Revolting cat! Family Releases Report!
Care to read it and comment?
Posted on 02/10/2013 7:10:13 AM PST by Uncle Chip
A report commissioned by Joe Paterno's family calls the July 2012 Freeh report that was accepted by Penn State trustees before unprecedented sanctions were levied by the NCAA against the school's football program a "total failure" that is "full of fallacies, unsupported personal opinions, false allegations and biased assertions."
The Paterno family report, which targets nearly every conclusion and assertion the Freeh report made about Paterno in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, states that while former FBI director Louis J. Freeh has had an honorable past and good reputation, his investigation -- especially as it relates to Paterno -- relied on "rank speculation," "innuendo" and "subjective opinions" when it concluded that Paterno concealed facts about Sandusky in part to avoid bad publicity.
Freeh was hired on Nov. 21, 2011 and paid $6.5 million by Penn State University trustees --
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The Paterno family immediately roundly and loudly rejected the report, and, four days after its release, instructed its lawyer to form a "group of experts" to conduct a comprehensive review of the facts and conclusions. The Paterno family asked its attorney's law firm, King and Spalding of Washington, D.C., to start "a comprehensive review of the report and Joe Paterno's conduct. They authorized us to engage the preeminent experts in their field and to obtain their independent analyses."
The law firm hired former U.S. attorney general Richard Thornburgh, former FBI supervisory special agent and former state prosecutor James Clemente, and Dr. Fred Berlin, a treating physician, psychiatrist, psychologist and expert in sexual disorders and pedophilia at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine. The family's report attacks Freeh's conclusions, assertions, methodology, investigative abilities and choices, disclosures and independence.
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(Excerpt) Read more at espn.go.com ...
“During the investigation, we contacted Mr. Paterno’s attorney in an attempt to interview Mr. Paterno. Although Mr. Paterno was willing to speak with a news reporter and his biographer at that time, he elected not to speak with us”
Louis Freeh, in his response to the Paterno Report
“The Special Investigative Counsel requested an interview with Paterno in December 2011. Through his counsel, Paterno expressed interest in participating but died before he could be interviewed.”
Freeh Report, page 53
“Mr. Paterno passed away before we had the opportunity to speak with him, although we did speak with some of his representatives. We believe that he was willing to speak with us and would have done so, but for his serious, deteriorating health.”
From the Freeh July 2012 press conference
Care to read it and comment?
From Wick Sollers:
Wick Sollers’ rebuttal to Louis Freeh:
Paterno family attorney Wick Sollers issued the following statement in response to former FBI director Louis Freeh’s comments on the Paterno family critique, released on Sunday morning, of Freeh’s report on Penn State’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case.
“Mr. Freeh’s attack on the report this morning should trouble everyone who wants the truth on the Sandusky scandal. He criticizes a report he obviously hadn’t had time to read and consider. And he refuses to address the critical factual and procedural failures in his own report, particularly his flawed conclusions which have only added to this tragedy.
The assertion by Mr. Freeh that somehow the Paterno family declined to cooperate with his investigators is an unfortunate distortion of the truth. I personally met with the Freeh team and pledged full cooperation. Joe Paterno’s cancer diagnosis, treatment and subsequent death prevented him from being interviewed. But Jay Paterno was interviewed and I shared additional information available to me.
Being angry does not constitute a defense of poor work. A failure to consider the facts carefully is exactly the problem our expert analysis highlights. I encourage everyone, including Mr. Freeh, to take the time to study this report.”
But how will I have time to read OJs report on his investigation regarding finding the killers of the people he murdered?
Penn State accepted the Freeh report and its recommendations.
Paterno admitted his knowledge of the first initial report of sexual abuse. Paterno stated he also knew the second (McCleary report) that something sexual in nature happened.
Yet he did not notify the authorities.
Worse, when the Admin came up with an Action Plan, including notifying authorities regarding the incidents, the Admin decides to not notify authorities AFTER THEY TALK TO PATERNO.
Read the report sycophants. Accept Paterno failed many children who were molested and move on. If you are going to read the fiction from the Paterno family, try a novel instead.
(AMPU, I'd pull this quote if I were you...how many witnesses of a rape actually see specific "insertion"???...a ridiculous degree of actually disclaiming a rape...and a dangerous one...and one not worthy of Christians to introduce)
Care to respond to my #51?
Wow! AMPU...far from you to be introducing the thought that there's "nothing wrong" with men taking showers with boys -- with no one else around.
"Later, under cross-examination, McQueary was even more emphatic: “I have never used the word anal or rape in this—since day one.”
Tell us, AMPU: How many men are in jail -- or were placed there -- for molesting boys minus any actual rape? Why are you going to the nth degree to make distinctions without distinctions in this particular matter?
Given that you don't seem to deny that Sandusky bared himself before a boy, and that McQueary heard slapping sounds along the lines of intercourse as the two were close in a shower, is that something we as Christians should be promoting as "acceptable" in any way by defending the firsthand eyewitnesses and secondhand earwitnesses of this?
Cult of an athletics coach at a provincial college? Gimme a break!
Ya know, ANY university of this size worth its salt would have had its own undercover private investigator giving administrative decision-makers enough signals on this matter...even if such an investigator might not give them the full scoop so that such an admin could create distance as to exactly what he knew...The scandal broke early last Fall...the Penn State Admin had over 8 months before the Freeh report came out in July...and almost 9 months pre NCAA sanctions.
The Penn State admin knew -- or should have known -- exactly what was "challenge-able" from either the report or the sanctions...Such an investigator could certainly reinforce what was "defensible" from Penn State's angle...
Guess what? They did neither.
Your admins are still in place @ Penn State, are they not? (Then why are you posting any blame further than them?)
I watched Thornburgh and the other two bozos for about ten minutes this morning. That was all the time I needed to see they were acting strictly as a hired guns for the university and deserved no credibility whatsoever.
From his own mouth, Thornburgh claimed the SINGLE MOST MAJOR flaw in the Freeh Report was the fact that none of the four principals in authority at the university, the president, a vice president, the athletic director and Paterno, had been among the 482 people interviewed for the report, making it seem that Freeh had deliberately failed to interview them in an attempt to railroad them. But of course, the fact is that Freeh couldn’t interview them because their own lawyers refused to allow them to be interviewed!
Thornburgh’s report is a joke. It’s an attempt to muddy the waters and exculpate a once great university from the consequences of the egregious failures of its own leaders. It will be little noted and will cause no changes whatsoever to the sanctions assessed against Penn State.
Actually I agree 100%, and if you talk to most Penn Staters they'll tell you that after Sandusky their anger is directed at an inept and self-serving board of trustees. There's a very strong argument to be made that the BoT and university president breached their fiduciary responsibility by failing to do exactly what you suggested above.
“(AMPU, I’d pull this quote if I were you...how many witnesses of a rape actually see specific “insertion”???...a ridiculous degree of actually disclaiming a rape...and a dangerous one...and one not worthy of Christians to introduce)”
I believe it is germane to the conversation and inclusion doesn’t detract from the rest of what M. testified to seeing or not seeing. It is important because the grand jury said “anal rape”. There is not anal rape without insertion. If he did not witness rape, as he says he did not, then he did not tell Paterno he saw anal rape, as was claimed by the grand jury.
And yet he was fired. I guess he wasn't the "most", was he??? [Uncle Chip]
Chip, please don't retroactively plead ignorance here; Ontap is referencing all those years where witness McQueary was bumped from grad student (at time he saw Sandusky & the kid in the showers) --> WR coach --> plus head of Penn State football recruiting.
Your firing ref to JoePa comes post-eruption of this scandal. You can't pretend that you really don't know the difference, here, right?
So then, Newbee troll, o great defender of Louie Freeh:
You have been here before.
Would you like to tell us who you were in your past life.
“Why are you going to the nth degree to make distinctions without distinctions in this particular matter? “
First, I am quoting what the “witness” says he saw and did not see. Since the grand jury claimed something very different than was testified to, the grand jury was giving an opinion.
None of that would justify abuse. It is, however a fact of this case and was used to draw a conclusion that was not supported by that fact.
This comment needs to be repeated for the benefit of the Jopologists.
This scandal broke 15 months ago...and somehow the Joepologists think that they can begin to do some "damage control" now.
I've got a suggestion for you Jopologists: Go take a Public Relations 101 course from your local community college. Ask that prof if he/she thinks that 15 months is the "optimal" time to conduct reputational damage control...
Haha you sir are a funny guy.
Paterno's own testimony reflects the reality that he did not require a declarative statement from McQueary: "I knew some kind of inappropriate action was being taken by Jerry Sandusky with a youngster..."
Had Paterno not known about 1998, then Paterno would've understandably been surprised. I'd allow some confusion at what one of his staff members told him and as a result, an instinctive presumption of innocence. I could maybe excuse the overwhelmingly poor leadership he displayed in not contacting the "appropriate" legal authorities and simply passing it up the administrative line and then not following it up. That wouldn't be a completely inexplicable response.
However, that is not what happened. Paterno did know about 1998. And as a result, a second allegation that this same man was showering with boys, much less caught in what McQueary, at a minimum, conveyed as inappropriate conduct, should've led Paterno to act decisively and contact the "appropriate" legal authorities.
It is not credible to assert that Paterno did not fully comprehend what was going on after receiving two sexual abuse claims against Sandusky in a 3 year period.
BTW: What is this fixation that some of you have in assuming I am new here? Do the numbers that show up when someone scrolls over your user id confer upon you an Honorary Degree in "Not Being Stupid"? :)
LOL amen!
AMPU, are you really telling us that if you as a witness saw what appeared to be rape -- but you couldn't tell if it was "mere" sexual abuse or actual penetrative rape -- that this would all somehow be relevant to the overall dimensions of this case...particularly now that this repetitive child abuser has been placed in prison for both child sexual abuse of a more general nature -- and rape itself???
So what if Joe didn't actually know if it was actual "rape" -- or, to shutter me even using the word -- "only" -- sexual abuse of another kind?
Can't you see why you're making distinctions without a distinction?
I tell you what: The jury in Sandusky's cases -- many of which haven't been tried -- made no such "well, that depends on the meaning of the word 'penetration'" parsings as you have done in posts here...
“Years later, Mr. Paterno would explain to a reporter he chose to discuss the event with that he told McQueary, ‘I said you did what you had to do. It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do.”
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