Maybe McQueary said doggie style and Joepa thought that meant horeplay.
Now you have me curious.
I would rank child sexual abuse as a 9 on a scale of severity of 1 to 10 (with murder being 10).
Do you generally agree with that ranking of the severity of the crime?
If you do, then it seems, in your opinion, only murder rises to the level of needing to follow up? Or does even that rise to the level of needing to follow up?
You really specialize in twisting things out of context, don’t you. What I said was “If it was clear to me that there had been a child rape, then it would be obvious, if I saw the perpetrator continuing to hang around, that the supervisor had been derelict, and I would have to take further initiative myself. if I only heard an ambiguous report from someone else, then it would not be obvious that proper procedures had been followed, and I would have no reason to doubt that a proper investigation had been done etc., and I would not have to involve myself further. So the crucial issue is what JP was told, and so far all evidence indicates that he was not told anything detailed.”
Right. But your claim was that “McQueary testified that he told Paterno what he saw in fairly graphic detail. I’m having a hard time imagining what could be ambiguous about “I saw a little boy getting fucked in the showers.””
I’ve been very clear throughout this thread that I think public opinion in this matter is inflamed by a lynch mob mentality. That most people are outraged by Paterno’s actions is not relevant to the point I was making. And you knew that (unless you’re really really not that bright).
The point I was making was that absent the lynch mob mentality, many people would regard it as proper procedure. As evidence for this mindset, I cited the fact that the law was written this way. Here’s the actual quote:
The word “otherwise” is significant here. The whole point I was making was about what people would think otherwise, i.e. were they not “outraged people with 20/20 hindsight demand[ing] blood”.
But you wanted to respond by pointing to current popular opinion. So you had to remove the word “otherwise” so that you could pretend I was making a claim about current public opinion. Poor form.
There’s no great shame in not being that bright. It’s compensating with dishonesty that’s the real problem.
There has been a lot of back and forth about presumption of innocence, who knew what when, evidentiary bars that must be met before things are done and etc.
Here are the facts:
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We have no idea what McQueary said to Joe Paterno, other than he told Joe that Sandusky did something inappropriate with a child.
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We have no idea what McQueary said to the AD and Schultz.
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We have no idea if Sandusky actually assaulted any children, let alone the child that McQueary has stated he witnessed being assaulted in the shower.
That’s all 100% true. What is also 100% true is that’s all highly relevant when it comes to the case playing out, I expect that Sandusky’s lawyers will vigorously refute McQueary’s testimony as he-said-she-said, and I expect his lawyers will trumpet the fact that no victim has been found in that specific case (although I believe of the 8 victims named in the indictment several of the others are going to be testifying at his trial, so it isn’t true that no material victims named in the indictment exist as a real body, but only that Victim 2 has not been positively identified.)
But here’s the thing, all of that is irrelevant when it comes to judging the actions of the PSU administration. The PSU administration is not responsible for investigating these matters, these are criminal matters, not personnel matters.
They obviously should do an internal investigation, but that should go along with a police investigation it should not have existed instead of a police investigation.
Here is essentially what should have happened:
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Mike McQueary sees a rape. First he should have attempted to stop it. Failing that he should have notified the police immediately.
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Mike McQueary goes to Joe Paterno the next day and says he saw Sandusky doing something inappropriate. First Joe Paterno should have told Mike “You’ve just told me you witnessed some sort of crime against a child, you need to call the police.” Then Paterno should have gone to the AD, and then some time down the road if it became apparent nothing was being done, Paterno should have contacted the police.
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Paterno goes to the AD. The AD should have called McQueary into his office and said “If you believe you witnessed a crime, you need to call the police.” If McQueary didn’t, then the AD needed to notify the police that a member of his staff has made an allegation about child sexual abuse to him but is unwilling to contact the authorities. The police can then sort out whether McQueary is trying to smear Sandusky’s good name or if the allegations are true. At the same time the AD should be looking into both of those possibilities with their own resources. Further, Sandusky and McQueary should both be put on leave and barred from any university activities until the investigation is over.
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Graham Spanier finds out about this “somehow.” We know he heard this was going on, I don’t know the specifics of when he was told any of it or what he was told. His first reaction should have been to ask, “Why hasn’t Mike called the police? Why haven’t any of you called the police? Why does Jerry Sandusky still have privileges at the facilities? Why does McQueary? Why hasn’t Sandusky been placed on leave? Why hasn’t McQueary?”
Essentially there are two possibilities for everyone except McQueary, meaning they believe his allegations that he saw something that needs investigating (in which case the police need to be notified so they can get to the bottom of it) or they think McQueary is lying, in which case they need to investigate McQueary for trying to get someone else in trouble and they still need to get the police involved to verify that McQueary is lying. That doesn’t mean the police investigation has to be their investigation, but it does have to happen.
See my earlier post to this thread. There is no one crime of “child sexual abuse” with one level of severity. Child sex abuse spans a very broad spectrum in terms of severity.
Murder too would be situational.
[QUOTE=F-P]
…you wanted to respond by pointing to current popular opinion. So you had to remove the word “otherwise” so that you could pretend I was making a claim about current public opinion. Poor form.
[/QUOTE]
Uh, no. You posted an unclear sentence and I parsed it incorrectly. When you stop handwaving away the fact that Paterno knew something illegal had happened in the shower you can call me dishonest all you like.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Here are the facts:
- We have no idea what McQueary said to Joe Paterno, other than he told Joe that Sandusky did something inappropriate with a child.
[/QUOTE]
That’s not a fact. We know McQueary told Paterno that Sandusky was “fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy”, per Paterno’s own testimony.
Would you be willing to provide examples of situations in which a 2nd hand murder report would warrant follow up and when a 2nd hand murder report would not warrant follow up? (hypothetical, just for illustration).
I’m not trying to argue or convince you of anything - you and I disagree, that’s ok - but I am curious to see where you and I are different in our thinking. I am a moral relativist and it’s interesting knowing how different brains work.
The biggest thing I take away from this, is at each level of escalation (McQueary–>Paterno–>Curley–>Spanier) it is patently obvious the first concern was protecting Penn State’s image. There was no concern for the victim, there was no concern for making sure the police would be told, there was no concern for any future potential victims.
Obviously no one in that link other than McQueary can know for sure if Sandusky is a child raping monster, but all of the ones above McQueary put the potential that he was and weighed it against Penn State’s image and decided they didn’t care about the possibility he was a child rapist or that he might rape more children if he was if doing anything about it meant tarnishing Penn State’s image in any way.
Even if they felt McQueary was outright lying, they should have done something, why wasn’t McQueary punished if they felt he was lying? If they were just unsure, they still should have done something. Even if they thought McQueary was lying or was just mistaken about what he had seen, the police had to be involved, because when you have the possibility that this has happened you need to give it to the professionals who can investigate whether or not a crime has been committed.
I don’t think everyone realizes the police investigate incidents, not all incidents are crimes. The police are fully equipped to investigate something and decide if the evidence gives them valid reason to make an arrest and kick it up to the DA, it is stunning to me that so many people think the PSU administration needed essentially ironclad evidence to go talk to the police…that isn’t how the police work. They operate on anonymous tips and vague recollections all the time, they can use those to point them in directions where they can find the real evidence that can be used in the prosecution, or they can look at it and say “there’s nothing here” and close it out.
For those of you defending the university, what if he was murdering these kids instead of raping them? Would the actions of the university staff still be seen as appropriate? Would you think it is sufficient for the witness to tell his boss “Hey, I saw this guy killing a kid in the shower.” and then leave it at that?
In some sense, Sandusky was killing a part of these children. Yet the staff seemed to treat it as if he was littering or something. They tell him not to do the crime on campus anymore and leave it at that.
This seems very similar to how the Catholic church treated their child molesters.
Has anyone now seen this? jerry-sandusky-rumored-to-have-been-pimping-out-young-boys-to-rich-donors-says-mark-madden
How reliable is Madden? I know he alluded to the Sandusky stuff in April - could this possibly be true?
That’s not what you did. You edited my words, in quotes, in a manner calculated to enable your rejoinder.
I don’t think anything I’ve done here constitutes “handwaving”, but regardless, I’m calling you dishonest now.
I’m not sure I’m going to go down a path of arguing about hypotheticals. But you can substitute murder for the facts of this case (more or less), and the same would hold.
I suppose a comparable case would be where someone told you they saw so-and-so attacking someone on the grounds of your building. You alert building security and tell them what you know and the name of the witness, and they interview the witness. You don’t see any further action taken but you assume it was dealt with appropriately.
Now years later it emerges that the so-and-so was actually a serial killer and he actually murdered someone on the grounds, and the building security people failed to follow through which led to more murders. I would say that’s very unfortunate, but you’re off the hook, morally.
Pretty much not at all, but even so, Penn State should probably shut down their football program. Their going to need the money for the settlement.
Once again, where does Spanier come into all this? I still haven’t heard anyone claim that he actually heard the allegations. And believe me, I am no fan of the guy.
Sadly, seeing as how the football program made $57.5 million for them last year, that’s about the last thing they’re going to be able to do.
Whenever i think my opinion of Starving Artist could not possibly get any lower he pulls out a fucking classic for the ages.
I was kinda thinking this about Spanier and Paterno. They both probably knew (at least recently) that a big ole shit storm was a coming. What did either of them do to inform/prepare the trustees/board of directors about this? What preps were made? What options were considered? Or did the trustees just wake up to a shit storm? If its the latter I’d be pretty much be inclinded to kick some ass to the curb on that basis alone (particularly when the people being kicked to the curb are rich famous well connected fuckers that aren’t going be living under a bridge if I fire their asses).
He was part of the cover-up.
Where did that come from? It is not part of the grand jury report.
I did? Well, then I eagerly anticipate the other revelations your mind-reading skills will no doubt enable you to share with us. I’m perfectly happy to apologize for misquoting you. I’m not very happy that you are making up nonsensical motives for me doing so, but since everything you’ve posted in this thread has been nonsense you are at least being consistent.
As I said, I wasn’t interested in arguing or convincing, just curious.
Thanks for putting forth a good-faith hypothetical (one of my pet peeves is when people can’t just restrict themselves to an analysis of the situation and insist on arguing at every turn).
Would you be willing to provide a hypothetical in which you think a person does have a moral responsibility to follow up? Again, I’m looking for a 2nd hand account type of situation, and again, you won’t get any arguing back from me, I already know we don’t agree and I don’t believe the world needs to have my exact set of views.