Living a lie
Joe Paterno issued a statement yesterday regarding the apparent fact that for 43 years Paterno’s PSU program harbored a serial child rapist (Jerry Sandusky joined Paterno’s staff in 1966 and was running football camps at PSU for ten-year-old boys as late as 2009). Here it is in full:
If true, the nature and amount of charges made are very shocking to me and all Penn Staters. While I did what I was supposed to with the one charge brought to my attention, like anyone else involved I can’t help but be deeply saddened these matters are alleged to have occurred.
Sue and I have devoted our lives to helping young people reach their potential. The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling. If this is true we were all fooled, along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers.
As my grand jury testimony stated, I was informed in 2002 by an assistant coach that he had witnessed an incident in the shower of our locker room facility. It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report. Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As Coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.
I understand that people are upset and angry, but let’s be fair and let the legal process unfold. In the meantime I would ask all Penn Staters to continue to trust in what that name represents, continue to pursue their lives every day with high ideals and not let these events shake their beliefs nor who they are.
This is a craven bit of attorney-crafted circumlocution that shouldn’t fool anybody, but Paterno is in the peculiar position of being a deeply selfish, half-crazy old man who the national media continue treat with kid gloves.
There can be little doubt that Paterno has known since at least 1998 that Sandusky had a “problem” with “inappropriate behavior” toward children, i.e., he was a child molester. That’s when the campus police did a six-week investigation after a mother reported to them that her 11-year-old son had showered with Sandusky. From the grand jury report:
The mother of Victim 6 confronted Sandusky about showering with her son, the effect it had had on her son, whether Sandusky had sexual feelings when he hugged her naked son in the shower, and where Victim 6′s buttocks were when Sandusky hugged him in the shower. Sandusky said he had showered with other boys and Victim 6′s mother tried to make him promise never to shower with a boy again but he would not. She asked him if his “private parts” had touched Victim 6 when he bear-hugged him. Sandusky replied, “I don’t know . . . maybe.” At the conclusion of the second conversation, after Sandusky was told he could not see Victim 6 any more, Sandusky said, “I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”
This conversation, in which Sandusky in effect admits that there are other victims, and even refuses to say he’ll stop victimizing children, was surreptitiously observed by a PSU police detective, who was then ordered by the head of campus police to drop the matter. (The local district attorney, who for unknown reasons decided not to press charges, disappeared in 2005 and was declared legally dead in July).
To put it mildly, it’s extremely unlikely that in a little town like State College, PA, word of this investigation didn’t get back to Paterno. This supposition is bolstered by Sandusky’s otherwise strange “retirement” the following year. Sandusky was considered perhaps the top defensive coordinator in college football at the time, he was only 55, and he had long been considered Paterno’s heir apparent. The story Sandusky gave out was that he was retiring because Paterno told him he wouldn’t be succeeding him as head coach at PSU. At 72 Paterno was, in the spring of 1999, already the oldest coach in major college football, and his otherwise inexplicable decision to get rid of his right-hand man in this fashion suddenly makes perfect sense if one assumes Paterno decided it might be harmful to his already iconic legacy if it became known that his top assistant over all these years was a child molester, who had founded a charitable foundation to give himself easier access to his victims. (I’m told that, at Sandusky’s retirement banquet, the normally gregarious Paterno spoke for less than a minute at this tribute to a man who had worked at his side for 33 years).
On the other side, we have Scott Paterno, Joe’s son, claiming in the New York Times that Paterno didn’t know about the 1998 investigation. (The Times might have noted that in 1996 Scott Paterno opined that, “the President of the United States is a felon. In my opinion, President Clinton, at the very least, conspired to commit murder at least 56 times.”). Paterno himself has said nothing on the matter, and the statement he released yesterday is obviously phrased to allow him to eventually acknowledge that he did know about the 1998 investigation (“the nature and amount of charges are very shocking to me”).
In any event Paterno did acknowledge in his grand jury testimony that he’s known since at least 2002 that Sandusky was a child molester, although incredibly enough now he’s even trying to walk back that admission. He testified that Mike McQueary told him he had seen Sandusky “fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy” in the PSU football locker room showers (McQueary testified that he saw Sandusky anally raping the child). Now in his statement Paterno is trying to get people to believe that he was told that his 58-year-old lifelong friend and co-worker was doing something “inappropriate” to a ten-year-old boy in a shower, but that he had no idea it was anything all that bad: certainly not bad enough to cause Paterno — by far the most powerful person in the PSU AD and arguably the most powerful person on campus — to wonder why the only thing that happened to Sandusky was that he was told not to bring the kids he was raping into the locker room any more (Sandusky retained all his access privileges to the campus until yesterday, and indeed was running football camps for young boys on Joe Paterno’s hallowed football field until two years ago).
This disgusting and horrifying spectacle is among many other things a cautionary tale about what can happen to someone when you indulge his selfishness and egomania to the extent that PSU in particular and the national sports media in general have indulged Paterno’s over the past few years. For quite some time now, Paterno hasn’t even pretended to perform many of the tasks any other head coach at a major college football program is expected to do. He hasn’t gone on a recruiting visit in nearly five years, and his season he’s spent most games high up in the press box rather than on the sidelines, while not even being in electronic contact with his staff, who are making all the in-game decisions that a head coach normally makes. He is in terms of actually doing his job a pathetic figurehead, performing it in name only, so that he can continue to pile up whatever “records” the media credit him with.
But Paterno isn’t a figurehead in terms of holding onto his job, as opposed to actually performing it. The Sandusky grand jury investigation has been going on for more than two years. It provided the perfect opportunity for the powers that be at PSU to nudge Paterno out the door, but he wouldn’t go, even with the firestorm that’s now finally broken hanging over his head. He’s a crazy old man who isn’t going to quit until either someone fires him or he dies with his boots on. He’s been living a lie for years now, and in the end it’s led to him trying to weasel-word his way out of his complete failure to do what he could to make sure that Jerry Sandusky didn’t continue to rape little boys. Joe Paterno was once an admirable figure to the extent football coaches can be admired, but when faced with a genuine moral crisis nine years ago he failed utterly. He’s become a fraud and a disgrace, and should be treated as such.
Now in his statement Paterno is trying to get people to believe that he was told that his 58-year-old lifelong friend and co-worker was doing something “inappropriate” to a ten-year-old boy in a shower, but that he had no idea it was anything all that bad
I would like a reporter to ask one of Paterno’s representative what “inappropriate” things Sandusky could be doing with a 10 year-old boy alone in an otherwise empty locker room that wouldn’t warrant alerting the legal authorities.
In addition to Paterno, I think that Spanier isn’t getting nearly enough criticism. He knew that the allegations against Sandusky were serious enough to warrant sanctions, he knew the remedy chosen by Curley was “lessen the possibility that Sandusky’s raping of young boys actually takes place within our athletic facilities,” and he did nothing. And then talked about what a paragon of moral virtue Curley is after the fact. He should be fired at the same time as Paterno.
Spanier is an even bigger disgrace than Paterno. He’s up next in the queue.
Spanier will resign by Wednesday, and rightly so. Paterno will hold on for a couple of weeks continuing to claim he did all he needed to do, but quit before the bowl game.
Penn State fans will have an interesting decision to make as to whether to cheer for someone who stood by and let a child rapist go unpunished and unchecked for nearly a decade after someone on his own staff saw the rape and reported it to the head coach the next day. I’m not quite sure how you do that, no matter how much you support the team or the players or the program.
McQueary also needs to resign – he was in effect an assistant coach when he witnessed the rape, and became one formally the same year … and apparently did nothing after his two talks with Paterno and the administrators. I have a very difficult time believing the assistant coach position didn’t amount to “hush money” if McQueary would just forget what he saw and keep quiet. He does seem to be one of the few to have done anything, and seemingly told the truth to the Grand Jury, but he had at least a moral (and potentially legal) responsibility to do more as the eyewitness to the crime.
No no, I have been informed that McQueary had a fight or flight reaction and we are being heartless in judging him, plus the Kitty Genovese case and that little girl in Chin prove we are wired that way, plus special people get special privileges which is bad but not something we should get all riled up about.
yeah, I’m still pissed about it.
plus the Kitty Genovese case
FWIW, the Kitty Genovese case is pretty much a myth.
FWIW, Genovese’s killer’s parole hearing is this month.
So, Kitty Genovese never existed? Thanks for clearing that up douchebag.
Please forgive me for injecting historical accuracy into a morality tale.
I never said she did not exist, I never said she was not killed. But it turns out there really were not a whole lot of onlookers that did nothing.
But don’t let that stop you from feeling self-righteous.
True, some did try to help. But the number of onlookers who made an effort to help was significantly smaller than the number of onlookers who did nothing.
Historical accuracy is undoubtedly important, but providing responsible context is just as vital.
Okay, I will need to get a new name.
“I would like a reporter to ask one of Paterno’s representative what “inappropriate” things Sandusky could be doing with a 10 year-old boy alone in an otherwise empty locker room that wouldn’t warrant alerting the legal authorities.”
All kinds of stuff! He could have been helping the boy cheat on his math homework… Telling him it was okay to keep out overdue books… Giving him coupons for really unhealthy fast foods… Even suggesting the boy purchase crystals for their healing powers!
You just don’t know! You never know! It could be anything!
Homeopathy
That’s a goodun. But I don’t feel good about liking it, you know.
I have two books at my bedside, Lieutenant, the Marine Code of Conduct and the King James Bible. The only proper authorities I’m aware of are my Commanding Officer, Colonel Nathan R. Jessep and the Lord our God.
Is there anything at all that can possibly be described as “not anything all that bad” that involves an adult showering with an unrelated 10-year-old?
I have a hard time imagining in what terms McQueery the grad assistant could have couched this in that makes Paterno think it’s a.) serious enough to report up the chain and b.) not serious enough to follow up on. He may not have committed a crime, but are they really going to have him that press box on Saturday? Fuck’s sake.
And I don’t buy that Paterno is too demented to be blamed. He seems lucid enough in press conferences and pep rallies and such I’ve seen on BTN. He knows enough to, for example, mock Gerry Dinardo for being on Twitter.
If your priorities are maximizing alumnae donations and making sure nothing scratches Paterno’s sterling silver reputation, then Paterno’s behavior makes perfect sense, as does that of his superiors.
I’m sure he was told, “We’ll take care of it,” in an attempt to isolate him from any potential embarassment. He probably believed they would.
Basically, this is the secular version of the Roman Catholic scandals, with the same dynamics at play – the institution and Pope Joe must be protected.
I don’t even know if we can say that it “secular”. Paterno is a devout Roman Catholic, and as such I am sure that he prayed about what to do. Unfortunately, when people believe in supernatural beings they often neglect the “render unto Caesar” part. I’d be willing to bet that Paterno prayed for forgiveness for Sandusky, and figured that covered it.
Roman Catholic? What are the odds he asked his confessor how the Church handles these sorts of things? [/cheapshot]
C’mon. Mocking Gerry DiNardo doesn’t impress me one bit. Any knucklehead can do that. You’re gonna have to do better than that.
Whatever. He knew long ago what was going on.
Obmorestuff: Sandusky’s kid coached football at my D3 school for 10 years.
Sandusky molested a kid in my high school.
This is exactly why I hate big time college athletics. I was in graduate school at the University of Oklahoma during the Switzer years and it was pretty much the same there, though it was generally the felonious behavior (raper, sexual assault, severe assault and battery, drunk driving, etc.) of players that was covered up. Nothing else mattered as long as they won games.
Heh. Paterno HATED Barry Switzer. He said some very harsh things about him.
Not just big-time college athletics. Happens in small-town high schools, also.
Tom Osborne was pretty good about getting things swept under the rug, too. I guess he felt he needed to to keep up with Barry
DrDick, did you notice that the University of Oklahoma actually unveiled a statue of Barry Switzer outside its football stadium this past Saturday? I guess they figured that he won some championships and a lot of games and it had been long enough for the memory of what kind of program he ran and what happened to it in the years after he left to be forgotten.
Can’t say that I was aware of that, but I rarely go back there. Does not surprise me in the least. As I said, as long as you win, nothing else matters.
Where on earth did you dig that little gem up? Just a regular Google search, or what?
I’d heard the Paternos (Paternoes?) were wingnutty, but the nature and the amount of the wingnuttiness shocks me.
The GOP ran Scott Paterno for a congressional seat in a district with a DINO incumbent and majority Republican registration. This column and his wingnuttery never came up in the campaign.
He was obviously the candidate because of his name, and his father has endorsed and campaigned for various Republicans in the past.
Despite the huge number of Penn State nuts in this area, voters were put off by Scott’s penchant for wearing sandals with his suits and his lack of any job history that wasn’t a JoePa-supplied sinecure, and Scott lost.
I haven’t heard of Scott since then. I vaguely recall that he supposedly moved here to run for the seat, so he’s probably moved back to State College.
Scott is batshit crazy. Jay I don’t know very well. I worked with Dave for a couple years – he was a very nice, seemingly liberal guy. He told me Scott is a whackaloon.
Jay was an Obama supporter (and This American Life did a piece on Pennsylvania during election time where I believe Paterno was helping out with registering voters on campus. Around that time it came out that Joe had donated to Obama (and Sestak). Scott Paterno is loon even by western PA politics standards.
Scott Paterno wrote a three part “column” for the Penn State
newspaper (the name of which escapes me at the moment).
Basically, it was a reprint of the Clinton Body Count page.
My opinion of the Paterno family went down after that.
Jerzy
Wow, it’s like the freakin’ Catholic church over there. Apparently winning that many football games can’t be done without being touched by the hand of God, however inappropriately.
JoePa loves the access his stature brings him. He is on the boards of several State College based or PA based companies. The time I worked with a troubled one, that had fraud allegation around it, he resigned at the first opportunity.
I always hated Penn State (it was a degree requirement) but this is too sad to fit into any sports category. Despicable behavior from all involved. What kind of advice was that from the grad assistant’s father? I hope to hell I could do better than that.
Penn State was a degree requirement? What does that mean?
I assume he meant “hating Penn State was a degree requirement,” i.e: he attended another Big Ten school.
I think Pitt, Temple and maybe Syracuse hate Penn State? Nobody in the Big 10 has a real deep tribal hatred for PSU above all, is my impression.
Or Pitt, we had a thing with them for years. Or Syracuse if he’s old enough.
Nebraska. We hated ‘em in the 80s. Penn State didn’t join the Big Ten until the 90s and they haven’t been good enough to be a true object of hatred. Yet.
It’s really a shame that Paterno’s legacy, of which he should be proud, will forever be stained by the actions of this disgusting rapist. I’m sorry, “showering with 10-year olds” should have been the first clue that there was something a bit “off” with Mr. Sandusky. I hope he is prosecuted and convicted for his crimes, and I am sure his stay in prison will not be pleasant. Sure wish I could work up some sympathy for this creep, but somehow I just can’t. Bye bye, JoePa…you had a good thing going.
It’s really a shame that Paterno’s legacy, of which he should be proud, will forever be stained by the actions of this disgusting rapist.
If Paterno, Curley and other Penn State authorities had handled the rapist in a manner in accordance with basic human decency and the law, I might agree.
A shame is when someone’s reputation is unjustly tarnished. This strikes me more as a consequence.
This disgusting and horrifying spectacle is among many other things a cautionary tale about what can happen to someone when you indulge his selfishness and egomania to the extent that PSU in particular and the national sports media in general have indulged Paterno’s over the past few years.
You lose me here a little, Paul.
I didn’t know about these allegations until the morning news, and didn’t realize that Paterno was this deeply in the know about them (despite partly basing that on your conjecture “how could he not know?” I’m not disputing that, only pointing out that it’s not a proven fact.)
But his assistant coach was pushed out the door. It’s not like Paterno protected the guy’s job. I’m confused where there’s the protection of Paterno as opposed to the whole damn system and university, which seems to me more plausible than singling out the coach.
I agree with you that Paterno has long overstayed his welcome at State, that he’s about ten years too old already to perform his job adequately and is in point of fact a figurehead, but if you’re going to call him a figurehead in that, you owe us a better explanation why he’s not merely a figurehead in this aspect of things.
The criticism of Paterno comes from the fact that Paterno is the BMOC. There’s literally no way this guy would be put in front of kids if Joe Paterno refused. He didn’t, and that is a moral lapse that is, quite frankly, shocking.
I can only imagine what went through Paterno’s head as he came to the realization that his right-hand man was a child predator. I can see him not wanting to call the cops. But I just cannot see why he would continue to allow him to coach kids.
Because the earliest accusations and investigation we’re aware of came in 1998, at which time Sandusky was forced out of his coaching job. After that he was still allowed to bring his “charity cases” to Penn State football facilities for several more years. According to what I heard he had his own keys. There’s no way that could happen over the head coach’s objections, especially when the head coach is the face of the school and one of its largest donors.
Well, hang on now. There was an internal investigation in 1998 but charges were never filed in any court that I’m aware of. It’s a little hard to justify more than a firing based on that, don’t you think?
It’s not like the guy had his day in court and then was found guilty, and if the firing was over the *appearance* of misconduct, what more can we really expect?
Now, to the fact that Paterno allowed him on campus after that and to run his camp…that’s a pretty egregious act, to be sure. Presumably, JoePa had some form of oversight in place, but it appears either he did not or he didn’t have strong enough oversight.
On that score, yea, then I think you have to lay much of the blame there.
Charges were never filed because the people running the internal investigation failed to notify the police.
Even back in 1998, I find it hard to believe that provable child molestation wouldn’t have warranted a call to the cops. Even in an institution as stodgy as Penn State.
FTFY
Seriously, go fuck yourself.
Nothing so special as the butthurt of sports fans who care more about their school’s “rep” than they do about justice. GFY too, Upton.
Why?
The chief of campus police ordered it dropped. EVERYBODY was either willfully ignorant (and determined to stay that way) or criminally negligent. Sandusky was a HERO, nearly as idolized as Joe.
This is the incident where the janitor saw him and almost suffered a heart attack. He said he had fought in Korea but this event shook him as much as anything. Another janitor saw Sandusky walk out of the shower with the boy. Sandusky took the boy’s hand and they walked away together. Schultz was notified. Nothing done.
Let’s give him all the benefit of the doubt you want to. It seems possible that nothing came of the 1998 investigation. Maybe enough evidence wasn’t found, the victims too unreliable as witnesses, whatever. It’s also possible that Sandusky’s firing in 1999 was unrelated; maybe Paterno decided that he never wanted to retire after all and the AD agreed that that would be cool. That would’ve put Sandusky out of a job whether he was a criminal or not.
None of that explains what happened in 2002. Only a few years after an investigation into Sandusky allegedly having been creepy or worse with kids in the shower, he was found raping a kid in the shower. Even if they’d been skeptical in 1998 they now knew the guy was a serial offender. After that Penn State told him not to use their facilities. That’s it. Effectively, they said take your horror show somewhere else. Paterno and the administration at that point showed greater concern for their program’s reputation than about the rape of school kids.
I don’t see why that put Sandusky out of a job – he could have stayed on as Defensive Coordinator, especially given that it’s not like he took a head coaching job somewhere else after leaving Penn State.
To clarify, I’m not giving Paterno the benefit of the doubt here. I stipulated it in order to show that he also failed on subsequent occasions. I think it’s likely that Sandusky’s denied promotion/firing had a lot to do with the 1998 investigation. That being said, by “out of a job” I meant only that he was denied the promotion that he’d always counted on, which in some contexts is basically the same. Sort of like Letterman not getting the Tonight Show. I guess now we know why Sandusky didn’t do the equivalent of a jump to CBS.
This is the insanely damning point. It’d be better if they’d actually done nothing. Then, they could have argued that they didn’t believe the allegation. Not reporting it to the cops, but acting quietly to make sure it didn’t happen again in their lockeroom shows they thought something was wrong.
Exactly.
OK, see, now Paul’s statement makes more sense. I couldn’t piece the timeline together with sufficient clarity.
Well, I think we ought to be able to expect that the University won’t continue to allow him to hang out on campus with kids he’s probably molesting.
Since when do people who have been fired or forced to resign normally keep their keys and their office, and get to hold youth camps in the facility?
Here’s a fun fact: the campus fuzz at PSU report up into the campus administration, not to some elected official. So what do we think the incentives are there with respect to diligent pursuit of a claim of rape by a senior member of the nationally famous football programn?
FWIW, Michigan State’s campus cops weren’t shy about investigating or arresting athletes when I was there or since. The whole Rather Hall thing, where a posse of MSU football players ran into a frat’s meeting in the common area of a dorm to exact some frontier justice against some member of the frat who’d done something to one of them at a club. The campus cops prosecuted that, despite the fact that the details about anyone being injured were pretty sketchy.
Maybe they were sweeping some things under the rug, but I can remember starters being arrested in the late 90s for stealing from dorm mates, for example.
Sexual assault is treated differently. Because it happens mostly to women and boys, whom our society can’t be bothered to protect at the expense of the men who perpetrate crimes against them. Unless (as is sometimes the case when the perpetrator/alleged perpetrator is a member of a racial minority) it happens to coincide with the interests of the powerful.
I thought actor was going to go in a different direction than this, but I guess not. I disagree with this summary for a different reason. Paterno knew about this problem in 1998 when he was quite a bit younger. Sure he was already heralded as one of the top football coaches in history at that time, but I have a difficult time believing that his conduct was really the result of an excessive indulgence of his ego by the school and by the media. He wasn’t a crazy old man in 1998. He took the appropriate step of forcing his assistant’s retirement. Quite oddly, in my view, he chose not to restrict his access to campus. I really cannot imagine what the motivation was there since he really insured that these crimes would continue. After firing the guy, what would it have cost him to handle this more appropriately? There are plenty of powerful people at the top of prestigious organizations who are granted considerable leeway in how they conduct themselves. Paterno is not that much of an exception in this regard and it is not a compelling and unique explanation for his behavior in my opinion.
You need to read the report. There were a lot of people who saw what this dude was up to and did nothing or as little as possible.
He took the appropriate step of forcing his assistant’s retirement.
How about taking the appropriate step of vigorously pursuing his assistant’s criminal prosecution.
Exactly. This is why this whole horror show is a repeat of the Catholic Priest scandal. They believed that it was their responsibility to handle things internally.
It’s utterly inconceivable that they didn’t report any of this to the police in 1998, much less 2002. It wasn’t their prerogative to ignore it because it was inconvenient for the program.
Just letting him go in 1998 without passing along this information to authorities was bad enough, especially since they knew that he was still running his “at risk” program for boys. Letting him continue to have access to university facilities merely demonstrates their utter lack of perspective about any of this.
I agree. The allegations being lobbed at JoPa simply have not been substantiated. He’s not an egomaniac. He’s a man who passionately loves PSU football and his life there. The media, the university and college football have created this larger-than-life persona. Collectively, they want him to be the iconic immortal. But I don’t think his actions suggest that he thinks of himself in that way. Maybe he should have known that his time to retire was a few years ago. But from what I’ve heard he reported to the appropriate university authorties that something inappropriate was reported to him involving Sandusky. Sandusky was not an employee of his at the time the alegations surfaced.
Thankfully our justice system reserves judgment until all the facts are in.
One of the things that outrages me about this is that, for 27 years, Penn State had a women’s basketball coach that had three ironclad rules: no drinking, no drugs, no lesbians. She was only let go after a former player sued her for being kicked off the team on suspicion of being gay, and thus losing her scholarship. I’m so glad that they’ve got their priorities straight.
Yeah, that she was not in fact gay (as a noted member of the gay community at the time I am 100% certain of that) was icing on the cake.
And Paterno was one of the basketball coach’s biggest supporters. I read somewhere that as a result of the lawsuit, PSU coaches were required to undergo some diversity training and Paterno was defiantly dismissive of the idea.
This is perfect. Paterno’s always been the high priest of college football, and here he behaves just like Cardinal Law and the rest. How very Catholic of him.
JoePa,
If you weren’t openly aiding and abetting a moral monster and criminal, it certainly seems like you looked the other way.
I’m a lifelong Penn St fan, and have been since the late ’60′s.
And I always loved and respected Paterno.
How do you not look deeper into something like this? These are little children, for heaven’s sake!!!
How?
Why?
Now, I think I’ll start rooting for Syracuse or Rutgers.
Maybe CT.
I’m done with Penn St and Joe Paterno.
And his son sounds like a fucking Conservative dick, so fuck him, too!
Maybe you should ditch football altogether and follow something more wholesome. How about dogfighting?
Bum fights.
GOP debates.
There’s a difference?
Here’s the link for the Scott Paterno 1996 Clinton Derangement Syndrome quote.
[...] Living a lie : Lawyers, Guns & Money [...]
The fact that this quivering stoat is pointing fingers gives me hope that this will devolve into perfect shitstorm for everyone who decided damaging the university’s (or its athletic program’s) name would be a far worse crime than raping little boys.
I hope some victims file suit before the elder Paterno croaks; the younger one can grind his teeth to powder watching his dad’s estate wither as it’s sucked dry.
“Quivering stoat”?!?
Kudos!
I wonder what will happen to Michael Berube’s chair?
It will be reupholstered.
is that one of those uphumizms I here so much about these days?
Fabulous.
(Also, Hi PeeJ!!!)
Fabulous
Of course – it IS moi, after all!
Hi Marita!
I’m also wondering how many fawning Paterno dicksuckers in the sports media had a whiff of this and never followed up because it might cost them “access.”
That’s easy: All of them. No WAY this sort of thing didn’t surface in the preternaturally insular Happy Valley — so it had to be a choice whether to follow up the rumor or not.
Paterno will walk,as he will be protected by the Governor’s office.He is a George Bush ass kisser,and everybody knows these people and their friends always skirt ever having to answer for any of their crimes,whether it be lying the country into war or lying before Congress like their thug friend Roger Clemens.
The state attorney general is a temp, appointed to fill out Gov. Corbett’s term as AG. Even so, I’m surprised to see this coming from a GOP AG, a far more straightforward act than Corbett ever did in the job.
[...] I’m just going to outsource this to LGM. [...]
This is part of why college sports are stupid. No one would have circled the wagons for an assistant professor of biology (probably not anyway); the flipside of this is that LGM wouldn’t be pumping out posts about that–because college football is IMPORTANT.
College football (basketball, etc.) ought to be run as for-profit subsidiaries of the universities (and taxed as such) and the players payed employees, not students. Let’s get over the idea that there is some educational aspect of big-time college sports and that these are amateur, student athletes.
No. all youth (amateur) sports ought to be run from private clubs and not affiliated with schools in any way.
that’ll make things less corrupt
Hear, hear, JoyfulA! In Europe, sports are not associated with any schools at all. I’ve been on a soapbox for years that big-time college sports should just openly admit they are the unofficial minor leagues–like steelpenny says. But despite Penn State’s shameful example of overlooking ANYTHING protect to the team’s reputation, I’m not holding my breath for the American system to change.
I do know that in the department I did my PhD, one of the faculty was misappropriating funds from a foreign corporation that funded some of his research (and paid some of his grad students) and that got swept under the rug by the Dean of the college
In my first week of graduate school, a very senior and distinguished scholar in another department raped a (male) entering graduate student. When the university essentially tried sweeping this under the rug, one of the grad students in that other department went to the New York Times (this being an Ivy League institution, the story was newsworthy). It turns out that the professor in question had been doing this at a series of institutions which, when discovering his crimes, simply asked him to take his business to another university. Even my graduate institution just asked him to retire.
The pattern of behavior we see in the Penn State Athletic Department is perhaps exaccerbated by the problems with bigtime college sports, but it is indicative of a much broader series of behaviors associated with universities and other large, bureaucratic institutions that do everything they can to avoid public embarrassment, including covering up the crimes of those sufficiently high up the hierarchy to reflect badly on the institution if caught.
In this regard universities, federal, state, and local governments, the National Restaurant Association, and the Catholic Church are all pretty similar to each other, though of course in practice some of these institutions behave worse than others.
Assistant Professor of Biology, maybe. But I personally know (because I did the research and wrote the stories) about the chair of the Finance Department at the University of Texas who was mixed up with the S&L Crisis as a board member of a defunct Austin Savings and Loans. He was listed on the initial indictment along with the other twentysomething board members. Then there was an amended indictment, he was dropped and then took over the “investigation” of it because he was on the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. His chair was endowed by the guy who ran the S&L and the bulk of that money was donated just before the S&L went insolvent.
All of that took place a decade before I was even in school and before I wrote the story. He was still the chair/department head and now he’s an emeritus douchebag for what’s now called the McCombs School of Business. Naturally, he threatened to sue me (a college student) and I begged him to if I was wrong. The suit never arrived.
Just don’t pretend that Universities are any different than any other 1% endeavor.
There’s a reason I chose assistant professor. Sure, rock stars and dept. chairs will always be protected, but grunts everywhere are expendable. And, yes, universities, colleges, schools, most any institution really, is going to look to protect the institution first. What I wanted to point out is that the only reason we’re having this discussion is because the people involved are football people. It’s a sign of our god awful priorities that we’re so upset because Joe Paterno is so beloved and respected and how could he do this?–he’s a fucking football coach not some kind of hero.
This may be the best post I have ever seen Paul write, despite the lashon hara (“selfishness and egomania”) factor.
I’d like to think that if I happened upon a grown man raping a 10-year-old boy, my only hesitation would be finding an object big enough to do damage before using it to beat the everloving shit out of him.
Sure, report these things, but first things first.
It seems that everyone would like to think this about themselves. When we actually find out about real-life instances of child sexual abuse, we find that not as many people actually behave so admirably.
That’s why this needs to be discussed.
I agree.
One would, for example, like to believe the parents of the child, in addition to getting the creep put away, would want to emotionally umbrella their child lovingly and help him get past a terrible ordeal.
Often, the child gets as much blame from the parents as the molestor.
Beating the offender to death without hesitation seems pretty attractive, but the fact is that wouldn’t help the kid. Even suggesting it doesn’t help all the other kids that are in similar situations right now. What is necessary is a more measured, cold-blooded and methodical response in which everyone who had a part in this coverup gets fired, starting with Paterno and the school president.
Yeah. We’d all like to think we’d do the right thing. God willing, we’ll never have to find out.
Fantastic Comment.Booyah!
Joe will be named in a civil suit for aiding and abetting for allowing Sandusky to have to keys. They will plead “upon information and belief” and get past a motion to dismiss. Then, all bets are off — emails discoverable, subpoenas. This will not end well for Joe Pa. Is there a 1983 claim lurking there too?
The ending for Paterno should be jail, but maybe he gets statute of limitations protections. Civil suits may be more effective. If I’m on that jury, Joe walks away with a loin cloth and a begging bowl.
What about this charity, The Second Mile? They severed ties with him in 2008– did they report their concerns to the proper authorities when they had knowledge of abuse?
2nd Mile has released some ass covering statement. They thought it was really important to stress that none of the alleged events is alleged to have taken place on their premises.
I looked at their web site. Typical of many children’s charities– teaches kids “correct behaviors” to set them on the right path but never questions the structure of a society that allows for such an unconscionable rate of child poverty.
This is the sort of attitude that allows some children to be seen as something less than a full citizen.
It’s all the kids’ fault for being born into poor or dysfunctional families. Why should the rest of us pay for their bad choices?
Oh God. I just read this in the NYT:
“Penn State is such a national brand, so when something like this happens, it’s terrible,” said Adam Blaier, a 21-year-old senior from Marlboro, N.J.”
Really, is that the current thinking of 21 year old college students? That tarnishing of “the brand” is the tragedy?
Well, the brand is on *their* hindquarters too, when they graduate and market themselves as PSU graduates.
Mr. Blaier and his family have invested over $100,000 in his Penn State degree by this point, given the out-of-state tuition rates. Mr. Blaier, next June, is going to have a shiny new Penn State diploma with crusty stains on it. Of course he’s concerned! Next September–ten goddamn months from now–the bills for the loans start coming, and he’s got to find a job, armed only with his crusty diploma. Thanks a fuckload, Penn State!
I remember that from college quite well. There was a certain segment of kids who actually wanted the troublemaker activists expelled, to protect the reputation of the school…
I’m an alum, the seventh among my siblings to be such. I then lived in State College for 20 years, up until five years ago. I have met Joe on a few occasions and I worked with Dave Paterno for a couple years at an engineering firm. I played racketball a number of times with Graham Spanier. Spanier was a very close friend of a psych prof. with whom my partner and I were very close. I met Jerry Sandusky a couple times, I wouldn’t say I know him.
There is no doubt in my mind that JoePa booted Sandusky for the reasons cited. And, behaving in true Catholic fashion, just wanted it to be kept quiet instead of doing the morally right thing. Sandusky was a lion, a hero and was expected to succeed Joe. When he left we were all like WTF? Now we know.
Spanier signed off on the “sanction” barring Sandusky from bringing kids into the locker room. There is no way on god’s green earth a person in that situation can not wonder why he’s being asked to endorse the action. That’s criminal negligence in my book though IANAL. It is especially shocking given Spanier’s academic discipline – family sociologist, demographer, and marriage and family therapist. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Family Issues for fuck sake. Graham has always been a media slut and thoruoghly enjoyed his rep as a leader among big U prezzes. The board of trustees had an emergency yesterday. I predict Graham will soon anounce his retirement.
the peculiar position of being a deeply selfish, half-crazy old man who the national media continue treat with kid gloves
HEY! YOU LEAVE JOHN McCAIN ALONE!
Oh god, is “THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!!!! FOR JOE PATERNO!!!!!” next?
If I were the parent of a Penn State football player I’d pull them from the team immediately. Joe obviously doesn’t give a sh!t about his players if he knew that someone molested children in the team’s locker room and didn’t do everything he could to protect them by turning Sandusky over to the police immediately. I’m glad to see the AD being charged, why wasn’t Paterno charged as well? Surely he perjured himself if he told the grand jury that the assistant was “distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report.” I’m sure the assistant told him what he saw in the same detail as his grand jury testimony.
“(The local district attorney, who for unknown reasons decided not to press charges, disappeared in 2005 and was declared legally dead in July).”
WTF!
He almost certainly offed himself but the “Ray Gricar may have been spotted in” circus went on for years.
Cf.
http://www.centredaily.com/2011/11/06/2976046/gricar-had-final-say-in-ending.html#storylink=omni_popular#wgt=pop
Here’s a link to an article relating the disappearance of Centre County DA Ray Gricar in 2005 and Gricar’s role in the Sandusky case (or rather, refusal to take any role at all–sound familiar?).
It was a HUGE local story when he vanished, and it’s still an unsolved mystery. There aren’t even any discredited theories, really. PeeJ thinks Gricar “offed himself,” and my spouse thinks he’s living in another country under an assumed name.
A lot of people are drawing parallels to the scandals that rocked the Catholic church, and I definitely see them. I’d like to add another comparison: Tom Osborne and the Nebraska football program. People may have forgotten that (three time US representative, R-Nebraska) Tom Osborne was actively involved in intimidating witnesses and covering up evidence for crimes committed by his players during his tenure as coach of Nebraska (rape, attempted murder [twice], more violent assault, etc.). Sports Illustrated summed up the damage. The difference that makes me hopeful is that no one seemed to care at the time. Certainly the voters of Nebraska didn’t. Somehow, I’m hopeful that times have changed, if ever so slightly.
See my comment below for how those gawd-fearin folk in NB felt about the scandal that was cornhusker football
@Daverz
According to Scott Paterno, Clinton did it!
Even if there wasn’t enough proof that the 1998 allegations were true, I think Paterno suggested that Sandusky “retire” in 1999, because he didn’t want those kind of rumors circling around his program, true or not. In the mind of Paterno, even if Sandusky was innocent, he should have never allowed himself to be in that position.
I don’t understand why Sandusky was given an emeritus position, campus office, and most especially keys to the locker room. He already had a pension. That should have been enough. Big mistake. Then there is the issue that a janitor apparently saw him showering with another boy in 2000, but no one reported that to authorities.
Next comes the 2002 incident. I will give Paterno a pass, initially, for reporting McQueary’s info to Curley. I do not understand why Curley and VP Schultz dropped the ball. Even if they wanted to protect the school’s image, wouldn’t turning in a child molester to the cops prove they won’t tolerate such filth, even from a former coach?
Furthermore, how much did Curley and VP Schultz tell Spanier? Did they let him know all the sick details? Instead of losing his keys, Sandusky should also have been stripped of his office and banned from campus. Even if they felt there wasn’t enough proof, they would have still been justified.
Guess what??!! This was posted Sunday on the Harrisburg Patriot-News site:
“Penn State now bans former coach Jerry Sandusky from campus By JAN MURPHY.
Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon released this statement Sunday regarding Jerry Sandusky:
‘Since the Attorney General’s office released its allegations over the weekend Penn State is now moving to ban the former assistant coach from campus.’”
Source:
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/penn_state_banned_former_coach.html
Do we have a bit of a TIMING problem here??
From http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-wetzel_sandusky_penn_state_presence_last_week110711
“Sandusky remained a presence around Penn State last week. By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
Embattled former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky continued to be a presence around the Penn State football program up to his arrest Saturday on child molestation charges, including working out multiple times in the team’s weight room just last week, according to multiple sources within the football program….”
[...] Sandusky has been accused of sexually assaulting children (Grand Jury pdf file here, more here and here), or that he even went as far as to found a charity for children that gave him access to victims. [...]
None of what has emerged about this story is all that surprising, or unique to college sports. In my experience colleges and universities frequently regard sexual assault– of any kind– as a matter to be dealt with internally, and in fact most institutions have protocols in place for handling such complaints that do not default to “report it to the police”. Child molestation is an extreme example, and probably an unusual one, but non-consensual sex is common enough, and it is rare indeed for a school to encourage victims of sexual assault to report the matter to the appropriate authorities. There is a sort of institutional assumption that the school exists as an island apart from the harsher realities which prevail off campus, and it seems to me that this may have colored the thinking of the people involved. Of course they *should* have known better, but within the campus culture the way this has played out seems sadly typical.
I thought this was posted earlier. If it was, and it was cut for length, then cut it again. I feel very passionate about sex crimes, especially the abomination of adults colluding to victimize children.
I’m going to take something back that I said yesterday, in the heat of the moment— I said, “Goddamn this son of a bitch…” It was wrong for me to say that. It’s not my place or my inclination to make such a judgment. I do, however, stand by the rest of the statement— “… may he rot in prison.” It’s apparent that he (like most sexual offenders) is a serial rapist.
This entire episode illustrates so much of what is wrong with human society, and what is a particularly American problem—the problem of separating the adults from the children.
Though it isn’t wrong, per se, I do have a problem with the label “child molester.” This term has been treated like a joke for too long— Chester the Molester,” was a character, if I remember correctly, in a cartoon that was popular in Playboy, and was a bog standard joke back in the bad old days when men joked openly about rape and women talked privately about it in whispers, often unable to even say the word “rape.” Was she— Woman nods yes in response, then they sit in horror together at the threat, the deed, and the damage.
On a previous thread, I mentioned that when the sexual abuse of children became a publicly discussed issue in the eighties, as a public service, some social scientists showed classrooms of children films about the threat and encouraged discussion. The first part of the film addressed the threat to girls. The boys laughed. Then the film addressed the threat to boys and they stopped laughing. Finally, the issue of the sexual abuse and rape of men and boys is being addressed, though many people and forms of media still consider it acceptable to joke about prison rape. We betray the boys and men of our species when we do this. We betray our humanity.
What we are talking about with this issue, is pedophilia. Pedophilia is a mental illness that manifests itself as an adult being sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children. Though we often refer to teenagers and even adults as “children” the difference between a pubescent teenager and a pre-pubescent child is profound. Pedophiles are not sexually attracted to adults. Whether they are all sociopaths, or simply have a few wires crossed in the parts of their brains that determine sexual attraction they are predators who singularly prefer sex with children who are not sexually mature and who have no concept of what sexual arousal is about. It’s a grossly uneven power relationship,and is not, as far as I know, acceptable in any human society.
In human history, teenagers having sex and reproducing has been normal, and in much of the world it still is, though it is often treated as aberrant or a moral failure in Western society. The life expectancy of early humans was sixteen years, we would not be here if teenagers hadn’t been sexually active throughout the history of our species. And because for most of human history men have lived longer than women (women died younger due to childbirth, complications of childbirth, or simply having their bodies depleted by so many pregnancies and malnourishment) it has been normal for men to marry much younger women, and for those women to start bearing children as soon as their bodies could and they became sexually active. The difference in ages did not, in itself, preclude the possibility of equitable relationships.
Many pedophiles want to be castrated. I don’t think that will necessarily solve their problem, but they know that what they’re doing is wrong. It is possible that many or most of them were sexually abused themselves at a young age and that that is what screwed up their wiring. Some people might abuse children as they were abused. Some victims of sexual abuse as children would cut out their hearts before they took advantage of a child. The compulsion is not well understood, and this situation exemplifies many of the reasons that it is not appropriately studied, talked about, interrupted, prosecuted, acknowledged…
Everyone who did not report this behavior is complicit in the abuse of every one of this man’s victims. The pedophile may be physiologically incapable of controlling his/her impulses, but everyone else involved in the cover-up and failure to report incidents to the proper authorities, and failure to notify parents, and failure to take this man out of a position in which he had access to children who were expected to respect his authority, and failed to intervene on the childrens’ behalf— THEY FAILED AS ADULTS TO PROTECT CHILDREN. THEY VIOLATED AN ESSENTIAL HUMAN CONTRACT FOR ADULTS TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM THE PREDATION OF SEXUALLY TWISTED ADULTS.
This term has been treated like a joke for too long— Chester the Molester,” was a character, if I remember correctly, in a cartoon that was popular in Playboy,
It was Hustler, and here is the rather revolting, if unsurprising, punchline to the “joke.”
glad you corrected that – Playboy, for all its faults, has always been anti-rape.
Hustler on the other hand . . .
Thanks for the correction, Mal. Didn’t mean to malign Playboy. The only copy I ever bought had the interview with John Lennon that was published around the time he was murdered. Never looked inside a copy of Hustler.
My main point is that the person making a “joke” about molestation was himself a molester.
EW.
This is a very important point. I sometimes wonder if our demonization of pedophiles has created a culture which actually discourages other adults from intervening on behalf of child victims.
There is definitely some sense in which the janitors, McQueary, Paterno, Schultz, Curley, Spanier, and the general counsel are actually MORE culpable than Sandusky. The former were all mentally healthy adults fully capable of taking steps to protect children from Sandusky. Sandusky, on the other hand, is mentally ill and possibly, as wiley states, “physiologically incapable of controlling his impulses.”
As a society, no matter what we do, there will most likely be more Sandusky’s in the future.
On tho other hand, there is no evidence that the janitors, McQueary, Paterno, Schultz, Curley, and Spanier are uniquely immoral awful people. There is obviously something (or things) about of society that discouraged these otherwise well-meaning people from doing what was necessary to protect these children.
As a society, what can we do to increase the likelihood that “normal” people will take the necessary steps to protect children from future Sanduskys.
NOTE: I am by no means absolving Sandusky of culpability for his acts.
I think this is a significant part of the purpose of mandatory reporter laws. So that someone knows it is YOU, yes, YOU that is required to take action. Also, people are more likely to report if they can say, “I’m a mandatory reporter, it’s not for me to be SURE before I report, it’s my job to report and then someone else’s job to follow up/investigate.”
I think that is why the 2 AD officials are charged with the mandatory reporting violation but not the coach. An article I read quoted the PA mandatory reporter law as requiring “school administrators” (among others) to report.
The short answer for someone who wanted to report it but was afraid to is to talk to university health.
Health care providers are required by law to notify authorities of suspected child abuse.
This is a very important point. I sometimes wonder if our demonization of pedophiles has created a culture which actually discourages other adults from intervening on behalf of child victims.
There’s another aspect to not getting involved, too.
A rather embarrassing event from my ex-in-laws saw the father get jailed for a weekend, the mother collapsed in tears (she still does therapy for this), and the daughter taken away by child services, all because a) the dad took the kid’s TV out of her room as punishment, and b) the daughter called child services to complain she was being abused.
My takeaway from it was to never let myself be alone in a room with the kid, no matter how much her “favorite uncle” I was.
It strikes me that any adult, apart from a parent intervening on behalf of their kid when another adult is involved, is risking an awful lot when dealing with someone else’s abuse.
Are you familiar with reactive attachment disorder? It is fundamentally anti-social for even a child to make such a false accusation over having heard the word “no.” It is possible for a child to victimize an adult and for a child to be without conscience, they just can’t legally be diagnosed a sociopath until they’re 18. Face it—sociopaths weren’t born with a conscience that they somehow lost along the way.
Many foster parents in various states are warned by the state that it isn’t a matter “if,” but a matter of “when” they are falsely accused of abuse of one sort or another, and as soon as an accusation is made, the state has to swing into gear and treat the foster parents with the utmost suspicion.
There is no easy answer to the problem, but dispelling the myth that “children never lie about sexual abuse” or that “children never anything for that matter might be a good start. The mental health industry is not doing children or adults much of a favor by objectifying children in such a cavalier and thoughtless manner that they would actually same something as blatantly stupid as “a child would never lie about _________.
Nevertheless, when there has clearly been a pattern of abuse, repeated over an over again, it is evidence of social and civic failure. On the whole, there are likely a whole hell of a lot more children being sexually assaulted by serial sex offenders who go undiscovered; than poor, innocent adults being falsely accused, or “demonized.” I’ll be the first to object to branding someone a sex offender for life because he/she had consensual sex with a seventeen year old—that is absurd— but rapers of children? What means “demonize”? For all practical purposes they are the evil that we, in our ignorance, have invented demons to explain.
I understood dave’s point to be that the way we’ve dramatized the horror of this kind of abuse makes it harder for people to see that it’s common, and to report it like they would report any shocking crime. It’s a horror, but people who are familiar, everyday human beings (that is, not demons) do these crimes every day. Understanding the banality of this evil might make it easier to report it.
Regarding false accusations, one of the first things I learned as an educator was never to be alone with any student, but especially not one who had been abused. Victims may be too terrified to actually accuse the abuser, but they may go ahead and accuse someone else who is not so fearsome, who is innocent. And, also, I’ve seen kids who knew how the system worked and that they could create a shitstorm for a teacher they didn’t like — and maybe get this annoying teacher removed from their lives — by making a false accusation. That’s a lot of irresponsible power, and some kids know they have it. But there is no alternative to taking accusations seriously until evidence does or does not materialize.
. . .(women died younger due to childbirth, complications of childbirth, or simply having their bodies depleted by so many pregnancies and malnourishment) it has been normal for men to marry much younger women, and for those women to start bearing children as soon as their bodies could and they became sexually active. The difference in ages did not, in itself, preclude the possibility of equitable relationships.
So this evo-psych nonsense is supposed to justify men in their 20s and 30s preying on teenage girls? I call BULL. SHIT.
Yeah, scrappy I laid out this little historic fact for that exact purpose you idiot.
I’m pretty sure this was never true. The figure you usually get is about 30 for the pre-industrial world, and that’s including extremely high levels of infant mortality. Someone who reaches puberty would have a life expectancy of 45 or so (although probably lower for women, given deaths in childbirth), and living into one’s 60s was never uncommon for either men or women.
“Pretty sure,” huh?
I think you show your bias a little here. Paterno jettisoning Sandusky was by any measure a good thing, but somehow you make it out to be an act of selfishness. Would it have been better to keep Sandusky as DC? Why must you assume that firing an accused child molester is done out of self-interest?
Well, when you let him keep his office and his keys, it looks a lot more like you don’t want to be formally associated with him as a technical matter than it looks like you want him brought to justice.
I think that the University keeping Sandusky on was part of the retirement package. Kind of a, “You say you are retiring, you get to stay on as an honorary professor or whatever, and in exchange you don’t sue us for wrongful termination / breach of contract” situation. Remember that at this time, an investigation was conducted but there was not enough for a prosecution.
I’m thinking that “he raped a ten-year-old” is a pretty good defense for a wrongful term suit.
Well, there is a question here where if you don’t get a conviction in a court of law (proof beyond reasonable doubt) or don’t think you can, can you still terminate on this basis? I’m not sure what the status on this is.
I was not aware that “investigation” is an alternative spelling for “whitewash”.
Seriously, I don’t know how anyone could believe that this guy is going to sue the university for wrongful termination when it would become public knowledge as part of the suit that the grounds for termination were “raped a 10 year old” and that the university would then have a reason to prove that he had raped a 10 year old instead of having a reason to ignore it.
They’d probably want to settle though – give him quite a chunk of dough; as discovery would show just what information they have and/or had, and just what they did in order to keep things quiet.
The decision to not see if there were other victims and engage in even the most basic of investigations, is beyond abhorrent.
It boggles the mind that there are people here who think the university and their employees discussed here actually acted fully appropriately.
And apparently, any suggestion otherwise merely shows ‘bias’(the fact these people think an appropriate investigation was carried out shows just how much thought they’re willing to put into this. Not far, that is) – I mean, how can people who think like this figure out how to turn a computer on, for goodness sake!
And yet, the university is now in even deeper shit than they would have been had they dealt with the problem promptly and properly.
Indeed, I’d bet these people are right wingers – many of whom have begun to act like a cult who can ignore reality, and refuse to learn lessons from history. Even the most obvious ones.
Too much of a liberal bias, you see. Can’t have that. Must not care about the lives of others when considering how to save one’s ass. So saith the newly Randianized Free market doctrine.
ALS, the police investigation could not go far because there was no investigation at the university, only a now very obvious, and totally abhorrent, cover up.
If those involved conspire to be vague, unhelpful, and lie to the police about what they were told, what they saw, any suspicions they had, the reasons for certain things happening – does that really mean to you that it’s likely only one little innocent groping occurred, and nobody knew anything for 4 decades? He was fired for no reason at all?
I think you show a bias against the victims here, and seem to think that keeping it quiet and not bothering to think about the victims is a good thing.
Firing Sandusky was a good thing. But it was, in football terms, punting. If Sandusky was just a regular guy, okay. But he was running a charity that gave him access to the most vulnerable type of children.
This made Sandusky an exceptionally dangerous pedophile. And Joe knew this. And he didn’t care. He did the bare minimum to wash his hands of the problem, and then he went right on living a life which is just a weekly celebration of Joe. And if kids got raped for years and years, it wasn’t Joe’s problem.
Sandusky has an excuse–his head is wired wrong. He’s a biological monster. Paterno’s staggeringly callous indifference to the children Sandusky was raping is incomprehensible. Anyone who doesn’t get why Joe is the bad guy here needs to ask themselves: How would I feel if I just found out that Sandusky raped my kid in 2002 and Joe Paterno knew about it? And never called the cops. And never told me. And never did a thing but tell Tim Curley, who works for Joe Paterno and does exactly what Joe Paterno tells him to do?
Now Paterno is saying we have to have faith in the criminal justice system? Why on earth didn’t he say that in 2002, or earlier?
I’m a Penn State grad, class of ’89. I bleed Blue and White. Joe Paterno didn’t just let down a bunch of defenseless kids. He shamed every Penn State grad and forever sullied the program. I’m disgusted, appalled and heartbroken.
Factually untrue.
Can’t argue that.
Joe Paterno got Curley the job. And Joe Paterno could take it away.
Tim Curley did work for Joe Paterno. He was only nominally Joe’s boss.
Just another example of how sports success trumps all.
I was doing a job in small town Nebraska the year after they were national champs – the year all the stories came out about the players being all rape-y and theft-y and violent. I was having breakfast in a little diner full of ‘salt of the earth’ farmers. They were outraged! They were foaming at the mouth, barking at the moon mad as hell – at the media for reporting all the arrests that had been smoothed over or avoided because the team was winning.
This is not unique to PA or NB but it is unique to big time sports (politicians and priests excepted). Sports does not build character, it destroys it.
This is not unique to PA or NB but it is unique to big time sports (politicians and priests excepted).
You forgot high society, Wall St. and almost everywhere else. So other than politics, the the world’s richest religion and most every town and country in the world where there’s a power imbalance between the haves and have nots, you’re absolutely right!
Sports does not build character, it destroys it.
I’ve read this a couple of times today. And it’s idiotic each and every time. Nebraska was a horror because the coddled players got away with shit. Penn State was a horror because of its institutional culture.
Sports are both good and bad. More good than bad, in fact. And most athletes are normally-adjusted people. I’d say that the tens of millions of normal people who have played sports in high school and college is pretty much proof of that. But sure, carry on!
Sports is a source of power in our world, and power corrupts. Hence the view that sports destroys character – and as a coach to kids, I take it as my first duty to prevent that from happening.
That’s quite an understatement, right there.
You had access to firearms, rope, automobiles, high bridges, alcohol, and knives. You could have been dead within thirty minutes of deciding to kill yourself. What you wished was that you were fucking a ten-year-old: you made that one come true.
I was thinking haha dark joke about the dangeral Bérubé being a Paterno Chair, but I had forgotten that it is true.
It doesn’t mean a lot in the grand scheme of things, but if I were the Paterno Family Chair of Something, I would feel agita about it. I think I would be somewhat depressed because I don’t know if there would be a graceful way for me to bow out of the honor, which is what I would feel like doing, knowing only what I know now, and not knowing unknowns that might be known to others.
There was a Ken Lay Chair in the Polisci department at the University of Houston. It was renamed after the Enron scandal, but not as quickly as one might have guessed.
“Seriously, guys? Can we get a fucking engraver to swing by the office already?”
I was living in Houston when that big, shiny,
E was downtown and none of us saw that coming. Bastards.
[...] Originally Posted by Genjiro Omfg Just read some of the deposition about Sandusky at Penn State. I'd be embarrassed to even be associated with this university. Joe Paterno should go down as hard as anyone, what a piece of old shriveled shit he is. Talk about disgusting. How do you see some man fucking an 11year old boy in the ass in the Penn State showers while ruining this kids life and not just go beat his ass right then and there? Pussies. This is just so, wrong, disgusting, and immoral on so many levels from all involved. Joe Pa fucking owns everything at Penn State, but now he is a victim of the chain of command? Ugh, feel terrible for all the victims. By the time this is done…Penn State is going to be the punchline to a lot of really bad jokes. The program and the Penn State administration needs to purged in a Inquisition-style pogrom. If you don't know whats going on…Here is a good summary I posted in a different thread. Living a lie : Lawyers, Guns & Money [...]
JoePa is lying about what he alleges McQueary told him he witnessed. Plain and simple.
Imagine the scenario playing out, a nervous and frightened McQueary comes to JoePa’s house and tells him he saw a naked Sandusky in the shower with what appeared to be a pre-teen naked boy.
Can you imagine in any sane world where Paterno didn’t press McQueary and ask him exactly what he witnessed, even if McQueary was as vague as JoePa says he was?
Sure.
Oh, you mean “sane world” as opposed to the denialist reality a man like Joe Paterno would live in.
Pardon me.
Someone further up thread made the parallel between an authoritarian entity like the Catholic church and how it dealt with pedophilia and an authoritarian like Paterno and how he would deal with it.
Same difference.
What about the Stanford (Sir Allen) Financial Buildings near the Galleria? Good ol’ Houston.
Mark F- that just reminded me of the Maltese Falcon where Spade has his partner’s name removed from the door like a second after he got whacked.
[...] but how is it that a black man who rid the world of a child molester is being sent to prison, yet a white man who protected one for years because he was really good at coaching football is probably going to get a slap on the [...]
You have got to be joking.
What utter rot.
Murray isn’t only a ‘black man’, he was a legal drug dealer who fed a client piles and piles of drugs for money. Knowing his client was very ill and likely could not survive the drugs he was begging to be given.
As for your accusation of ‘child molester’, I think it’s likely he was – but the law says he wasn’t and it’s probably the fault of some of the family of his victims he wasn’t held accountable.
The kind of sick ‘justice’ you seem to be advocating is available in places in parts of eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Go for it, if that’s the kind of community you want to live in.
Good ole’ boys will be good ole’ boys.
This is the ‘free market’ at work.
Those gorram socialists trying to inflict justice on money earners….
scottpa ran for state office. sadly he had never voted in any election prior to running for office or even registered to be able to vote.
It is pretty obvious that this is a long term coverup, complicated, or perhaps enhanced by, or related to the disappearance of Ray Gricar, the Centre County DA who in Lewisburg mysteriously is believed to have jumped into 3 feet of water in the West Branch of the Susquehanna, drowning, but his body was never found and might lie on Hoffa Mill Road next to the Hoffa who was never found.
In the end it is “what did Spanier/Paterno/Curley know and when did they know it?”, similar to the John Dean testimony in Watergate.
In the absence of more less damning information, JoePa’s legacy and PSU’s reputation lie in shambles as they will be judged on the critically damning information we now have in front of us.
Peterno’s claim that a report from an assistant coach of inappropriate conduct by Sandusky with one or more juveniles was then forwarded in the correct channels to Curley with no Paterno follow up does not fly; it has no wings. Any father would make sure that the report had received appropriate attention. Joe is not above it all.
Talking to Curley 6 weeks ago, I never thought he had a single worry in the world. Now I am thinking that he and all the folks that he hired over the years are gone. Good people like John Nitardi might be at gone.
The State College Borough police are not known to favor PSU football players. It would be good to know what they had been told, if anything. I am certain they would have pursued any allegations presented to them.
In any job we have in society, be it head coach, cleaning person, waiter, or president of a major university, there can be no free rides. If Joe wants the victories and the recognition, he needs to do his job and suffer the negatives as well as the positive. Didn’t Palladin say no one was above the law?
Any one want my tickets?
[...] but how is it that a black man who rid the world of a child molester is being sent to prison, yet a white man who protected one for years because he was really good at coaching football is probably going to get a slap on the [...]
Where’s all this moral indignation coming from? Neither football nor boxing with their intended ‘goals’ (Contact Collision/Brain Damage) can pretend to be ‘good’ for the participants, no matter what they do in the showers afterward!
WWJD? He wouldn’t be sitting there cheering to ‘sack the Q’back’ or cheering for more brain damage so He could see a knockout! So where DOES all this moral indignation originate when the stated ‘goals’ are so inhumane initially?
http://espn.go.com/blog/ncfnation/post/_/id/52307/how-does-psu-scandal-affect-recruiting
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
What we do know for a fact is that a 10 year old boy was anally raped by Sandusky. He needs to be in prison. That child and countless others are being violated over and over each day this monster is free. Please re-post this story as far and wide as possible and strip their ‘un-tarnished’ reputations from every person involved since that seems to be what is most important to these pedophile allowing 1%-ers. HOW PREVENTABLE!
I know if I was at a company where one of my employees reported to me that he witnessed another employee anally rape a 10 year old, I might do a little more than kick it upstairs and forget about it for 9 years. Disgusting and shameful all around…