That’s a weak argument and you know it. Even putting aside the fact that Sandusky wasn’t even working for PSU when much of the abuse happened, such a loose standard would practically implicate anyone who through poor judgment costs their employer money.
Reagrdless, since you seem so sure that “that’s how honest services theft cases work” I will be waiting to see when these cased are successfully litigated against all the PS officials you named. You wanna take bets on whether that happens?
I am confident that PSU will pay over one hundred million dollars, and that few if any of the plaintiffs’ theories will be dismissed. I am confident that if the State (who has standing) brings theft of honest services claims against the individual miscreants, the State will prevail. I will bet you $100 American dollars that this will not end up with vindication for any of the PSU officials (it’s essentially unadjudicable, I know, but there is no way anyone involved will be absolved by anyone other than a self-serving University enquiry).
Papal infallibility? Wow. Do you just make up shit with every post? As I said before, your way has been tried for a while now, and it doesn’t seem to work. Your latter statement just highlights your misunderstanding of the issue. Accountability is often not individual. We may punish individuals for certain things, but societal problems are usually tackled on a macro level by governments or large institutions. In fact, that’s why PS will likely be sued to high heaven- because they were accountable on many levels.
Everyone leave Starving Artist alone. Male on male pedophilia is a long standing Western cultural tradition, an institution even.
I’m impressed by the hierarchical rigidity of the university to protect itself at every level. Even the janitor of all people sees a dude blowing a kid and is all like hey now, there are rules to follow! Let me take this through the proper channels. Don’t want to go off half cocked or anything.
BUT NOT TO THE GODDAMNED POLICE LIKE ANY DECENT HUMAN BEING SHOULD. For crissakes, it’s like, “well, it’s not MY responsibility, I’ll let the other guy take care of it.” Fuck that shit.
What should he have done? Grown some balls and called the fucking cops. Period. No one ever did – they just kept saying, “well, I’ll tell my supervisor”. And not one of them ever called the cops. No one did. Way to take responsibility.
Have you not been reading the same damned thread? People HAVE been attacking McQueary and you’ve got posters like Starving Artist and brickbacon making excuses for him as well.
Good god, what does it take for people to admit that their hero fucked up? Oh, he’s an old man, he’s so respectable! Gah. It makes me want to puke.
Now it’s IF. The money we are talking about here is several million dollars between all the pensions of those involved in the incident. The VP alone is getting 300k+ per year. I would guess Paterno will get even more. If PS could get the money, seeing as how that’s how these cases work, then why would they leave in on the table? The reality is they will not bring claims because they have a terrible legal argument. They might just try it with Sandusky to prove a point, and hope that people will be swayed to abandon logic to punish this scumbag, but they will likely lose.
Again, if you are so confident in your argument, then take this bet. I will bet you that successful claims will not brought against the majority of Penn state officials involved in the scandal within 3 years, or 1 year from the end of the criminal/civil proceedings, whichever is first. Sound good to you?
Do you mean you may have done the same thing as McQueary did and called your father or your lawyer to advise you as to what to do in order to protect your PSU paycheck?
Witnessing a child being abused is not good enough cause for behaving like a decent human being and trying to stop it?
There’s a reason this kind of child abuse keeps on happening. Too many adults are willing to tolerate it for their personal gain and benefit.
And it will keep on happening.
That’s sad.
I am amazed there is any argument in here at all.
Every posting should be a pitting. This whole thing is indefensible on every level.
The only thing I think one cannot say for sure about this whole thing is knowing what you would do if you were McQuery that night. Hearing, and then seeing anal sex between a grown man and a 10 year old boy in the shower of the PSU football team’s locker room and leaving the scene of the crime (literally), may be despicable, but who really knows what they would do? I know I’d like to think I would have at the very least broken it up and got that kid the hell out of there, but I can’t say that for sure. Like I said, that would be the minimum. To think I could walk away from something like that, especially when I know that there is no way the sex is consensual, disturbs me greatly. I personally couldn’t live with myself if I allowed that to happen.
Like it or not, McQuery was put in a position to act ***morally ***Not legally. Apparently, McQuery, JoePa and McQuery’s dad all did the bear minimum required by state law… (Actually, since McQuery’s dad didn’t actually see it, I’m not sure what his legal obligation was at all). However, McQuery and Paterno both reported it to their superiors. And then wiped their hands of the whole thing.
How could they do that? I keep putting myself in McQuery’s shoes and I can’t for the life of me believe the only thing I would have done was leave and call my dad. That image would haunt me for the rest of my life (and who’s to say it doesn’t?) But I couldn’t work at PSU knowing that ***nothing ***happened to Sandusky. But that’s just me. I’m not a holy roller or anything… I’m just a person who views sexual acts by adults on children to be abhorrent.
So yes, McQuery and Paterno both covered their ass legally, apparently, but that’s it. How do you live with yourself knowing that not only was Sandusky not arrested, but other children followed?
Where on earth did this “Code of Silence” come from? What does Sandusky have on Paterno? Why did Paterno hire an expensive defense attorney? What other bodies are buried?
I have a feeling we will be finding out more as the investigation progresses, and none of it will be good. It will be one person after another having a chance to stop this and they did nothing.
If McQuery didn’t have the guts to physically accost Sandusky, then get your ass out of there and call the Police immediately. 9-1-1. Simple enough. And stand by that decision. I doubt that PSU would have the balls (yet alone the ability) to fire him. But if they did, McQuery would have been hailed a hero and would have not had trouble landing another job in football.
What do you think his job prospects are today?
Predictions:
**McQuery **will be on paid administrative leave indefinitely, until he either finds another job or PSU figures out a way to fire him without getting sued. Until then, paying him is the cheapest option by far concerning him.
A movement will begin to remove **Paterno’s **name from anything it is currently on, like the Paterno library, on the PSU campus. The University will try to do anything and everything it can to distance itself from Paterno, a virtual impossibility. But renaming the Library would be a good start and a strong gesture.
Penn State’s next head coach will not be from the PSU family. It will look too incestuous (pun intended) to hire someone that has lived in the JoePa world. The football program (if it remains viable) needs an image makeover immediately. They will sandblast the entire coaching staff out of there.
Joe Paterno will suffer a fatal heart attack within a year.
One final note for those of you that think cancelling the season or giving the football program the death penalty or a 5 year hiatus would be “harming the good kids and people in the program”, well guess what? Too bad. Back in 1951, scandals broke out in college basketball regarding point shaving. Long Island University (LIU), after finding out that members of their men’s team were bribed to shave points, held an emergency meeting and voted to end LIU’s participation in intercollegiate athletics that year.
Too far back for you? Remember the Duke “rape” case? A coach lost his job, a season was cancelled, and kids reputations were sullied because of an accusation by a female and an overzealous prosecutor. A lot of innocent people were hurt, including the 3 kids found innocent of rape.
That happens. It’s not ideal, but it happens. And I for one don’t think PSU can worry about the collateral damage. The real damage, to all those children, has already been done.
Joe Paterno will suffer a heart attack within the year and die. And he will take a lot of secrets with him.
Starving Artist and brickbacon are rotting, stinking, shit-eating wastes of space. I’m surprised they are able to use a keyboard, because it’s pretty clear that the best part of them dribbled down their momma’s leg after the goat was finished.
That is all.
That’s out of line. Let’s try to remember who really deserves condemnation for these events. In order of severity, it’s:
Jerry Sandusky
Those who knew, or should have known, what Sandusky was up to, and should have stopped him.
Those who defend Sandusky’s defenders.
Sandusky’s fate will be decided by the coursts. Penn State needs to seriously clean house, and I have no problem with the firing of Paterno as part of that process. I don’t know what precise words McQueary used when reporting things to him, but it seems by any account he knew enough to take much stronger action than he did. People keep talking about his sterling reputation for honesty and integrity, but I’ve yet to read what he was supposed to have done to deserve it. I saw an interview today with Franco Harris defending Paterno. He cited Paterno’s statement that he wishes he had done more. That’s exactly why he had to go; he didn’t do enough.
I don’t agree with Starving Artist’s (or anyone else’s) defense of Paterno, but I don’t think he deserves the insults that are being flung his way in this thread.
One positive that will come from this scandal is a stronger mandatory reporting law. Right now, those who learn of abuse only have to report what they know to the “person in charge”, which is essentially meaningless because it puts the onus of calling the cops on one person, who may have reasons of his own not to pursue it. The law will likely be strengthened so that anyone who learns of abuse has to inform not only the “person in charge” but the appropriate state agency. At this point, however, that state agency has not yet been identified. But Corbett is confident that the new legislation will pass by the end of the year, and he’s made it clear that it will happen. (I just heard this on the radio and the station hasn’t posted the story yet, so no cite yet.) I also think that the level of the offense is supposed to go from a misdemeanor to a felony.
As a mandatory reporter, I think this is overdue. McQueary and Paterno had a very strong moral obligation to tell what they knew to the police. To expect an abuse victim to wait for some process to move forward while the abuse persists defies all logic.
Agreed. Those dissenting in this thread may be arguing from a conclusion based idea and ignoring/twisting facts to suit their conclusions, but they’re not the worst people on earth. Even Starving Artist’s potential quibbling over the actual type of sexual abuse witnessed is more :smack: stupid than :mad: defense of a pedophile.
I love insulting people’s intelligence as much as the next raging asshole, but it’s well past time to take it down several notches.
If there’s only one good thing that comes out of this whole sordid tale, the above is it. I was a mandatory reporter when I was a teacher, and even though I haven’t taught in a long, long time, I still consider myself a mandatory reporter. Personally I think everyone should, but as we see, there is still some scum* that thinks that kicking it upstairs takes all responsibility off their weak little shoulders.
*No offense meant to pond scum which actually serves a valuable purpose.
OK, but might I suggest that they don’t rename it:
I’m sorry. There’s very little that’s funny about any of this, but that was funny.
Well said, my friend. It’s a good reminder that the facts as we know them are reason enough for outrage, without muddying the waters with other insults that we’re blindly grabbing at.
Hmmm…not sure I can agree with this part of what you said. The problem with SA’s “JoePa didn’t know it was ‘anal rape’” defense is that it de facto establishes grades or categories of abuse - something we should not allow. Fondling is abuse. Oral sex (either way) is abuse. Anal penetration is abuse. It shouldn’t matter that Joe didn’t know the type of abuse, he knew enough to know it was abuse. End of story.
I agree. And I think we need to remember that the case in 1998 was reported to the police, if I’m remembering correctly. From the little we know, even they swept this under the rug.
So, the cover-up goes much deeper than just Penn State.
Playing devils advocate, I might be able to feel less contempt for someone that witnessed this child abuse and freaked the fuck out and ran out without helping.
Then he goes to dad and they go to Paterno and somewhere in the conversation, someone points out that previous reports of abuse have been sanctioned, more or less, by the very authorities that are supposed to deal with these issues. The Police and the DA himself.
And then maybe they do lose sleep over this and they stew about this and it eats away at them and maybe they finally decide to tell the authorities and then, the DA disappears. And they go back to not reporting this. Too far fetched?
I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m defending McQueary or Paterno. I’m not and I hope my previous posts are proof of that. I’m just trying (badly, no doubt) to make the point that this goes back farther and higher than we want to believe. So, I can see myself giving pause, if I knew my scenario were possible. But I don’t know.
This whole damn thing is just full of shame.
Except for the fact, Harborwolf, that some apparent lighter forms of abuse can be innocent. Putting a hand on a child, for instance, might be of innocent or sexual intent. A little wrestling or tickling or teasing might just be innocent horseplay with a kid you like, or it may be sexual in nature and a prelude to more serious things later on. Until something obviously crosses the line so that sexual intent becomes clear it can be difficult to determine whether these lighter forms of play are inappropriate. Even some things that can be erroneously interpreted as fondling can be innocent in fact. I know all this not only from my own locker room experiences when I was in school but also in interactions with the playmates of my daughter and two neices when they were growing up. They climbef all over me and we wrestled and manhandled each other mercilously, and while hands landed on legs or butts from time to time during this horeseplay, not a glimmer of sexual interest ever occurred.
So yes, there are varying degrees of behavior that may or may not constitute sexual abuse, and what may appear to be fondling to one person may just be horseplay that both of the other parties are comfortable with and having fun at.
And this is what I’ve been getting at with Paterno. He has testified that he was told Sandusky was spotted engaging in fondling or some type of sexual behavior involving a young boy. Assuming this is correct, Paterno, knowing as I do that what may appear to be fondling to one person who gets only a brief snapshot of the activity and not understanding the dynamics between the adult and child involved, may very well have felt that what McQueary saw might indeed have been nothing more than horseplay of some sort. So, not knowing enough about what really happened but knowing things might not have been what they seemed but moved by McQueary’s passion, felt there was enough ground to report the matter to his superiors to get to the bottom of. Then, upon hearing nothing more of it, he simply decided that whatever behavior was going on could not have been determined to have been inappropriate amd thus no reason for furthet action.
P.S.-Thanks Robot Arm, Harborwolf, lorene and SpazCat for trying to tone down the insulting rhetoric. Talk like that not only accomplishes nothing but creates a barrier to productive discussion. Hopefully your words will raise the level of discussion in this thread.
Wow, I thought it was “only” an adult guy doing anal sex on a ten year old boy, didnt know there was also some horseplay. That’s gross.
Can you cite another honest services theft case on similar facts? Obviously there won’t likely be another pedophile rapist coach case, but generally where a cause of action was sustained based on a fiduciary duty not to corrupt or sully a reputation for veracity and uprightness, where the underlying conduct has such a weak nexus to finance?