It looks like Texas is investigating an incident where Sandusky brought one of his Second Mile boys with him when PSU played A&M at the 1999 Alamo Bowl. That could also bring the Feds in, as it would be transporting a minor across state lines.
McQueary is protected under Penn’s whistleblower law. Under the laws conditions he did what was required. He also testified truthfully at the grand jury about what he witnessed. McQueary will be ok for awhile. But realistically the pressure to leave and move on will be too much.
It seems like McQueary will be a key witness in testifying to what happened after he reported the incident. Was he pressured to keep quiet? Told that it was being handled? He has a lot of questions to answer.
“Good faith” might be a sticking point there. You told one guy, and he told one guy, and then you kept working there for another 8 years when it was clear that no further action was going to be taken.
I don’t know if the law considers that in good faith, but I certainly don’t.
In my opinion, not calling the cops when you actually see a rape, murder, or other such act should be a crime. (Taken on case by case basis, of course. If you are in a group of 10 people and see it, no need for all of you to call.)
McQueary watched the act, and chose to do nothing. Isn;t there anything he can be charged with? I find it really hard to believe that what he did is ok according to the letter of the law.
This is all part of the problem. The guy was a grad student assistant coach; basically, he wanted to make coaching his lifelong career, and managed to get a lowly job working for one of the gods of the profession. He sees one of the demigods doing something horrible, but by the time he tells any evidence could be gone. If a guy can “convince” a 10yo to have anal sex, I bet he could also “convince” him to say nothing happened (which one victim repeatedly told his mother).
McCreary would be flushing his entire future down the toilet, what he’s worked for for 10 years, or more likely since he started high school. A grad student job is a tenuous position that can end at the end of the year just by saying “sorry, no renewal”. If Paterno decided not to believe him, and fired him, and gave him a bad reference, he would be blacklisted. Whistleblowers DO get screwed, anally, and it appears this is what may happen to this guy now.
So any way, after much soul-searching and discussion with his father, he went over to the coach’s house anyway and said what he say. The coach apparently fulfilled his legal obligation by kicking it upstairs; and if McCreary wanted any confirmation how iportant he was to the organization versus some chld molester, 9 year of total inaction could have confirmed it.
So, should he quit working his chosen career and get a job at McDonald’s because his word did not stand up to a child molester’s? Should he guarantee he’d be fired by going to the police with no proof after the whole PS organization appeared to have closed ranks? How many policemen are not interested in football?
If he had called the police at the time, there almost certainly would be “proof”. There would be two eyewitnesses if you include the child, and there would be very likely be forensic evidence that could have been collected from the bodies of both Sandusky and his victim.
As an aside, if there are other pedophile college football coaches out there who are looking for assistants, McQueary’s career path is assured.
Yes! Yes! If it was YOUR child in that shower with Sandusky, would you still philosophically accept that McQueary’s possible career ambitions were worth your own child’s mental and emotional (not to mention physical) health? Would the possibility that your child, at 16 or 17, wracked with guilt for “allowing” that to happen with Sandusky (probably multiple times), would take his own life be worth somebody’s coaching career?
The people who are excusing McQueary for making this kind of cold-blooded career calculus on the back of a 10-year-old are sick.
And of course, that’s all beside the fact that McQueary LEFT A 10-YEAR-OLD CHILD WITH HIS RAPIST WITH ANAL RAPE IN PROGRESS. How is that even possible for anyone with even an average level of empathy?
Would the police be there before all evidence was gone? Would the average 10yo admit to anyone what had happened? (Do you think he would be threatened by the perv to not tell?) Is a small-town policeman going to put a lot of effort into arresting the coaching staff of his favourite team and upsetting the biggest applecart in town? Heck, after it’s pretty much definite what happened, hundreds of fans still rioted because the head coach was being held to account…
If the guy knew he was seen, everything would be cleaned up in 2 minutes. When’s the last time police responded to anything within 2 minutes.
In many college towns, the first thing to police would do is call the campus police to take care of it.
It would still boil down to a “he said” vs “HE denied” and likely the boy corroborates the big shot.
It’s a big “if” to put your whole world on the line. In the end McCreary did do it, and it looks like he’ll still pay the price. And as you see by your last sentence, he’s still being blamed for something despite blowing the whistle and seeing for 9 years the evidence that his word was worthless.
His word was apparently worth a 9-year career as a coach at a top football school. “In the end”, yes, he did do it. People (on this side of the line, anyway) aren’t blaming him for finally doing it. We’re blaming him for not doing it at a time when it could have saved a lot more boys from being raped.
Yeah, I wonder how many times he wondered “are they keeping me here because I’m good, or trying to buy me off? If I try to move somewhere else, will they give me any kind of reference? If I try to leave, will it set of alarm bells in the organization?” Basically he’s screwed because he saw something, and screwed because he reported it, and comments here are still heaping vitriol on him 9 years later, for at least doing something right. Is it any wonder a lot of people “don’t want to get involved”?
He told his story to the coach, who told him to take it to the Athletic Director, who told him the campus police would look into it. (IIRC, the Athletic Director took it to the university VP.) Basically, I assume he was told “appropriate steps have been taken” and he saw no real result. That told him where he stood in the world of Paterno’s organization, versus a child molestor.
Remember that in many Catholic molestation cases, the local city governments and police heirarchy also felt it was inappropriate to charge a priest so things were covered up. This behaviour is not unique. McCreary probably felt he could anticipate the same reaction if he went to the police - it’s obvious Paterno wasn’t taking his side.
Some further points after reading a few articles from Drudge Report:
-AP says Sandusky was considered the “heir apparent” to Paterno at one point. You accuse someone that high up, and see no results, you know you can’t win.
-Sandusky was doing recruiting for Penn last year, according to one high school athlete. No condemnation was obvious there. Another report said he was using the weight room 2 weeks ago.
-Penn carries about $1Bn in debt already and their rating amy be downgraded. Sandusky has been charged with 40 counts of child molestation, some on Penn property. Penn investigated, and did nothing. 2 Penn officials are charged with perjury over their stories to the grand jury about what they knew and what they did about it. Think about it… 40 future lawsuits or more, some accusing the university with complicity. How much disposable cash will that gobble up? Top players will choose to go elsewhere; sponsors will be reluctant to pay up. People will say “why would I give money to Penn to help pay off child victims, instead of donating to do something for the students”? I see interesting times ahead.
All because the university ignored the warning it received.
Yes, I feel so bad for him. He walked into the middle of a rape and was worried about his job. :rolleyes: I think this thread needs a pit.
I’ m under the impression that Paterno also notified the police. Don’t know if it was municipal police or campus police. But, I can see where an older guy whose whole life is football coaching can do what he thinks he should do, i.e. notify someone in authority and even the police, and then go back to the only thing that really occupies his mind - his team. He made the reports that he thought he was supposed to make. From that point on, he figures that it’s been taken care of. It disappears from his personal radar. If he sees the guy still there, he may figure that the report showed no crime actually had taken place. If someone should have done more, it may have been the administrators or the police. I somehow think Paterno has been the focus but only because he’s an easy target - a prominent head of a program. I keep thinking that pretty much all he cares about is his football team and that other stuff is taken care of by others and he counts on that. He is taking a fall for some others, in my view.
You are way too late. There’s been a Penn State Pit thread going on for days now.
I have never seen any cite that Paterno notified the police. Yours is the first I’ve read of anyone suggesting he did.
There are some some posts in the pit thread that claim Peterno notified the police because he notified the university VP who oversaw the campus police force. Apparently the fact the that the police unit appeared under his name on an org chart (as did many other divisions of the university) makes him a police official – in some eyes. That VP is one of those now charged with perjury.
Not everyone reports the mafia to the (corrupt) police even though it means they and their family will be killed, their house and place of work burned down…
McCreary reported the problem to the one man with power, prestige, influence and concern to do something about it, at the risk of his entire life’s work, not just “a job”. Nothing was done. For all he knew, the president of the University, the Mayor, and the Chief of Police, had already heard and dealt with the case they way they wanted. I bet Paterno was on a first name basis with those people. He certainly had the connections.
I don’t need nor want a detailed answer, but what did Mike McQueary see? Was it simply Sandusky and the kid both naked in the shower (which is inappropriate in itself; there’s no reason that kid needs to be using the showers there), or was it clearly sexual assault? As I said, I don’t want details, but is it possible that what he saw was not necessarily an assault?
He testified that he saw Sandusky performing anal sex on a boy he estimated to be 10 years old. He also testified that he told the highers up exactly what he saw.
Read. The. Indictment. Which has been linked in multiple threads about this issue.
To sum up, McQueary reported that he saw Sandusky engaging in anal intercourse with a boy approximately 10 years of age.
Unless you were doing a parody of some other posters, who ARE arguing (in other threads) that anal rape might not be sexual assault.