The difference is these folks in cow towns are coming to grips with their local bully-boys. No sign of that in Europe and the coasts.
But why wouldn’t he think they were lying when 4 different entities (Dispatch, ESPN, Syracuse PD and Syracuse University) previously investigated the situation and found no evidence of any wrongdoing?
As soon as some legit evidence came to light, he changed his tune.
What would you have done different? You need to take his ‘liar’ comments in the context of everything that happened up till that point. You can’t blame him for being a very loyal friend - we would all do good to have a friend like that.
Congressman Jim Moran doesn’t live in flyover country, nor does he represent it. He very likely committed simple (nonsexual) assault against an 8-year-old boy a few years ago. A complaint was filed, and assault charges and complaints are pretty common in Moran’s past.
This didn’t prevent his reelection at that time or since.
So spare me the talk about flyover country. This kind of crap happens everywhere. And the Europeans have little to get arrogant about in this regard - just google the name “Berlusconi” if you want a few hours of interesting reading.
Bunga-bunga.
I don’t think upstate New York is generally considered flyover country. Anyway Syracuse did the right thing by firing Fine, but that story is becoming weirder and weirder. The recordings of Fine’s wife (assuming they’re legit) are extremely incriminating. On the other hand nobody knows why Davis didn’t turn those over during the previous inquiries, and it’s also worth noting that Davis himself had an affair with Laurie Fine, although I think that was long before the phone call. I think it was contemporaneous with the alleged abuse. Meanwhile, as you can see in the link, the new accuser is being called a liar by his own father.
Boeheim was right to apologize for what he said earlier, by the way. I’m not sure he or the school or local police did anything wrong before, so in that respect this seems to be very different from Penn State.
Because the lack of evidence is not equivalent to lying. Just like you need evidence of wrongdoing before you accuse someone of committing a crime, you need evidence of poor credibility before you accuse someone of lying.
This is a concept that people, even seemingly intelligent ones, have such a hard time understanding.
Lang stated in 2002-2005 that he was not touched by Fine. In 2011 he said he was touched. At some point he was lying.
Davis said Boeheim saw him in a hotel room. Boeheim denies this and now Davis backed off that point, so he did lie about that one incident (or so it seems at this point).
If these are true, it’s still not enough basis to accuse these men of making false allegations, which is the charge hurled by Boeheim. I can think of any number of reasons why a guy would initially lie about not being victimized, (shame, guilt, immaturity, fear), but then later change his story.
That said, I’m not saying Boeheim did anything wrong by not firing the guy years ago. Just that he was wrong to pronounce the accusers as being liars without the benefit of evidence. His knee-jerk reaction was illegitimate.
I keep wanting to write Jerry Sandusky as Jerry Sarkozy. I wonder why.
I agree with you here. Boeheim would have been better served to leave out the lying part in his statements defending Fine. Still, to fire him over that seems to be going too far, IMO.
I don’t think anyone (even me) is saying Boeheim needs to leave, based on the facts we know so far (i.e., no evidence Boeheim was aware contemporaneously of the alleged acts). I think the consensus is he was a bit of an ass for the “liar” comment. I don’t know whether “sensitivity training” is anything other than hooey, but I trust Boeheim will be less crassly careless going forward.
Updated thought on this mess:
The PSU scandal and the Syracuse scandal are very different other than the fact that as they develop they are getting weirder by the minute.
As for Syracuse, I can’t cry for Boeheim’s scalp at this point. I don’t particularly like the guy but so what? At Syracuse, at least at this point there are no eyewitnesses unless it was Fine’s wife. The recorded phone call looks like a smoking gun. That doesn’t implicate Boeheim at this point. OTOH, Paterno was informed by an eyewitness (McQueery).
As for PSU, I suggested in an earlier post that the Feds may get involved. Deadspin reports that they have:
This could get beyond ugly depending on how far they want to take it. Another person, with questionable veracity, has claimed to be a victim that crossed state lines. Send it to the FBI. They love high profile convictions.
Paterno, Sandusky and Penn State’s lawyer were reputed to have been out shopping for Rolls Royce’s, Bentley’s and Maybach’s on Black Friday. (Just kidding.)
Yeesh - the Fine story is just sixteen different ways to Sunday level of crazy. I need someone to draw me a diagram - keeping the events/people/timeline straight is driving me crazy.
I actually doubt they’ll ever get a conviction on this. Too much of a muddled mess with conflicting testimony, and so much time has passed. And when one of the accusers’ own father says the accusation is ‘100% false’ and that his son needed help and is a ‘master manipulator’, one kinda has to wonder how eager the DA will be to put the accuser on the stand…
Here’s **Deadspin’s ** timeline summary.
Nobody here, no. A few people who advocate on behalf of children have said he should quit, but he’s not going anywhere based on just those comments.
Thanks. Helpful, in the sense of ‘fog lights help me see the fog a lot better’ helpful.
Let’s see: We have one accuser who’s accused of being a child molester himself. His father says the accuser is lying. The accuser says his dad abused -him- as a child.
Another one of the accusers apparently had a sexual relationship with the suspect’s wife.
And the third accuser is related to another one of the accusers.
There’s a tape recording that seems to suggest the suspect’s wife knew what was going on, but it’s been edited so it will probably never be heard in court.
I recall one of the first quotes I saw on ESPN about the Fine story when it broke: ‘this is an adult relationship gone sour’. Which, I guess, would explain why the alleged abuse lasted until the ‘kids’ were in their late 20s or early 30s.
That last part never made sense to me - who lets himself get sexually abused by someone he has no reason to be around if he doesn’t want to? Fine wasn’t a dad/husband/co-worker. It turns out that Davis apparently got money from Fine (and there was a problem about him not paying it back?). David apparently had an affair with Fine’s wife. I mean, this just gets weirder and weirder the more you read.
If they tried to make a TV show about this, the TV execs would reject the plot as ‘overly in-the-gutter and unbelievable’.
Sandusky’s lawyer needs to tell him to keep his mouth shut.
He was in the room again for the interview, but not accomplishing much. Sandusky’s story did not improve with time or amplification. And he still has a very, very difficult time just saying “I’m not sexually interested in little boys.” Bizarrely difficult. He explains away his Costas fumbles by saying that it would have been inaccurate to say he’s not interested in boys, because he is (but then his lawyer had to intervene to remind him to say (if he must say any form of “I like boys”) that he has to immediately claim/qualify it that it’s wholly nonsexual). He’s had three weeks to practice this. God knows it’s not like he has any other duties.
Well, what am I going on about. That’s the least of this freak’s problems, and he clearly occupies some sociopathic world where the sky is not the same color as the one we see . . . .
Really! WTF is this guy doing giving an interview under any circumstance. Meanwhile, his lawyer has floated out the notion of a guilty plea. In what weird place of consciousness can he, under his circumstance, think that he is going to improve his standing? Write your book in prison, you stupid fuck. Don’t implicate yourself before you go to trial.
Also, his lawyer should be disbarred for incompetence.
If there is an explanation for this bazaar behavior please explain it to us.