It's time to officially Pit Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program.

[Boyo_Jim]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

That has all been linked before, as you say. But the law specifies “suspected child abuse” and I’m questioning what falls under that category.

The hypothetical again is that Sandusky, backed by the kid, provided some innocuous explanation for what he was doing, such that McQueary realized that the whole thing was an overreaction and misunderstanding on his part. I would guess that in such case there is no longer “suspected child abuse” and no obligation to report.

Or at any rate, Paterno might have thought so.

I will agree with you that if, when Curly and Schultz met with McQueary, who at that time withdrew the accusation and claimed he misinterpreted what he saw, there MIGHT be a rationale for not reporting to the police or child welfare authorities.

That didn’t happen.

What did happen clearly fall under the category of a report of suspected child abuse that REQUIRES a report by phone in writing to specified police or child welfare agencies.

As to whether Paterno knew this – well, he certainly knew part of the law. He knew he was legally obliged to report it to his superiors, and he knew he wasn’t legally obliged to report to police.

[Boyo_Jim]

@mnemosyne

…Your hypothetical assumes that Paterno would have chosen to investigate on his own. Perhaps, in this case, a satisfactory answer would have been obtained and the police would not have been needed…

I don’t agree with this. It was definitely not Paterno’s (or Curly or Shultz) place to investigate. And neither Sandusky’s denial or the child’s would have been sufficient reason to fail to report, certainly not if a third-party witness was sticking to his story.

And the reporting law doesn’t offer “investigate it and report it if you still think it’s credible” as an option. Like I say, if the accuser recanted, that might be something else, but I would damned well talk to a lawyer before deciding that question.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Boyo_Jim

I will agree with you that if, when Curly and Schultz met with McQueary, who at that time withdrew the accusation and claimed he misinterpreted what he saw, there MIGHT be a rationale for not reporting to the police or child welfare authorities.

That didn’t happen.

But Paterno may not have known that it didn’t happen. And that was only one hypothetical anyway.

IANAL, but I would guess that this law works like so many other laws work and that “suspected child abuse” is defined by whether a “reasonable person” would suspect child abuse based on the evidence given (with that standard in turn decided by a jury should someone be prosecuted in a given case). And that, for example, if some kid tells a teacher that so-and-so abused them and it’s completely obvious to the teacher that it didn’t happen and couldn’t have happened and the kid is making it up for some apparent reason, then the teacher does not have an obligation to report it just because the kid said the magic words. (I’m not saying this is directly comparable and obviously McQueary was not a little kid, but my point is that there could be circumstances where an initial “investigation” determines that this is not a case of “suspected child abuse”.)

Perhaps a more knowledgable person can comment more definitively on this. (Though any event, Paterno may have assumed this is the law, as I do.)

Paterno didn’t know how C & S dealt with it, but he did know that he had confidence that they dealt with it appropriately, whatever that was. (In hindsight, looking at C & S as indicted perjurers and failure-to-reports this looks bad - to have relied on people of that caliber! - but at the time Paterno would not have had that hindsight, and they would have seemed to him as people who knew more than him about dealing with this type of situation and people on whom he could rely to do the appropriate thing, whatever that was.)

[Boyo_Jim]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

But Paterno may not have known that it didn’t happen. And that was only one hypothetical anyway.

IANAL, but I would guess that this law works like so many other laws work and that “suspected child abuse” is defined by whether a “reasonable person” would suspect child abuse based on the evidence given (with that standard in turn decided by a jury should someone be prosecuted in a given case). And that, for example, if some kid tells a teacher that so-and-so abused them and it’s completely obvious to the teacher that it didn’t happen and couldn’t have happened and the kid is making it up for some apparent reason, then the teacher does not have an obligation to report it just because the kid said the magic words. (I’m not saying this is directly comparable and obviously McQueary was not a little kid, but my point is that there could be circumstances where an initial “investigation” determines that this is not a case of “suspected child abuse”.)

Perhaps a more knowledgable person can comment more definitively on this. (Though any event, Paterno may have assumed this is the law, as I do.)

Paterno didn’t know how C & S dealt with it, but he did know that he had confidence that they dealt with it appropriately, whatever that was. (In hindsight, looking at C & S as indicted perjurers and failure-to-reports this looks bad - to have relied on people of that caliber! - but at the time Paterno would not have had that hindsight, and they would have seemed to him as people who knew more than him about dealing with this type of situation and people on whom he could rely to do the appropriate thing, whatever that was.)

Jesus Christ! It is not the place of school officials to investigate nor evaluate how credible a report of child abuse is. It is their job, by law, to pass it on to the appropriate authorities to make that determination. The law is clear. It does not allow for exceptions. The words ‘credible’, ‘reasonable person’, or ‘believable’ do not appear in it.

If you want to defend Paterno’s decision never to follow up to determine whether his superiors obeyed the law about reporting an allegation of a serious crime, that’s one thing. But don’t even suggest that there may not have been a requirement for anyone to report it.

[ElvisL1ves]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

That has all been linked before, as you say. But the law specifies “suspected child abuse” and I’m questioning what falls under that category.

“Something of a sexual nature”

“Rhythmic slapping sounds”.

Gawdamm, boy … :rolleyes:

[ElvisL1ves]

@Boyo_Jim

I will give Paterno this much slack – if it turns out he never again saw Sandusky on the Penn State athletic grounds or facilities again, then I will grant that he might have assumed that the situation was dealt with.

Does anyone know if this is the case? I know Sandusky WAS on campus again, but I don’t know if he ever again encountered Paterno on those occasions.

How would he not know his old friend had full access to the facilities? Hell, how would he not run into him repeatedly in such a small town even if he *did *shut him off?

Nope, there’s no such slack available to give him.

[AustinJane]

Oh come on. Paterno thought he was controlling it. He made sure the man was not his successor, he gave Sandusky the cold shoulder. This was his world and this is how he did things. His ego did not allow the view that he could not handle this problem, in his world. I’m sure he thought that he was controlling Sandusky. I think he did talk to the man and I think he thought he had made his point. Not in his world. His athletes and staff (and ex-staff)did not follow rules that others did. Many documented examples. I would not be surprised Paterno had a lot to do with the fact that Sandusky was never recruited for jobs after he retired. A point questioned frequently on Sports Talk radio shows. Why did Sandusky’s career wither after he retired? He was at an age and had a reputation that should have been recruited. It just never happened. My personal assumption is that Joe Pa was doing a lot and that he had a hell of a lot to do with keeping it in the “family”. He had it in control. He was in denial and was keeping it in “control”. Paterno was not unaware of what anal rape was, what he was unaware of is that when a person is a pedophile the disapproval by Joe Pa will not make it go away. That’s not an excuse, it’s a statement about his ego. What was inconceivable to Paterno was that he hadn’t stopped the activities, not that he didn’t understand what the activities were. I think this had a lot to do with why he wouldn’t step down. He had a lot of things to keep his thumb on.

[Robot_Arm]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

You’re making it sound like some sort of terrible thing, but everyone makes these types of judgments all the time. I’m an actuary and not a doctor and I trust my judgment more about actuarial matters than about medical matters. I suspect the same thing applies to you, WRT your own areas of expertise.

Three points:

1. The person who knows more still doesn’t know everything. I was talking with a financial planner the other day and we disagreed about what the rules were on a required distribution from an inherited IRA. He sent me an e-mail a few days later and said I was right. Everybody should be willing to take advice when it’s needed. To think otherwise is arrogant in the extreme. Even kings have advisors.

2. No well-run organization should put someone in a position where they answer to nobody. Should Paterno have been able to choose his own salary? (After all, who knows better how hard Paterno works than Paterno himself?) It sounds like there was no one to second guess Paterno on any matter he didn’t choose to fob off on somebody else. (And then that choice is not to be second guessed.)

3. If you are in a position where you answer to nobody, then you take the fall when shit like this happens.

[Enola_Gay]

@Starving_Artist

Even if Sandusky was seen on campus again that would prove nothing one way or the other to Paterno. For all he would have known the school’s administration might have looked into it and found nothing there, or they may have found something that turned out to be relatively minor and disciplined Sandusky in a way that didn’t include banishment from the campus.

But all of that is beside the point really. The main thing was to get Paterno’s head. If he had questioned the administration and been told either that nothing was found or that more minor offences had been found, the anti-Paterno would be screaming that this was a coverup that Paterno went along with knowingly, or that Paterno should have called the cops to rrport that child abuse had occurred and he wasn’t going to rest until somebody found it. There is simply no way short of Paterno personally making sure that Sandusky was arrested, tried and jailed, that Paterno would be considered blameless in this incident, and probably not even then, as the nattering nabobs would simply switch from this incident to whatever allegedly or imaginedly occurred before or after it, and then blame Paterno for having allowed it to go on and only taking action when as mandatory reorter he had to. In short, to that crowd it is always Paterno’s fault no matter what actually happened.

Your head is so tightly wedged up Paterno’s tight end that it has caused cerebral hypoxia which has severely impaired your judgement.

[Huerta88]

@Enola_Gay

Your head is so tightly wedged up Paterno’s tight end that it has caused cerebral hypoxia which has severely impaired your judgement.

There’s also this persecution-by-proxy delusion he’s foisting on us. The “anti-Paterno crowd” was “out to get his head.” Umm, before this, there was not any “anti-Paterno crowd” that Iknow of. It came into existence only after, and solely to almost solely as a result of Paterno’s conduct re Sandusky.

First the idiot said that it was the liberals persecuting Paterno for his political conservatism – a thing that I (no liberal, and fairly knowledgeable about college football over the years) had no knowledge, notion, or opinion of.

Nor was Paterno or Penn State a polarizing hate magnet, even by the standards of sports. His reputation was as an un-flashy, trying-to-run-a-cleanish-NCAA-program-and-still-win-games (we now learn that was not really totally deserved, but that was the vastly prevailing accepted view of Paterno and PSU (when anyone bothered to think about them)).

For the most part no one is out to “get” anyone without a reason (real or specious). Free floating persecution exists much more frequently in the fevered imaginations of paranoids and those with Messianic delusions.

For those of you not too familiar with U.S. sports or college football, there are some polarizing figures and teams that people could be fairly said to be hoping would fail (justifiably hoping, or not). Factually, this includes teams like the New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys, for some the Eagles. There are controversial or divisive players (Tebow, Vick, James Harrison, Suh), usually because of irritation at their on or off field comments or demeanor or conduct.

I can definitively say that leading up to Sandusky-gate, Penn State and Paterno were nobody’s targets of vendetta, envy, persecution. The Miami Hurricanes in the 1990s? Sure. Reggie Bush? Sure. Nick Saban? Yep, in some quarters.

I gotta tell you – for most of the past decade PSU (and Paterno) has been in relative obscurity 'cause they, mostly, kinda sucked on the field.

[Boyo_Jim]

IIRC Bobby Knight got a lot of flak for his abusive courtside behavior.

[Huerta88]

@Boyo_Jim

IIRC Bobby Knight got a lot of flak for his abusive courtside behavior.

Another good example. Hmm. Bill Belichek. Jimmy Johnson in some circles. Barry for God’s sake Switzer. Buddy Ryan. Woody Hayes. All hated (mostly deservedly).

Paterno, no.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Huerta88

Another good example. Hmm. Bill Belichek. Jimmy Johnson in some circles. Barry for God’s sake Switzer. Buddy Ryan. Woody Hayes. All hated (mostly deservedly).

You forgot Notre Dame and the evil, lying bastard Lou Holtz!

[Starving_Artist]

@Huerta88

There’s also this persecution-by-proxy delusion he’s foisting on us. The “anti-Paterno crowd” was “out to get his head.” Umm, before this, there was not any “anti-Paterno crowd” that Iknow of. It came into existence only after, and solely to almost solely as a result of Paterno’s conduct re Sandusky.

Can you say “specious”? Yeah, I thought that you could. :rolleyes:

Nothing says an anti-Paterno crowd must necessarily exist prior to the alleged offense.

@Huerta88

First the idiot said that it was the liberals persecuting Paterno for his political conservatism…

No, first were hysterical liberal board nitwits saying that I was only supporting Paterno because he was a conservative and in a position of authority. You can look it up.

[Huerta88]

@Starving_Artist

No, first were hysterical liberal board nitwits saying that I was only supporting Paterno because he was a conservative and in a position of authority. You can look it up.

I am so far to the right of you (I am routinely and retardedly accused of fascism, by the normal idiots here). I’ve articulated a far more coherent right wing anti-Paterno policy than your dumbass back-Joe-P.-at-any-cost agenda has ever evinced.

This thread has nothing to do with politics. Joe P. is conservative? Who gives a rat’s ass? Joe P. is a pedophile enabler. Proven and proven. He enabled a pedophile. Not a single good rightist can back that.

We hate that crap. Ya know?

[Huerta88]

@t-bonham@scc.net

You forgot Notre Dame and the evil, lying bastard Lou Holtz!

I hate Lou to death.

[Starving_Artist]

@Huerta88

I am so far to the right of you (I am routinely and retardedly accused of fascism, by the normal idiots here). I’ve articulated a far more coherent right wing anti-Paterno policy than your dumbass back-Joe-P.-at-any-cost agenda has ever evinced.

This thread has nothing to do with politics. Joe P. is conservative? Who gives a rat’s ass? Joe P. is a pedophile enabler. Proven and proven. He enabled a pedophile. Not a single good rightist can back that.

We hate that crap. Ya know?

If you’re more of a conservative than I am, you need to stop it because you’re giving us all a bad name.

Throughout this thread you’ve shown yourself utterly incapable of comprending words in front of your very face, to be sorely vocabularily challenged, and to richochet around like some demented pinball, jumping to conclusions and making accusations that you don’t have a shred of evidence for, all in the apparent belief that if the offense is bad enough it’s okay to throw logic, reason and due process out the window. These are not typical conservative behaviors, and frankly, given your demonstrated challenges with the dictionary, I have to question whether you know what “far to the right of you” actually means.

[Carmady]

@Starving_Artist

Even if Sandusky was seen on campus again that would prove nothing one way or the other to Paterno. For all he would have known the school’s administration might have looked into it and found nothing

True. Even though Sandusky was still “always around” the football team (according to players), still at Second Mile camps on campus (where he apparently found all his victims), still brought kids to practice, still ran overnight football camps for kids on another Penn State campus, there was absolutely no way Paterno could have thought anything was amiss.

After all, Sandusky was long since gone. McQueary was nowhere to be found. School administrators would not return Paterno’s calls.

What’s that? Every single one of those people was still there, right in front of Paterno all the time? Sandusky was still using Paterno and his reputation to get victims, therefore giving Paterno an extra responsibility to do something? Paterno remained dead silent, not talking about it even when the people with the answers were bumping into him on campus?

Oh. Then yeah, Paterno did not fulfill his moral responsibility.

[ElvisL1ves]

Jane McManus of ESPN offers more perspective on his claim to ignorance:

How could a man like Paterno, fully involved in the Catholic Church, not see the correlation between what two of the most important institutions in his life were covering up? And if that revelation didn’t come immediately, as the ensuing months produced some excellent reporting on the Church’s damaging silence, how could Paterno and the administration remain blind to the implications of their inaction?

Paterno is from the “Mad Men” generation, when a well-cut suit and lunch-hour scotch were valued as much as keeping scandalous behavior a secret. Homosexuality and pedophilia are not related, but Paterno’s quote seems to suggest he cannot fathom the idea of two men together sexually.

But Paterno is more worldly than that. He studied Greek literature at Brown

Etc.

As if it still needed saying, there is no credibility whatever to the claims SA and F-P are making here. But only they still refuse to grasp that.

[UltraVires]

CBS News - Breaking news, 24/7 live streaming news & top stories

CBS Cleveland reports that Paterno taken off of respirator and near death