We already know they decided to do the wrong thing. The question is how much they knew when making their decision. These emails don’t seem to shed any light on that.
But we do now know they held ongoing discussions about what to do, and still ultimately decided to do the wrong thing. That is indeed new light, and it may open the door to additional conspiracy charges, though I’m just speculating on that.
And we now know that the reason they did the wrong thing wasn’t due to an oversight or an incorrect belief that maybe they weren’t obligated to report the allegations to the authorities. Instead, it was because they wanted to be “humane” to Sandusky. Pretty damning, IMO.
The $13 million jackpot that Paterno’s wife won because an 82-year-old man died somehow ought, in any moral world, to be subject to a lawsuit against his estate for his culpability. Can any PA attorneys tell us if this is the case?
IANAL, but I think that it’s pretty hard to sue heirs for wrongdoing by the deceased. You could sue the estate, but once the will is probated & the funds dispersed to the heirs, doesn’t ‘the estate’ cease to exist? Sort of like trying to sue a company that went out of business.
Might be a reason for them to proceed quickly with dispersing his estate.
If his wife inherited $13 million, well, she is elderly too – when she goes, perhaps some of that will go to Paterno’s adopted, molested son.
Will the NCAA take action against Penn State, it seems there oversights are much worse than players getting benefits or sleeping on a couch.
I think you’re conflating Paterno and Sandusky.
IANAL, but in my experience of administering an estate, it would be unusual to settle the estate and close it down this rapidly. There are waiting periods for creditors to amake demands against the estate, property to sell off or somehow divide among the heirs, etc. I’ve administered one estate and my sister’s done two, and all 3 took something in the neighborhood of two years each. A lot of that time was just waiting on lawyers to get their asses in gear, file papers, get court dates, and such.
And some stuff, like the proceeds of a life insurance policy, never go into the estate. A benefit of an insurance policy is paid directly to the beneficiary by the insurance company. That may vary from state to state, but I’ve never heard of a third party having control of the money between an insurance company and a beneficiary, unless the money is put into some kind of trust by direction of the policy holder.
I’ve not seen anything to indicate that they believed they were required to report these specific allegations to the authorities, only that at some point they contemplated doing so.
To the contrary, one of the things revealed in these emails is that they apparently had some communication with their legal people over what the reporting requirements were. I would think it’s unlikely that they directly flouted this advice (although I don’t know if that can be found out - it might be protected legal advice).
Dude, the level of willful ignorance you will stoop to in order to pretend this bullshit you’ve concocted is absolutely astounding.
Bolding mine.
Very possibly, all that means is that if what eventually happens happened, they’d be in exactly the situation that they now find themselves in.
That doesn’t mean they thought they were legally required to report it or knew the level of abuse. It just means that if Sandusky goes on to abuse kids after they did not report it, they would be in trouble, regardless. Which is true, of course.
Partially this is due to people like you, who will concoct any scenario that allows you to assign maximum blame to your preferred villians. But in general, it’s never good to be involved in this type of situation. That argues for hypercaution. But hypercaution needs to be balanced against other considerations.
Sorry, you’re a moron if you can construe “we will be vulnerable IF WE DO NOT REPORT” to mean “we’ll get in trouble if HE CONTINUES TO RAPE CHILDREN”. This is not “concocting” any scenario. This is reading the emails they themselves sent. You are the one applying twisted logic to the reading of those statements.
Maybe think about what the words “isn’t heard and acted upon” mean.
Or not. Whatever.
So you’re really arguing that the entire time they contemplated notifying the authorities, they believed it was only contingent on whether or not he continued to rape children. That if he stopped, they were no longer “vulnerable” for not reporting it? Or maybe, the more reasonable solution, is that if he continued to rape children and they were found to have not reported previous times they had been notified of reports that he had, they would be vulnerable because they were in violation of mandatory reporting requirements. Or not. Whatever.
It’s hard to know what they believed was “only contingent” the “entire time” since we’re only discussing a snippet from one email.
That said, what I do believe is that what they meant in that particular snippet is that if Sandusky failed to follow the guidelines that they laid down and some new incident occurred, they would be vulnerable for not having been more reported him for the earlier incident.
Which was prescient, because in fact that’s exactly what happened. (Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing they were prescient about …)
Which means, they knew they had a reporting requirement, they knew they were not fulfilling that requirement, and they knew that if he continued to rape children and people found out that they knew about previous incidents, they would be in trouble for failing to report. You’re the one who just said that their emails did not indicate that they knew they had a reporting requirement. You were presented the quotation that indicates that yes, they did know, and have tried to weasel around the quotation since. Now, you are saying that you do believe they knew they would be in trouble if they did not report it. So tell me, which parts of what I have said are you actually disagreeing with still?
No it doesn’t mean that. It means you can get into a lot of trouble even if you meet your requirements. This is what I said earlier, so - agree or disagree - you should relate to that. Please try to keep up.
In what sense had they met any requirements? The part where they specifically say they were vulnerable for not reporting? Because the guidelines that Penn State lays down for Sandusky mean precisely dick. They are not any sort of law enforcement, they do not get to determine any sort of behavioral modifications he must abide by, nor does it negate any reporting requirements. So tell me, in this specific case, what specific requirements do YOU believe Penn State to have fulfilled?
This is nonsense. McQueary tells Paterno what he saw on 2/9/01. Paterno tells AD Curley. Curley and VP Schultz meet with McQueary on or around 2/19. Curley and Schultz decide on a course of action: contacting Sandusky, contacting the chair of Second Mile, and contacting child welfare (their minimum legal obligation). Schultz confirms this course of action with Curley on 2/26. They’re going to do the right thing.
But then…2/27, Curley writes president Spanier, refers to a conversation with Paterno the day before, and says that he no longer wants to contact child welfare. Instead, they’ll keep it internal, reach out to Sandusky and implore him to seek help, and bar him and his “guests” from using PSU facilities. Spanier thinks this is an acceptable plan. “The only downside for us is if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it." Translation: if we get caught covering this up, we’ll be in deep shit.
Bottom line: keeping it internal, and protecting the reputation of the university, took precedence over the interests of the kids that Sandusky had raped and would rape. And Paterno was right in the thick of it.
It also shows how much influence Paterno had. It is just laughable that some folks think he was somehow not instrumental in this cover-up