out the facts when the dust settles. There was more people than just Jerry to blame. I see in the future that Penn State will be paying a whole lot of money when the lawyers are finished. What we need to remember is the victims.
In my own upbringing, throughout grade school and high school we routinely showered after gym classes and extra-curricular sporting activities. If on any occasion one of our gym teachers or coaches would have had the temerity to join us in the shower room (such a thing NEVER happened), it would have caused a scandal that would likely end with the teacher being fired or worse.
In fact, if I recall correctly the athletic staff had their own showers in their offices. It would be very interesting to know if this was the situation in the Penn State athletic staff offices, and if so, why some claim it was "normal" for the staff to shower with their charges.
The majority of child sexual assault victims are girls.
The vast majority of sexual assault perpetrators are male.
While there may be (and there is) and argument made about disproportionality - the numbers simply don't add up to the majority of pedophiles/pederasts being gay.
The homo/pedophile community and their sympathizers demonizes anyone who stands up to them without a conviction. The name the victims and witnesses liars. It takes a lot of courage to stand up because you will be named wierd - even a homophobe - for standing up to an unconvicted homo wierdo.
Pedophiles thrive in secrecy and keeping everyone in fear of them. Joe could have messed all that up by being open with everybody in football, in administration, and within the charity, that Sandusky was suspect in his eyes and he could have asked for all eyes to watch him based on him taking boys into the shower with him and acting inappropriately.
Heck, in his position, he could have brought in experts to speak to the whole football program about why boys don’t tell, how they get entrapped by sexual predators, how sexual predators operate, what is appropriate and inappropriate contact between men and boys and what to look for and what to do if you see signs of abuse.
Maybe, but it’s in God’s hands, now.
They are not the same.
However, they DO walk hand in hand.
The vast majority of sexual assault convictions are male.
Thus you get wildly different graphs if you chart your information strictly from court records or a head count of convicted prisoners in the justice system than what you see from counseling and therapy researchers. Female predators may approach thirty percent. As with male predators, they go after both sexes in their victim selection.
“Female (sexual) predators may approach thirty percent”
Source?
Everything I have seen says around 10%. Around 5% of abused girls are victimized by women and 20% of boys.
McQueary never told the doctor that. What the doctor friend, Jonathan Dranov, M.D., said was that whenever he pushed McQueary on that point, McQueary would break down. To quote from Dranov's testimony:
“He couldn’t go on. He just seemed to get more upset."
Dranov asked him three times and all three times McQueary broke down when asked whether he saw sex. Dranov also testified on cross that he knew McQeary and had never seen him break down like that over anything.
The fact is: McQueary NEVER told Dr. Dranov he didn't see sex. McQueary couldn't answer the question the three times he was asked it by Dranov.
First, after spending a day to think about what to do Paterno did not contact the campus police. Paterno only contacted Tim Curley, the Athletic Director. Gary Schultz was only pulled into the mix after that and we don't know whether that was Curley's idea or Paterno's.
Second, there is a head of the University Police, but it's not Gary Schultz. Gary Schultz was the Senior Vice President of Finance and the police reported to him - as did physical plant (like, say, those who maintained the football showers; do you want to tell me contacting Schultz was also contacting the head of football showers?).
The head of the FBI and the head of the CIA report to Barack Obama, but if you whisper something to Obama, that's not the same as reporting it to the FBI or the CIA - just as reporting something to Gary Schultz wasn't the same as reporting something to the university police.
And, in fact, it wasn't. Gary Schultz never reported the shower incident to the university police.
One of those with knowledge was Jonathan Dranov, M.D., who was called to the McQueary household that night after John McQueary heard his son's story and couldn't decide what to do. He knew something was going on in that shower - he pressed Mike McQueary three times on whether he saw actual sex and all three times McQueary broke down and couldn't answer.
Physicians are required under Pennsylvania law to report suspected sexual abuse; Dranov reported nothing.
In the interest of full disclosure, Dranov was medical director of a clinic to which the Paternos had given over $1 million. He advised telling Paterno and not the police.
It was a little more bizarre than that. Two former Penn State assistant football coaches, Booker T. Brooks and Richard “Dick” Anderson, testified for the defense that they showered with children. Brooks said he showers with his granddaughter at the YMCA and Anderson said he showers with boys a the YMCA and in the Penn State football showers.
Yep, a systemic problem including many people who failed in their duty to protect children.
For the record, I have reported numerous incidents of sketchy behavior, in my private capacity as parent and volunteer, and in my public capacity as representative of my employer. At the time, proof of crime was not available, but the reports led to investigation, people coming forward and eventual prosecutions in some cases. A notable conviction was of the apparently loved and respected police department youth officer assigned to the school district. Do you think that was easy? I also investigated sexual harassment claims brought before my employer. Sometimes people lie and have ulterior motives, and sometimes they tell the truth. It is complicated, and I put my own employment on the line each time.
My original point remains the same as it did with “Grandpa”. If you want to report a crime or suspicious incident that occurred on the campus of Penn State, University Park, PA, with its own area code and zip code, and five times larger than the city in which I live, the only jurisdiction is the campus police. Paterno could have gone to the desk clerk, a patrolman, or the
head administrator. He chose the latter, plus that man’s boss.
If he did so to plot a cover up, I hope that will come out in his supervisors’ trials or in Louis Freeh’s report. I am disappointed that Joe didn’t do the many things he could have done, but changing the realities of jurisdiction wasn’t one of them.
No. Paterno's only interest was in notifying the Athletic Director. Here's Paterno's Grand Jury testimony:
Q: To whom or with whom did you share the information that McQueary had given you?
Mr. Paterno: I talked to my immediate boss, our athletic director.
Q: What is that person’s name?
Mr. Paterno: Tim Curley.
Q: How did you contact Mr. Curley?
Mr. Paterno: I believe I did it by phone. As I recall, I called him and I said, hey, we got a problem, and I explained the problem to him.
Q: You indicated that your report was made directly to Tim Curley. Do you know of that report being made to anyone else that was a university official?
Mr. Paterno: No, because I figured that Tim would handle it appropriately. I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Mr. Curley and I thought he would look into it and handle it appropriately.
So even if Schultz was the university police (and he wasn't), Paterno didn't contact the university police. He contacted the Athletic Department.
Next, Here's a copy of the Penn State organizational chart. Notice where the Senior Vice President of Business and Finance (now the SVP of Finance and Business/Treasurer) is. Then look down at all of the full departments that report to him. Commonwealth Operations, Physical Plant, Human Resources, among the ten.
Do you think mentioning to Gary Schultz that there was a light out in Room E-328 of the Minsky Building was the same thing as contacting Physical Plant? Why then would drawing the Sandusky matter to his attention be the same as contacting the University Police, just one of ten departments under him? It's just as likely he was contacted because he was in charge of Human Resources (after all, Schultz never let anyone inside the police department, including the chief of police, know about the Sandusky matter).
So, no. Paterno didn't contact the university police. By his own testimony, he only contacted the Athletic Department.
Then, by the time Schultz was brought into it, it was a Senior Vice President of the university to whom Human Resources reported, just the same as the University Police and Physical Plant. Bringing Schultz into the mix had nothing to do with "police," and Paterno didn't bring Schultz in anyway.
To what extent did the fact that Penn State celebrated a gay friendly environment (as per the agenda of its president) contribute to the suppression of Sandusky’s crimes?
Were McQueery and Paterno intimidated to some extent?
Would this have happened at the University of Nebraska?
Bringing Schultz into the mix had nothing to do with “police,” and Paterno didn’t bring Schultz in anyway...
...you’ve made some excellent points, and have aided greatly in understanding what went on here...to the extent that the author’s original input on the ‘facts’ now seems more like just opinionated rambling...as far as Paterno goes, as others here have mentioned, he is in God’s hands now, as such beyond our ability to hurt or help him any further...I still think he should have been allowed to finish out the year, or be placed on some sort of leave (his ultimate illness may have justified that). The benefit of whatever little doubt there may have been his role in all of this should have been allowed to him...
...but for the record, I’m glad PSU has a new head coach, should have had one years ago, and hopefully will proceed apace in a new direction...
Would this have happened at the University of Nebraska?...
...sad to say, this could have happened anywhere, and it’s highly unlikely that a homophilic campus atmosphere has much impact on a football program...PSU football had a rogue predator, fulfilling homoerotic perversions with those least able to challenge him...any campus, or any organization, is subject to the same atrocity, regardless of its public posture on such matters...
my point was only that pedophiles are not solely homosexual...there are plenty of pedophiles that prefer the opposite sex.
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