You have to be fucking kidding. “Fantastic story” my ass. “People” in the PS football program knew that Sandosky was a sexual predator as far back as '97 – and that’s just taking into account what’s on record: Victim 4. Poor kid was literally raped all over the Penn Sate Campus – including the very Country Club Hotel were the team slept prior to home games. And a couple of Bowl Games to boot.
Yeah, that’s right. There was Sandusky, in all of his “glory,” proudly parading a 12 year old boy – even sitting w/him at the coaches table – prior to taking him up to his hotel room to rape him. Mind you, the guy’s wife was nowhere in sight, and yet some of you would want us to believe that this is normal behavior? I mean seriously, wouldn’t YOU at least raise an eyebrow if you saw, say a co-worker, sleeping with an unknown kid at some convention you happen to attend together? Because it sure as hell creeps the shit out of me.
Further, Sandosky is fired a year or so later – with all sorts of benefits, including emeritus status, a personal office, parking etc. Guess WHO “fired” him? That’s right, God Paterno. Think he didn’t know about Victim 4? Or all of the perks he’d gotten? Pull my finger, will ya?
Look, I am not going to bother schooling you further as this whole thing makes me feel physically ill. Read the fuckin’ Grand Jury report and quit trying to make excuses for Joe…the asshole GD, the janitors, the AD, VP, school President and any/all involved in this putrid cover-up in any way, shape or form. Fuck them all! The RCC Professional Pedophile Team has little on this bunch…'cept numbers.
Bothers you that Paterno gets all the ink? Tough shit. Bet it didn’t bother you at all when all the headlines sang his praises. Turns out that’s pretty much all he was interested in.
Well, it looks like he’s gone, and good riddance. I wonder if the B10 sent a message to the PSU Board of Trustees saying something along the lines that “you cannot let Paterno bring his team on the road. It will create security issues that we are not prepared to deal with.”
Yes, he may be safe in Happy Valley but who knows what could happen on the road? At least, I can imagine rocks thrown at the team bus and near riot conditions outside the team hotel.
BTW, Sinsaint, welcome to the Board. Stick around awhile.
First… “some guy” didn’t come up to Paterno on the street and disclose that his friend was a monster. The person who went to Paterno was a trusted colleague. Paterno never once said he doubted the story in question. He never said the person was a known liar, had mental issues, etc. This person worked with Paterno. He had zero reasons to lie about what he saw. Paterno had zero reasons to doubt the person’s authenticity. There was absolutely no reason to doubt his story… Unless you want to believe that some Joe Schmoe decided one day, out of the blue to accuse Sandusky of child molestation and, lo and behold, Joe’s accusations miraculously coincided with other molestation reports and that his miraculous report was less colorful to Paterno than his GJ testimony.
Nope. Not buying it. The witness had no reason to sugar coat what he saw to Paterno. The witness also had no reason to lie to Curley and Schultz or to the GJ. It it very apparent by the GJ testimony that at least two people lied… Curley and Schultz. There may be more but one thing is certain. The GJ said the testimony from the witness is credible, meaning he has no reason to lie about what he saw or told.
And sorry, but you can’t get around the fact that Paterno knew a child was in danger and then decided to golf on it? Relax on it? definately sleep on it. Then called, not the police, but his office buddies. His behavior makes no sense other than to hide a blemish on the ass of the Nittany Lion… and don’t tell me he had no reason to. Paterno is PSU’s icon and PSU is Paterno’s bread and butter. PSU must remain untarnished, especially the Football division and Paterno knows it. The man was in his 70’s when this came up. He choose to protect his college over a boy (need I remind you again… a boy we still can’t locate) because his retirement is certain and a good retirement contract would hinge on a good college standing when you leave.
None of this could come out under Joe’s watch. Either he’d be the idiot who didn’t see his own child molesting colleague or he would be the enabling idiot who was too old or self-absorbed to see it going on under his nose. That Saturday was his one and only chance to do it right. He thought of himself and PSU over that boy. He made his choice to put that boy dead last and now he’s reaping
At some point is anyone going to step back and say, “Wait a fucking minute?” Probably not. A lot of sportscasters don’t like JoePa… BUT Let’s look at stuff objectively for a minute…
in 1998 Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar decided there would be no criminal charges for the first shower incident The university did NOT “sweep it under the rug”
June 1999 – Sandusky retires from Penn State.
Fall 2000 – A janitor named James Calhoun observes Sandusky in the showers of the Lasch Football Building with a young boy. Calhoun was a temporary employee and never makes a report to campus police.
March 1, 2002 – A Penn State graduate assistant (who is now an assistant coach at the University) enters the locker room at the Lasch Football Building. and sees Sandusky in the showers with a 10yo boy. The graduate assistant tells his father immediately. But doesn’t tell Paterno until the next day. What he specifically told Paterno, has not been mentioned.
March 3, 2002 – Paterno calls Tim Curley, Penn State Athletic Director to his home the next day and reports a version of what the grad assistant had said. Except Paterno wasn’t an eyewitness, so anything he reported was hearsay. -
6.March 2002 – Later in the month the graduate assistant is called to a meeting with Curley and (now)Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz (who was, at the time head of the campus police, people!). The grad assistant reports what he has seen and Curley and Schultz say they will look into it.
March 27, 2002 (approximate) – The graduate assistant hears from Curley. He is told that Sandusky’s locker room keys are taken away and that the incident has been reported to The Second Mile. The graduate assistant is never questioned by university police and no other entity conducts an investigation until the graduate assistant testifies in Grand Jury in December 2010.–* Except Schultz WAS the head of the police, remember? So he DID talk to ‘the police’… another half truth.* Was the University negligent in not contacting the County DA? Those files, if there were any, are missing… and so is DA Ray Gricar, btw - he is assumed to have committed suicide and has been declared dead.
Nov. 7, 2011 – Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly says Paterno is not a target of the investigation into how the school handled the accusations Meanwhile State Police Commissioner Frank Noonan decides to make some political hay at Paterno’s expense saying he met his legal obligation, but not his ‘moral’ one.
( And the grand jury testimony is given to the press - ensuring an impartial jury will be damned hard to find. Probably violating the rights of Sandusky, Curley, and Schultz to due process…)
Nov 9, JoePa announces he will retire at the end of the season, saying he wished he “had done more.”
Under pressure from politicos, press, and alumni, the school trustees perform an act of extreme CYA, and decide to fire him anyway.
"What if it was my kid?: I’d want JUSTICE, not REVENGE. This is NOT** justice**, not for those kids, not for Joe Paterno, not even particularly for Sandusky. It’s a public humiliation in the kangaroo court of the press. The right of “presumed innocent until proven guilty” be damned.
I read somewhere (maybe this thread, I’ve read a lot on this) that Paterno only spoke at Sandusky’s retirement ceremony for like five minutes, and he’s not exactly known for being brief or shy away from attention.
Do you have any evidence that Paterno was aware of this?
All the articles I have read said he RETIRED in 1999. He was not fired.
Actually, I care little about Paterno, Penn State, or college football in general. I am mostly concerned when people can’t look at a situation rationally.
Wrong. At the time, he was a graduate assistant. Hardly comparable to a guy he’d know and worked with for decades.
The accuser’s veracity is not what is in question. He could have just been wrong. The problem with your logic is that there is no reason for Paterno to protect Sandusky if he thinks he did it. Unless you truly think Paterno is some nut who just didn’t give a shit, I am not sure why you think he would participate in a cover up. What’s in it for him?
Kinda like the GA did, huh? That’s the issue. Why do people expect a person who heard this story in the third person to react more stridently and vociferously than the person who actually witnessed? Furthermore, you are only assuming the Paterno knew a child was in danger. If he didn’t really buy the story, which is what all the evidence points to, then why would he assume there was a victim in danger?
Bullshit. That makes no sense. Why would he think he could cover it up given that everyone supposedly knew about this, and his complicity would only make him look worse in the end. There is no reason why anyone would do that. Joe Paterno isn’t stupid.
Then why didn’t he retire a few years ago? You really think he would be more afraid to be known as an enabling idiot than to be thought of as the guy covering for a pedophile? Really?
What’s interesting is Spanier has resigned/stepped down and Paterno was outright fired. I imagine that both Spanier and Paterno were basically given the classic “out” in these situations by the Board and told they could resign or they’d be dismissed.
Spanier did what most people do and resigned…the fact that Paterno didn’t basically means that even after all this Paterno was refusing to step down and felt that he had some entitlement to go out the way he wanted.
You know, if Paterno was just having a bad year as coach I’d feel like yeah, make the old guy retire and let him go out on his terms at least. But this is way bigger than football and unfortunately for Joe (and far more unfortunately for the children who suffered at Sandusky’s hands) the time for Joe to avoid this destroying his legacy passed long ago, and Paterno’s only honorable course of action would have been a deep, emotional apology about his failure to live up to the exacting standards he always held his players to followed by an immediate resignation.
Wow, the story’s made front page of the BBC —second-biggest headline, no less. That takes some doing. The last Canadian elections didn’t make it that high, IIRC.
Excellent post, Da Mikster (and those of brickbakon as well). Won’t make a dime’s worth of difference around here of course, but excellent post nontheless.
I didn’t know about Schultz being head of the campus police at the time he said he’d look into it. So I can’t help but wonder why so many people are getting away with claiming the police weren’t contacted. I’m thinking that this means Paterno, in reporting what he was told to Curley, most likely assumed that Schultz, as head of the campus police, would be brought in to investigate as well. I realize why the media and the vigilante mob that has formed around Paterno and Penn State wouldn’t publicize this, but you’d think that at the very least Curley and Paterno would have pointed to it.
Schultz was the senior vice president for finance and business. Technically, that encompassed the police department, but he wasn’t the chief of police or anything close to it. He’s not a criminal investigator, just like the Attorney General isn’t an FBI agent even though he’s technically head of the Department of Justice. If you need to report a crime and have it investigated, you should report it to an actual police officer, not a paper pushing bureaucrat.
Now, Schultz certainly should have done something, just like everyone else involved in this hideous mess. But “head of the campus police” doesn’t really encapsulate how removed he was in reality from the operations of the police department.