The tone of this SF reporter all huffy against only Paterno when no one there, or here, knows for sure that Paterno knew squat about every jot and tittle of campus gossip on Sandusky. I can back off defending Paterno when I hear the evidence that he actually knew more than he turned in, or covered up for the creep, but there is absolutely none yet. [RitaOK, #38]
#1
Notice the pedophile cover-ups -- like RitaOK -- uses words like "campus gossip" to describe more than one conversation Paterno had with a credible eyewitness, Michael McQueary, how head of Penn State recruiting.
An eyewitness report can...
...(a) get you arrested;
...(b) get you convicted;
Yet...RitaOK reduces that direct eyewitness report to "campus gossip"...that's the way "spin" works with pedophile cover-up apologists.
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#2 The author's article is very vague about what the witness told Paterno [DDD from Dumas]
He was actually citing p. 7 of the Grand Jury presentment as to how Paterno testified as to what McQueary told him.
McQueary told the Grand Jury in no uncertain terms that it was child-rape, even estimating the boy's age to be 10.
As to what Paterno "heard" -- or at least relayed to the Grand Jury -- was that it was either "fondling" or "doing something of a sexual nature."
I'm not sure why people think less-than-pornographic specificity is somehow "case promoting" for Paterno. Come on, now: Even if JoePa wants to defend pedophile Sandusky and downgrade the shower activity from "only" child-rape to generic child sexual abuse, how does sexual abuse minus rape-penetration make it any less sexual abuse, anyway? Fondling is still a felony!
You posters amaze me! [You seem to tout, "Well you see my son was 'only' 'fondled' and 'only' had 'things of a sexual nature' done to him" as if that somehow testifies to Paterno's stalwartness character-wise as to why he didn't pursue protection for this victim over the long run]
Truly pathetic.
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This is what the author wrote: "Even if McQueary, then a graduate assistant, gave Paterno only a vague description of the shower incident (and why in the world would Paterno not demand details?)..."
This is what I don't like about the article. The Grand Jury transcript says that Paterno reported to Curley that McQueary had seen Sandusky "fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy." Why doesn't the author quote what the transcript actually said? The grand jury transcript proves that Paterno knew that a witness identified Sandusky as a molester of a very young minor.
I agree with the author's conclusions about Paterno (....the report should have raised in Paterno a reasonable suspicion that Sandusky was a dangerous criminal.), but he presented his evidence in a ham-fisted way, suggesting that what McQueary's father told Paterno may have been dubious. I had to read the grand jury transcript to find out what really happened.