Agreed this was the wrong choice, but I don’t think Paterno did it out of self-interest, I think he misjudged the situation and misjudged his own authority and wisdom for dealing with that kind of situation.
Considering in this case you had a guy who turned out to be an actual child molestor giving those “naked hugs”, I can’t see how that’s a bad thing.
Forget Paterno for the moment. Being more aware of child molestation, and not just shrugging anything off (if your kid tells you, “so and so was giving me naked hugs in the shower”), well, I can’t understand how you WOULDN’T see that as an improvement. Because if not, that’s really sad. Kids should be able to tell their parents if they’re being molested, and people should be aware that it happens. To be otherwise isn’t “innocent”, it’s being ignorant and blind. And it’s down right scary.
Not bad. But also not correct.
What specifically is incorrect?
I’m not sure I agree. The more I read about this, the more I am beginning to think that Joe Paterno had despicable morals. His ego and legacy seem to be his highest priorities, trumping even the safety of children. It is little wonder that child molesters idolize him.
The part about contacting the police. It isn’t in there, but if you replace “authorities” with “police” it is. So, after modifying it to be wrong, we find out it is wrong.
Winning!
Now, now, now, little Enola. You wouldn’t be trying to troll me now, would you?
You know, all through this thread people have been saying that Paterno failed in his legal duty as a mandated reporter to report McQueary’s allegations to the police…the actual local police and not the campus police, despite the fact that the actual local police requested a system be set up many years before in which allegations of crime on campus be reported first for university officials and police to investigate in order to prevent their receiving multiple calls for the same crime (and presumably to ensure they don’t interfere with each other’s investigations).
But in reading pages 23 - 24 of the Freeh report which Jeffrey Lebowski cited, I noted that no mention nor concern was made in regard to the local police, and that none of the usual suspects have appeared since then to make an issue of Paterno, et al. having not gone to the police but rather has no become, according to Hector, that he [they] failed to comply with the law.
So I looked it up.
Now, I’m not a lawyer and perhaps I have an inaccurate view of just how much hair-splitting over the precise wording of how laws are written is actually allowed in a courtroom, but since Bill Clinton was allowed to get away with his “it depends on what the meaning of is, is” defense, I presume the law pretty much means what it says. However if I’m wrong in what I’m about to allege then perhaps a passing lawyer (hopefully one not already swayed by bias) might offer his or her take on the matter.
Note first of all that only by the greatest technical legal definition of a minor could Joe Paterno be said to have any child “come before him in his professional or official capacity” as the youngest any candidate for one of his football teams would have been seventeen years old at least. Still, one could make that argument if a seventeen-year-old member of his team were to come to him and make allegations that he had been abused.
Which leads us to two more cruxes of the matter:
- The law appears to say nothing which requires a mandated reporter to notify the police, requiring instead that the Department of Public Welfare be notified.
So it appears my esteemed opponents are wrong in regard to Paterno’s having any sort of moral culpability as a result of having not notified the police, nor of any moral culpability for crimes that were committed subsequently because the police weren’t notified and therefore weren’t able to instantly indentify the boy and interrogate Sandusky so that he broke down and confessed the truth, as was so stidently alleged during the early phases of the thread. And…
- It appears that the reporting requirement requires that the abused child come forth with allegations to the mandated reporter him or herself rather than for a requirement to be imposed merely upon hearsay. Note the wording of the law, which states: “a child coming before them in their professional or official capacity is a victim of child abuse.”
Clearly the law is written to require that people who hear from a child who has been or is being abused, or who in their opinion based on their training or experience have reason to suspect the child has been or is being abused, report those accusations or beliefs to the Depart of Public Welfare in Pennsylvania.
Thus it is my opinion that neither Joe Paterno nor any of the members of the Penn State administrative staff were legally remiss in not calling the Dept of Public Welfare for two reasons, as no child had come before them to allege that Sandusky had been abusing them, and all they had to go on at that point was, in effect, hearsay, and not something they had learned by virtue of their own professional training or experience.
So while it may be argued that a moral person would have wanted to contact “the police” or “the authorities” - and I would not necessarily disagree with that for the most part - it may also be argued by a moral person that seeking to pressure someone into getting professional help for a problem they had come to believe exists but which they had only the vaguest idea of vs. ruining that person’s life and destroying a charity he had established which by all other accounts was doing a tremendous amount of good would be a logical, mature and reasonable approach to try to address the problem.
Thus, in my humble opinion there was no law breaking and no moral rectitude on anyone’s part (save for Sandusky, of course). Those guys were trying to do the right thing based on what little they knew and what little they had to go on. They made no mention of Penn State’s reputation, of worries about the football program, of what news of Sandusky’s alleged behavior might do to alumni donations, none of that. All they were trying to do was find a way to halt Sandusky’s strange behavior with kids in their showers and to do it in a way that would get Sandusky the help they had come to believe he needed. Their focus was on a humane solution and not on covering their asses, and if anything I think more highly of them now than I did before.
And with regard to Paterno, think about it. Seriously. There was a guy so concerned about the the welfare, intellectual development and future lives of his players that he would sacrifice success on the football field by benching players who failed to perform academically. Does it really make sense that he would care so much about kids in their late teens and early twenties but then so callously turn a cold and uncaring eye away from small children being forced to submit to traumatizing and painful oral and anal rape by his 6’3", 60-something former assistant football coach, rapes which would likely have harmful effects on them for the rest of their lives? It defies belief. There is simply no way he would do that, no matter whether it affected his football program or not. He simply wouldn’t. Nor would any normal person.
And yet here we have a thread full of people who not only think that this man who previously had a superb reputation without a shred of sexual abnormality would do exactly that, but that a whole coterie of like minded sadists existed at Penn State who were all willing to let small kids be sexually tortured and raped willy nilly for years on end by this huge man while they went happily on about their business.
Think about it. Really, just sit down and think about it. You don’t have to admit it to me. You don’t have to say a word about it here. Just think about it. That’s all I ask.
Hey dumbfuck. Read the very last line of your quoted text.
Goddamn you’re stupid.
And there is nothing in the code that says a child has to make an allegation. You are as lacking in cognitive ability as you are possessing skeeviness.
I did. It’s governed by the first line of the quoted text.
No u
Other than the part about a “child coming into contact with them” or “coming before them in their professional capacity,” that is? Certainly I don’t believe the code prohibits anyone from coming forth should they feel they have grounds, but like I said I don’t believe the code requires them to act upon mere hearsay.
I do thank you for your post. Perhaps it will serve as notice that people shouldn’t listen to anything you say if they aren’t willing to listen to me, because every damn thing you just said is not only wrong but applicable to you, including a skeevy and perverse nature that leads you to see salaciousness in mere practicality.
I am a mandated reporter in Pennsylvania. I’ve done CE specific to mandated reporting requirements. I’ve had to make Childline reports many times, including as a supervisor of another person who was the one to obtain the info.
I know this stuff a little better than a skeeve who just read it a little while ago on the internet.
ETA: stupid ass, the child doesn’t have to make an allegation because they might not want to or be able to. The mandated reporter acts on their concerns, whether or not the child says anything.
Rules of evidence don’t apply. It’s up to the subsequent investigators to determine if a report is founded or not.
Ok, I thought about it. I think that you’re in denial. I think that you continue to rely on supposition and guesswork based upon who you believe JP to be. You didn’t know the man personally, all you have is an image, and I believe that if that image were to become shattered, it would wreck your worldview, and so you have gone to great lengths to keep that image in tact.
I posted the what the law says. You apparently follow some sort of policy based on what you or your superiors think the law says or what it ought to say or how it ought to be applied. As Curley’s memo shows, even he and the other members of Penn State’s administrative staff felt they may be exposing themselves to problems later on by not reporting McQueary’s allegations to the Dept. of Public Welfare. What I’m saying is that they may have been under the wrong impression too, according to the actual wording of the law.
But be that as it may, the fact is that Paterno did not violate any mandatory reporting law by not going to the police, and he did follow the mandatory reporting law as written even though it may not actually have applied to him because he did “notify the person in charge of the institution, school facility or agency” upon having reasonable cause to suspect that a child had been a victim of abuse.
I have no problem accepting that Paterno was a mostly okay guy who did a bad thing - i.e. he did nothing when he was supposed to do something. I’m not clear on why Starving Artist seems to think this is a contradictory view.
Skeeving Artist believes his having read it on the internet trumps professional experience and legal counsel.
Paterno talked others out of making any report. He doesn’t get credit for reporting or causing a report to be made to.Childline.
Yeah, I guess you’re right.
He’s a hopeless cockdick.
Curley and Shultz have both been charged with lying to the grand jury and failure to report child abuse, and Joe Paterno would likely be facing those same charges if he were still alive. And rightly so.
It is entirely possible that the judge may throw out those charges or a jury might acquit. But that doesn’t change the morality of Curley, Shultz, or Paterno’s inaction.
You seem to get caught up in the technicalities, but are unable to grasp the spirit of the law. Whether Shultz, Curley, Paterno or Jerry Sandusky violated any particular statute is no what is causing all the outrage.
You know, the one thing this thread is missing is the presence of curlcoat and ZPG Zealot celebrating.
Maybe their absence is evidence that, at long last, they have demonstrable standards.
Then assuredly, this is the end time!
We have not mentioned enough that the son Sandusky molested was adopted. That should smoke out ZPG.