The accusations in this scandal are really serious and really ugly.
PSU Athletic Dept./Catholic Bishops = despicable enablers of crime.
So here’s to you Paterno and your bosses, wallow in the Pit of the despised. I never, ever thought that Joe Pa should end his life in jail but now I’m not so sure. He built his legacy on helping young boys. I guess it really wasn’t that way.
Thus far, JoePa is kinda sorta clean. He reported the allegations when he became aware of them. I’d put the blame higher up for not being more aggressive in the investigation and making more of an effort in cleaning up as opposed to covering up.
Read the link. Yes, he reported it but did nothing to bring any justice. He didn’t fire the guy. That makes him an enabler. He didn’t notify law enforcement. What was reported to him was that Sandusky was seen having anal sex with a boy. That’s pretty serious. That requires more action than just telling the boss. Why didn’t he insist that he didn’t want the guy around him and his team?
Yes, it’s hard to get your brain around the fact that someone like Paterno, as revered as he is, may be a criminal. It’s also hard for many people to think that of a RCC bishop. Nevertheless, that may be the case.
I’m not just pitting Joe Pa, I’m pitting everyone in the PSU Athletic Dept. that had any knowledge of this guy. This whole thing is very ugly.
It seems to me that the AD would do the actual firing. Sure, Joe could have recommended this firing and he probably should have. I think the question is did Joe follow the procedures in place at PSU at the time? If so, I’m not sure it’s his place to bring in the police.
This pitting is spot on. Everyone on the sports TV over the weekend was so worried about old JoePa. “He did the right thing, he reported it to the AD.” Nothing about what happen to the poor kid.
This morning on Mike and Mike, it’s now what did Joe know and when did he know it? They went on to say that Paterno may have just heard some off handed comment and did not know the true nature of this crime.
Whatever the outcome, this is a nasty stain on smug pissy college football program.
(Mandatory disclaimer about innocent until proven guilty, etc).
Assuming the allegations are true, Joe Pa is as guilty as anyone in this. Sorry, saying ‘he told someone else’ doesn’t cut it. He knew about it and still let the guy hang around the program. He was head of the damn program!
I think there’s a 50-50 chance Paterno is forced out before the season ends. I think there’s a zero percent chance he is back next year. The stench is overwhelming and goes back far, far too long - by all accounts it goes back to 1998. How many kids were molested after that?
Looks like Paterno won’t face jail time, but R.P. McMurphy has it right: His legacy will now forever be ‘the guy that helped and protected a child molester for almost 10 years’. Hope he enjoyed those 409 wins, 'cause he’s going to have to spend the rest of his life thinking about the dozens of kids that he allowed to be molested right under his very nose.
I believe Joe Paterno is a mandated reporter in the state of Pennsylvania, due to his position as university faculty. If he knew of an incident, and nobody else was making a police report, he would have been bound to do so.
University procedures cannot operate in violation of state law.
If you are correct and it seems reasonable that you are, then Paterno has to go, which was long overdue anyway. I stand corrected and withdraw my defense of JoePa.
I don’t think that signifies. Either he knew one of his employees was a child molester, in which case he obviously should have gone to the police, or he didn’t.
And, if you have any real idea of how the PSU Athletic Department works, Paterno’s “superior”, the one he told about the allegations, pretty much actually works for HIM. Paterno is a god at Penn State. Anyone he wanted out would be out…like snap-your-fingers out.
What actually happened was that it was kicked around in the Athletic Department trying to find a way not to have what happened stick to the Athletic Department. They were face-saving. For Og’s sake…Sandusky was actually SEEN forcing anal sex on a 10-year-old boy in a locker room on campus! The witness actually TOLD PATERNO! And Joepa basically tells his nominal superior “Find some way to take care of this”.
And their “solution” was to ban Sandusky from bringing any underage boys on campus.
Read that paragraph again. Seriously. That was the extent of Penn State’s “punishment” of Sandusky for actually being witnessed unlawfully sodomizing a child in their own locker room showers.
“Reasonable cause to suspect, on the basis of the reporter’s medical,
professional or other training and experience, that a child under the
care, supervision, guidance or training of that person or of an agency,
institution, organization or other entity with which that person is
affiliated is a victim of child abuse, including child abuse by an
individual who is not a perpetrator (as defined in 23 Pa. Cons. Stat. §
6303).”
There are some other nuances of the PA law, that I suspect do not make JoPa a mandatory reporter by law. However, knowing or not knowing is not an excuse from a legal standpoint under the reporter law. “Reasonable cause to suspect” is what would get him.
In any case, Paterno is now tainted. The right thing to do is to let the school administration know about the problem and to let them know you are calling the police. You don’t hand off your responsibility by telling your boss and then assuming everything is taken care of.
So, the guy told Paterno that Sandusky was having anal sex with a boy, but he didn’t mention specifically whether the kid was bent over a bench, pushed up against a locker, or laid back on a massage table?
Yeah…to a normal person, I’d think that “old man and young (pre-pre-teen) boy naked together having sex” is more than enough information to go to the police with. And I mean real police, not “campus police”, which is another little piece of cutesie-pie talk-around they’re trying to do on this.
As a Penn State alum who once really thought Sandusky was going to succeed Paterno, this is a gut-punch. I’m outraged on behalf of those kids. And I thought Penn State administration was better than this, and I’m outraged too that they didn’t do anything.
After the story broke on Saturday night I thought JoePa might, just might survive this. But he shot his foot off with the press release yesterday, when he claimed that he didn’t follow up with the AD because the grad assistant who witnessed the assault in the university building didn’t tell him all the details of the story. Well, that just leaves him wide open to the grad assistant saying that he did–and at this point (and, just a couple days ago, who would have believed it?) people are going to take the assistant’s word over JoePa’s.
That’s going to be the end for Joe, and I can’t think of a sadder end for his reign honestly. Not–assuming these allegations are real–that I feel sympathy for him, but that I’m just boggled that he didn’t speak up when it happened. Why, Joe? Why didn’t you say anything? Sandusky didn’t even work for you any more…why did you feel like you needed to protect him and not the little kids? And I have a sinking feeling that Sandusky’s abrupt departure from Penn State in 1999 had nothing to do with him “spending too much time at the Second Mile charity.” So did you know about this all along Joe?
I’m not surprised Curley resigned right away. He’s been on thin ice over Team Pegula, so nobody was going to support him. I won’t shed a tear for him. I feel bad for the kids, and for the current players, who had nothing to do with this. JoePa? I don’t know, I’m too much in shock. Not because he might go, but because he didn’t speak up. Why, Joe?
And I share this. I took classes at Penn State. I grew up in Altoona, which both has a PSU campus and is within easy driving distance from State College. I was floored by the story, too.
More to the point, really, why didn’t Joepa GET the details from the GA so he COULD report it to the police? REAL police, as I noted above. No, Uncle Joe was trying to retain some plausible deniability here, although given the nature of what was reported to him (even sans details), plausible deniability never had a real chance. It is a shame, not just for the poor victims of Sandusky, but for Paterno’s (and the PSU Athletic Dept’s) reputation and posterity.
I’ve always decried much of the hysteria in our society over child molesters, and the suspicion that men face around kids just for being men. But then I read a story like this, with multiple people having genuine reason to suspect that Sandusky was up to no good - the sleepovers, the excessive telephone calls, the showers, finding him lying face to face with a boy on a wrestling mat, catching him doing some kid in the friggin locker room shower! - and I can’t believe it took this long to stop the guy. WTF? He admitted to taking showers with boys in 1998!!! Gah!
And it goes beyond simply trying to remain oblivious about what happened. The AD lied to the grand jury about what that grad student had told him in 2002, to cover up for the fact that they didn’t report it. Did the AD honestly expect everyone to believe that this grad student witnessed Jerry Sandusky naked in the locker room shower, raping a 10 year old boy, but chose not to tell them that? That image has to be seared in his mind, of course he told them.
I know you weren’t on Main Campus, but State College town police seemed more interested in doing things like surrounding the local McDonald’s when there were “too many black people there” while two blocks over there was a full-blown riot occurring (long story, but one seared into the memory of everyone who was there when I was). He needed to go right to the DA…who probably was a friend of his.