In a few years here, I’ve never found the need to add anyone at all to an ignore list. Until now.
I figured that I should be open to any kind of opinion no matter how foolish or ill-informed. I should not be ignoring those that I disagree with, otherwise what is the purpose of being here?
I’ve changed my mind though. I’ve decided that I don’t need to read the fecal foamings of a filthy old pedophile-enabler, who things that naked hugs between disgusting pedophiles and young boys is A-OK, or who actually thinks that “hide the soap” is a nice pastime for a grown man to play with a boy in the shower. Or that “hey at least he didn’t anally rape the little boy” is a defense for not calling the police.
My wish is that the entirety of the SDMB population puts this sicko on ignore as well.
Now, as to your assertion that what you posted was grand jury testimony, this is incorrect. It was a synopsis written by the jury based upon the evidence it received. It is not a verbatim recital of McQueary’s own testimony. In point of fact, McQueary tesified that he heard only “two or maybe three” slapping sound (don’t know how many times I’m gonna have to repeat that) and he described the position they were in, with the boy standing with his hands on the wall and Sandusky behind him with his hands on the boy’s waist. In none of McQueary’s testimony that I’ve read did he ever use the phase that the boy was being “subjected to rape”. Clearly he thought it was rape or something very wrong, but he never said what your quote attributes to him.
Blatant lies, every word! No one with a clear head and even fifth-grade reading comprehension could read what I wrote and come to such ludicrous conclusions (don’t feel badly, though, you’re hardly the only offender).
I wonder what it must be like to be SA. To look in the mirror every morning and know that in your heart, the rape of children is okay if it’s not discussed. To walk out into the world every day with a smile on your face, knowing that you support rapist enablers. To interact with others as if you were a normal person, all the while knowing that you hide this secret loathing of those who would protect the vulnerable.
It’s an interesting (albeit revolting and utterly futile) thing to consider - does a person who lacks a moral center KNOW that they lack a moral center? Are they aware that they are missing some core ability to understand the difference between right and wrong?
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.
No, no, wait, I’ve got it! The kid confesses to the Old Coach about these strange feelings he has when he’s showering with the guys, and he’s worried that maybe he’s, you know, not normal…
And the Coach gives him the “gay test” (at great personal sacrifice, one must note, as he finds the practice abhorrent…) See, if the kid likes it, that means he’s queer as a blue horse, but if he *doesn’*t…
Well, turns out he didn’t like it, not one bit, so he can go forward in his life secure in his sexual identity and free from self-doubt!
What a guy, that Coach Sandusky, a man is never so tall as when he bends over a young boy! I mean, looked at this way, it becomes a selfless act of loving wisdom!
You may not have noticed, but I ignore a lot of Huerta’s shit. There is nothing in those statutes that expressly prohibits and make illegal a man and boy being nude in each other’s presence, or showering together. What there is is a lot of vague crap open to interpretation and intended to give prosecutors something to go on if they decide a situation involving alleged child abuse merits the bringing of charges.
Actually I conceded a fact to Huerta just a short time ago. I thought, based on erroneous allegations by a couple of tbe board’s hysterions, that McQueary turned on the locker room lights when he entered, thus leading to the question of why Sandusky didn’t stop raping the kid then if that’s whst he was doing. You might want to give it a look, it blows your theory all to hell. (And I say that in the nicest way possible. :))
Given that they hew to the facts instead of supremely idiotic interpretations of words and attitudes never espoused, they’d most certainly do a much better job of it than whatever it is that passes for your brain tells you.
Nope-sorry. There is NO justification for an unrelated adult to be teaching a boy how to shower. In addition, there would be absolutely no need for them to be naked together in the shower and certainly not in contact. Anybody who believes that is mentally deficient. It is against the law to expose yourself to an unrelated child and it is against the law to be in physical contact naked with that child and any idiot knows that having an adult male naked alone with a child in a deserted shower at night is a situation that raises so many red flags that it should be investigated by police, especially when the adult involved has a lot of access to underaged children. While Paterno may have wanted to do the minimum and then ignore the situation, that is his moral failing.
Or maybe they were just standing around naked, like ordinary people do all the time, and the kid started to choke…on something, gum maybe, anyway, the Coach turned him around and performed an emergency Heimlich maneuver, and it didn’t work the first time, so he did it again and again and his blood pressure was way, way up, so its no surprise that he had an involuntary erectile reaction, and he was so intent on saving the boy from choking to death, he didn’t notice that it slipped into the boy’s Nixon…
No, sorry. There is no law I know of that says unrelated men and boys can’t be nude in each other’s presence. Of course if you can present a credible cite to the contrary I’ll be happy to retract. Naturally that will raise the question of whether Joe Paterno ever heard of such a stupid law, and that will lead to assertions that ignorance of tbe law is no excuse, and that will lead to counter-claims that while it might make him legally liable one can hardly expect him to take action as proscribed by a law that he never heard of, which will lead to allega…well, you get the idea.
And then let’s say that while they were showering the boy slipped on the slippery, soapy floor and that two or three hand and foot slaps occurred as Sandusky grabbed the kid at the waist to catch him just as the kid managed to stop his fall by putting his hands out to brace himself against it, and at just that moment Mike McQueary, having heard suspicious sounds, looked around the corner and saw what for all the world looked like anal rape when in reality Sandusky was trying to keep the kid from falling and busting his head open.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying this is what happened but I do believe there’s just as much evidence for it as the rape scenario (if not more because McQueary said nothing about Sandusky being in a crouched position and nothing to indicate the kid’s expression was benign, both being significant omissions as he make mention of both Sandusky and the boy turning their heads to look at him. Why would McQueary include that detail and omit more damning ones? But I digress. I think that despite whatever you think about the propriety of men and boys showering together, you would agree that naked contact was justifiable as it happened in an effort to keep the boy from slamming headfirst or facefirst into the floor.
You’ve got the hook set pretty deep, but you’re letting too much slack into the line. You’ve done better. The paper towel tube test was some good, stinky troll bait, but you’re not even trying anymore.
Firat of all, you keep going back to rape when I have hypothesized a situation in which there was no rape. The cite for it being potentially illegal for an adult male to expose himself to a child has already been posted. You are correct that the situation may have been entirely innocent. That is why it should have been appropriately investigated. If the police questioned the child and his parents stated that they had asked Sandusky to teach him to shower or if the kid states that he was choking then everything is OK. Also, I agree Paterno had no legal responsibility to do more than he did. However, just because a scenario MAY turn out to be innocent does not mean that there is not a moral duty to ensure that it is appropriately investigated. If there is a reasonable chance that the scenario might NOT have been innocent then Paterno had a moral duty to ensure that there was an investigation. You see, when morality comes into play, taking a situation that may be innocent but may also be criminal and deciding to ignore the potential for criminality because of a possibility that there may be an innocent explanation is a moral failing. Adults are supposed to protect children and look out for their best interests and being aware of when child abuse may have been committed and making sure that there is an investigation is the moral duty of an adult.
Sorry, but I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagee on whether Patrrno behaved egregiously or innocently. But from what I know of Paterno’s character I can’t imagine that he would knowingly allow or overlook harm being done to children.
The limits of your imagination are irrelevant to the argument.
From what I know of Paterno’s character, prioritizing the football program over everything else is entirely consistent with his personality. If you think of it in terms of him “protecting the program and his own legacy” rather than “wishing harm on children” it makes more sense. I’m sure under other circumstances JoePa would have been right in there to help those kids, but faced with the possibility of hurting the program, being associated with child molestation AND harming an old friend it’s not surprising that his reaction would be “do the minimum and hope it goes away”. Add to that the fact that (as you point out) he’s an old man at the end of a long career who is looking at having a generally sterling reputation sullied with little time left to fix it and it’s a very human reaction; he’d have to be pretty brave to put everything on the line to investigate further.
On the other hand, doing nothing could have (and apparently did) result in children being molested. Which is the point of this thread.
I utterly reject that “bare minimum” crap, and regard it as simply an excuse to blame Paterno despite the fact that he did exactly as he was supposed to. He did not procrastinate in reporting the incident that McQueary reported to him; he related it fully and did not try to hand wave it away or trivialize it in reporting the incident to the school’s administration, and he didn’t try in the slightest to get McQueary to back off on or moderate his story. He reported it right away as he should according to the law as written by lawmakers not himself. He did everything right down the line exactly as he should and not in the way a person would be expected to behave if he was trying to preserve his legacy.
Mods could you close this thread please? In case anybody forgot; this thread is supposed to be about NOT engaging SA and letting the Joe Paterno thread die. Instead, this thread has become another fucking rehash of the Joe paterno thread.
I claim full responsibility. I’ve been here long enough that I should have known this thread would get derailed like it has.
Sorry.
SA, my hats off to you sir. Your ability to manipulate people is awe inspiring. Even more so in the fact that this is a board that (supposedly) attracts people of high intelligence.
