Posted on 11/08/2011 5:29:07 PM PST by Colofornian
Correct.
I find it hard to believe that he did not kill Sandusky on the spot with the nearest heavy object to hand - let alone didn't call 911 right then and there, let alone didn't call 911 at all, let alone didn't follow up at all.
Good point. The glory of "the program" had to be protected at all costs, no matter how many more pre-teen boys would be sacrificed before the god of silence/betrayal.
One more thing...and I'm not saying that you were real intentional in framing it the way you did...but this wasn't simply a "sex" scandal. When a Penn State privileged individual becomes a predatory child rapist, yes, sex is the method of his violence; but rape is first and foremost an act of violence. And secondly, "sex" makes it sound like some sort of "consent" was involved.
Please don't reduce mass child-rape to the divine gift of sex. It comes across as downplaying what occurred here.
Thank you. I found that yesterday after searching.
Thank you nit, for sharing your experiences of the college and with your father and family. Knowing you, I’m sure you have been reading and keeping up with everything pertaining to the scandal and I feel your sorrow.
With the high powered, administrative career you had in education, I know you are well informed on how these things should be dealt with. I also know you to be the most decent of people and that you, personally, are crushed at the terrible crime committed against these young people.
I remember that game against Miami....it was the ultimate battle between “Good and Evil”. Here was cocky Miami, wearing battle fatigues and thugging it up, against nice, wholesome Penn State. And when Penn State won, it was great, the Evil Empire had been defeated.
Now, looking back, who was the evil empire, after all?
Dear nynychik.
I am old enough that I have the cynicism that often comes with decades. I know that men are flawed; all of them, except for One who died on a cross. I had heroes in my childhood, but I have very, very few today. Last Sunday, I had one hero in college football. His name was Joe Paterno. I never attended Penn State, nor did my parents, nor siblings, nor any relative. I've lived around the country, but never in or particularly near Pennsylvania. As I said above, when I was boy in Seattle, I put black electrical tape on my backyard football helmet so I could be one of JoePa's Penn State players. I liked JoePa then.
As a man, I grew to respect JoePa, almost love him, with each passing year of the debauchery in college sports because Joe Paterno was, in my eyes, a moral, decent, good man.
I'm genetically a Texan. I'll make a contract with a handshake. When I say somebody is a "good man," I pack a lot in that one word, "good." When I say "a moral, decent, good man" . . . well . . . as I said, I have few heros.
I didn't say he was a legalistic man. Legalism is a refuge for cowards and scoundrels. A good man does what is right and morally sound, not what is minimally required of him or that which legally gives him cover.
I knew he was powerful. He earned that power through respect and (I'm not stupid) through winning college football games. But he didn't seem to abuse his power.
On Monday morning of this week, I read the Grand Jury presentment regarding Penn State coach emeritus Jerry Sandusky. On Tuesday, I read the Grand Jury report. I don't know if you have read them yet.
What you will discover is that something grotesquely obscene happened at Penn State over a period of years, probably since 1994, and at least since 1998. It didn't happen once. Or twice. It didn't happen unnoticed.
Most of the attention is about a single incident of anal rape of a pre-teen boy that took place in the Penn State football locker room showers in 2002. But that's in the middle of the story.
The story apparently begins as early as 1994 or earlier, but let's start in 1998. Jerry Sandusky worked with troubled youth as part of a charity called The Second Mile, which he helped found years earlier; Joe Paterno was actually on the board at some point, perhaps as a honorary trustee. Jerry Sandusky played for Joe Paterno from 1963-65, and served on his coaching staff starting in 1969. By 1998, Sandusky had served as defensive coordinator for years, was a close personal friend of Joe Paterno's (for almost thirty years), and was the 'heir apparent' to replace Joe Paterno. However, in 1998, the University Police conducted an investigation into incidents (plural) involving Sandusky showering with preteen boys in the Penn State football locker room showers. Sandusky would have been in his mid-50s. There's nothing appropriate about that. Forget molestation. When you're a man in your 50s working with troubled boys, showering naked with them is not therapy. It's wrong.
Based on complaints by a mother, a DA looked into allegations of molestation but decided he did not have enough evidence. I may be wrong (I do not have the stomach to go back and read the reports again), but I do not believe the University Police report file was available to the DA, and I do not believe the University Police reported Sandusky to legal authorities.
This was Paterno's defensive coordinator and friend and assistant coach of thirty years. It was the Penn State football locker room. What's fairly clear is that Sandusky's problem with little boys was widely known after (or before) the investigation. It would be disrespectful of Joe Paterno to think he was so naive and disrepected that everyone else would know and not tell Paterno.
Well, within months, Sandusky unexpectedly announced his early retirement. The official story is that Paterno told him that he would never be the head coach at Penn State. That's probably true. And he was probably told that because . . . he showered with little boys.
Instead of disassociating completely with Sandusky, Penn State or Joe Paterno - because Joe Paterno was, as far as anyone who knew and understood the program believes, the athletic department in 1999 - decided to grant Sandusky 'emeritus' status.
Instead of disassociating with him, they gave him an office in the athletic building, with keys to the facilities, a parking space, a phone, internet access, discounts on campus, a tuition discount for himself and his adopted children, the rights to hold sleepover youth athletic camps on campus, and the rights to bring boys with him to insider football program events, such as sidelines and pre-game banquets. If you envision a child molester as an old man luring boys with candy, then Sandusky's candy was bringing boys to the Penn State facilities and inside the football program, and Penn State - with Paterno's knowledge, or at Paterno's instruction - gave Sandusky the candy.
I have to believe that Paterno, as a decent man, could have called the President of Penn State into his home (he was that powerful) and said "no man who showers with boys is going to have access to MY football facilities." At the very least, Paterno could have kept Sandusky from bringing boys to special football events, such as pre-game banquets.
In 2000, a janitor caught Sandusky in the football showers again, performing oral sodomy on a preteen boy. He didn't report it to the police because he was 'too scared." Whether scared of long-time hero Sandusky (whose defense won the 1987 Orange Bowl National Championship), or bringing shame on Penn State, or reporting Joe Paterno's friend of three decades, we don't know. But I find it difficult to believe that Joe Paterno, who ran his program so that he knew if his boys broke curfew, even if it was in a town twenty miles away, would have heard that his good friend and former coach had another boy in the football showers. It was never reported and Joe Paterno apparently did nothing to stop Sandusky from bringing boys around to football events, to keep Sandusky from having access to the football showers, or . . . anything.
In 2002, Mike McQueary, former star QB for Penn State and then a graduate assistant, walked in on Sandusky anally raping a preteen boy in the football showers at 9:30 on a Friday night. McQueary didn't stop Sandusky (who had been a coach when McQueary played) or rescue the boy. He didn't call the police. He called his father and the decided that McQueary should report the incident to Paterno . . . the next morning. McQueary did.
Here's an open part of the story. Paterno says he was only told that there was "fondling" and "maybe something of a sexual nature." McQueary told his father it was anal rape. McQueary told the AD, Curley, and the Senior VP of Business and Finance, it was anal rape. Why wouldn't he tell Paterno that?
Both the Grand Jury presentment and the GJ findings are very careful not to disclosure what McQueary says he told Joe Paterno.
Paterno waited one day to call the AD, Curley, to whom he 'reports' on the organizational chart. Of course, in real life in 2002, everybody really reported to Paterno. Paterno was the man with the power that came with respect, 34 years of coaching, and National Championships.
Curley and Schultz did nothing. They never reported the incident to the University Police, state youth protection, or any law enforcement. Sandusky kept his office in the Athletic building and emeritus status until this Sunday. He held sleepover camps for boys (although on the University's other campus) through the Athletic Department until 2008.
Joe Paterno says "I fulfilled my legal duty. I reported to my superior." And then he never followed up. He never asked about police involvement, or why Sandusky was still around, or hosting camps, or why Sandusky wasn't charged with anything. Nobody at Penn State even tried to find out the identity of the boy who was raped.
The Pennsylvania State Police Commission stated publicly that Joe Paterno had a moral duty to report this to the police.
But for nine years, Joe Paterno, whom I believed to be a righteous, decent, moral man, hid behind the "I told my superior" and watched as Sandusky still roamed freely. He either didn't ask any questions . . . or he didn't care what was heard.
And now, we find that as of yesterday, there are twenty know victims of Sandusky, while there were only eight in the indictment. And we wonder why the indictment and these details were held until Joe Paterno could pass the All-Time Wins As A Division I Coach record. Because they were held.
There are plenty of people to blame. Penn State's president should resign (I haven't even discussed his involvement). Mike McQueary should never coach again.
But it wasn't an incident in the showers in 2002. It was an unspeakable pattern of activities taking place at Penn State since at least 1998, and hushed up. And Joe Paterno knew and didn't speak.
I'm left having to make one of two assumptions. Either my hero placed a friendship of 30+ years and the desire not to tarnish the Penn State name over the safety of preteen boys, and did that since Sandusky was given emeritus status and allowed to bring boys to football events back in 1998, without Joe Paterno taking a stand or speaking out . . . or Joe Paterno was a clueless, incompetent figurehead dating back to 1998, and while everyone around him knew that Joe's friend was molesting boys in the showers of Joe's football program, Joe was the only person who didn't know about it.
And suddenly, these programs who give cars and cash to players? When you have everyone from the President of the University on down apparently involved in some way actively covering up child rape, or sweeping it under the rug, or ignoring it, or saying "it kicked it up the ladder, so why look at me, I didn't need to speak out?", those cars and cash are not even in the same category.
When I read about a veteran of D-Day dying, I grieve. This is not quite the same. But I lost my youth. I lost my innocence. I realize that power does corrupt. I lost JoePa. Now, he's an old man who sat silent for fourteen years or more, allowing more boys to be molested, to protect a friend, or the reputation of Penn State and its football program.
This reminds me of when my Scoutmaster died.
Above all, let us not forget these young boys. Their suffering far surpasses anything we feel as alumni, or fans of Penn State or Joe Paterno.
14-10. And Sandusky was the hero. This was Linebacker U. Sandusky was the defensive coordinator and his defensive schemes - and directions to hit Michael Irvin hard and continually - were credited then and now with the win.
Sandusky was revered as the architect of the famous Penn State defense and the reason for that National Championship. . . which may have had a residual effect on the treatment he received even after 1998.
Thank you for your responses, detailed and sharp as a knife. Thank you for your gracefulness to me. My mixed feelings clarified quickly when I read the entire indictment “presentment”. I was upset Tuesday night by Paterno’s turning supportive students’ visit to his home into a pep rally. I was outraged Wednesday morning at his cynically manipulative resignation “at the end of the season,” to make things easy on the board /s. I would have driven down to campus and fired him myself.
Wednesday night, if not before, the students should have held a candlelight vigil for the victims. Their pity party was a disgrace.
Much more information will come out, and I think we will be shocked and disgusted again. For starters, Sandusky is out on bail.
Paterno’s ouster gave cover to the also-deposed university president Spanier. Much attention needs to be paid to the culture of tolerance for deviance he directed and enabled on campus. I will begin to know PSU is serious when I assess the quality of Spanier’s replacement and other appointments.
I was at the 1987 Fiesta Bowl. It was definitely the battle between good and evil. We were approached by many Arizonans, complimenting our school.
The interception that gave us the win was right in front of us. GIFTopolous. I have to say that PSU’s offense was horrible that night. The game, actually, was sickening. Despite all the anticipation and excitement of attending, there was little overt joy in the stands where I was sitting. I’m sure there was cheering somewhere, but where I was, when the game ended people collapsed to their seats and cried or hugged each other. The bus ride back to the hotel was utterly silent.
The hotel was locked down, guarded, all facilities closed. I asked a guard why nothing was open. He said they feared a riot. Many of us laughed and said we’re Penn State, we don’t act that way, then quietly took the elevator to our rooms. The irony has not escaped me.
Thursday Rush said he was told by a friend in a position to know that Sandusky's activities were common knowledge.He elaborated on the Sandusky ice cream dessert (apparently one of a hundred locally named for campus figures) and it was graphic.
He alluded to the suspicious nature of the DA's refusal to prosecute in 1998 and the disappearance in 2005.
In the larger scope we have a Babylonian closet queen in the Oval Office appointing a NAMBLA worm to a Safe Schools czardom.
It's time for diverting the river through the Augean Stables.
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