I do not agree that for a boy and a man to be in a shower together is automatically a crime. As a boy I’d been in many public swimming pools with adult men. And the fact is that millions of boys of boys are showering or bathing with grown men all over the world to no ill effect. Further, there are tribal areas in the world (and no, I’m not talking about hippie communes, love-ins, “naked bike rides” or gay pride demonstrations) where children are exposed to adult nudity every day of their lives, also to no ill effect.
Now, just for shits and giggles, let’s consider the following scenario. Let’s say there’s a boy from an underpriviliged background who has gotten to know Jerry Sandusky through his Second Mile work. And let’s say that boy is about to graduate grade school and start junior high where he knows he’ll be in phys ed classes and required to shower. But for whatever reason he’s never been in a shower in his life and has always taken baths. This makes him feel insecure and worried that he’ll embarrass himself 'cause he won’t know the protocol and the other kids will make fun of him. So, having found Sandusky to be someone who cares about him, someone non-judgemental who he feels comfortable with and can talk to freely, he asks Jerry Sandusky to teach him the routine of showering at school. Perhaps his father, not knowing of the allegations against Sandusky, even suggested it himself. Who better to teach your kid locker room comportment than a manly big-time college football coach, huh?
I can see this scenario played out with young boys and Big Brothrrs or mentors all over the country and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. The only fly in the ointment in this case is that the mentor is Jerry Sandusky, and Paterno, perhaps having been told earlier that in his role as mentor Sandusky had been teaching kids to shower from time to time and thought nothing of it. I would have thought nothing of it myself and I’m a generation younger than Paterno. Then let’s say Paterno gets wind of the 1998 complaint that a mother complained that Sandusky hugged her kid in the shower. He likely feels Sandusky was merely being encouraging or expressing affection of a wholesome and fleeting nature and that the mother was being over-protective and foolish. Then he hears McQueary’s report and isn’t sure whether Sandusky was really misbehaving with kids or whether there was some other, more innocent explanation and McQueary simply misread what he saw. So, being unsure whether anything bad had happened or not, he duly passes the report up to his superiors as the law prescribes, figuring they’ll determine whether there was anything bad going on and what should be done about it, then he returns his attention to the 24/7 job of being a football coach.
See? Easy-peasy to see how all this could have gone down with no moral failure on Paterno’s part, and no belief that a man showering with a boy was a crime…which is stupid if it is and emblematic of the equally-stupid CYA practice of making certain things always wrong even if they aren’t. It’s idiotic bullshit like that which gets young girls charged with distributing child porn for sending a naked photo of themselves to their friends and punishing six-year-old boys for sexual harrassment because they kissed a girl on the cheek. No telling what kind of fucked-up relationship problems these kids are gonna have twenty years from now.