In case anybody has any remaining lingering doubts that SA is just a troll pure and simple, well, there ya go.
Would you drop it already. Jesus fucking Christ, I’ve explained myself multiple times and even posted with the correct information way back up on this page. I’ve also explained that one of those posts you’re harping on was an accident. So move the fuck on, already.
I clearly said he could have been mistaken about what he thought he saw.
Thanks, Nancy. We really don’t even need trials for these people, do we?
And he might not have been mistaken. Is Sandusky a conservative Republican running for the Senate or something? Otherwise, I’ll just assume that you’re drunk.
Right. However that is directly contradicted by the testimony given. He seems rather specific about what he saw. That’s a heck of a mistake to make.
I was referring to you. You’re making shit up. You’re expecting everyone else to take your devils advocate role seriously when you’re just making shit up. There is simply no reason to treat anything you’ve posted seriously. It has no basis in reality. It’s a fairy tale.
Keep pushing that Nancy Grace angle. You’d never be so judgemental.
That’s my default assumption about SA and a lot of other posters.
Not to be crude or anything, but I don’t think I’d soon forget seeing a naked 50+ year old guy buttfucking a 10-year-old. But this is just me.
OK, suppose you’re Joe Paterno, and McQueary has just reported this story to you. And you’re thinking, maybe McQueary didn’t really see Sandusky forcing anal sex on a naked 10 year old boy. Fine.
Then unless you are open to the idea that McQueary was making this story up out of whole cloth, what in the world do you think McQueary DID see, how in the world do you think this DIDN’T constitute child sexual abuse, and how in the world do you think this WASN’T something that had to be reported to the appropriate civil (non-university) authorities?
Also, Paterno thought enough of McQueary to promote him up through the ranks in later years. It isn’t as though he can point to the guy and say, “I don’t believe him to be credible”.
It’s really irrelevant (at least in terms of what Penn State should have done) as to whether Sandusky was anally raping, fondling, just “dry thrusting” or whatever on some little kid. All of them are horrible, horrible things.
If I was the AD of a major university and someone came to me and said “I saw this dude who has a cushy retirement job and 24/7 access to all of our facilities naked in the shower with a 10 year old boy doing something with him” I honestly wouldn’t be scrutinizing whether maybe the guy who reported it was mistaken and instead of anal rape he was just seeing some 60+ year old naked dude “thrust without penetration” at a little kid, or just “wrestling” with him or whatever.
Sorry, but that’s the job of professionals to investigate and find out what happened, it’s not the role of the AD to do that. As a member of society someone in that chain of command (if not all of them) needed to report this to the people who are actually equipped to investigate and evaluate these things.
I don’t really care too much if Sandusky was just “innocent playing” naked with a 10 year old in the shower and these allegations destroyed his life, if I was in Paterno, or the AD, or Schultz’s shoes to me the fact that he put himself in such a situation with a child (which only a fucking idiot can claim is anything innocent regardless of whether anal rape occurred) mean he pretty much deserved any backlash from an investigation. Sorry but in weighing my decision worry about the minuscule chance that Sandusky had some legitimate reason to be naked in a university shower with a 10 year old and that the mere investigation would ruin him just wouldn’t be of much weight to me. Finally, Sandusky had already been investigated by the police in 1998 and it apparently brought no media attention whatsoever, so there is good historical evidence that if Sandusky was “really innocent” the likelihood of an investigation leaking out to the media would apparently have been small.
While Sandusky is obviously a sick, sick individual, the fact that he allowed himself to get caught and appears to have been blatant in so many ways suggests that he may have wanted to get caught. Perhaps a tiny sliver of morality deep down in his subconscious was screaming out: Please stop me!
If only one of these other dipshits actually did something after finding out, some of these kids could have been saved.
The only explanation I can come up with is that when covering up wrongdoings becomes institutionalized, it just becomes SOP no matter how horrible someone’s actions are. Maybe OSU covering up student athletes selling jerseys is not all that unrelated to PSU covering up child rape, as far apart as they may appear to be for those of us on the outside. I can’t help but compare this to the Catholic Church’s long time cover-up of priests abusing thousands of kids.
Oh, calm down. If you’ll recall, it was Martin Hydeand Boyo Jim who plausibly suggested that previous anal sex encounters could explain why the boy wasn’t crying out in pain. The phrase I used was just in an effort to be a little more adult than to say “Yeah, you’re right! He might have been banging the shit out of that kid for years!”
It’s becoming easier and easier for me to see how witch hunts, mob justice and lynchings have occurred in this country’s past. Calm down and let the facts play out in court. Hysteria may be friend but our system of justice requires facts and deliberation. You and a few of the other posters to this thread might want to take a lesson from that.
Only on the Straight Dope would fighting speculative assumptions and hysteria be considered a Republican trait. But if so, I’ll happily claim it.
The fact is that nobody here knows exactly what Paterno was told, and they don’t know how he interpreted what he was told. Thus they’re in no position to pass judgement on what he should have known or what he should have done. I’m content to let the facts come out as the investigation proceeds before I’m willing to condemn a man whose whole life has been one of exemplary honesty and integrity.
Nor would I.
I would, however, be careful about taking as gospel an accusation that just doesn’t make sense for a number of reasons. Why would the kid not be crying out? I seriously doubt Paterno considered the possiblity that the abuse had already been going on for some time. And why would Sandusky be raping a kid in the shower where he could be caught in the the first place? Etc., etc., etc. From his perspective as a major university football coach in 1999, mired in a macho, hetero atmosphere and where there would be so much for Sandusky to lose, there is just too much about this allegation that just doesn’t add up. Under those circumstances I would think that what a reasonable and responsible person would do is turn the matter over to people who are charged with investigating allegations of criminal behavior and let them decide how to proceed. And that’s just what Paterno did, didn’t he?
I don’t believe I’ve said anything to indicate that what McQueary saw didn’t constitute some form of child abuse, or at least attempted child abuse. What I said was that it might not have been penetrative anal sex. This is not a distinction without a difference. Plus, frankly, it’s not outside the realm of possiblity that Paterno might have thought that McQueary had it in for Sandusky and was indeed lying for some reason. I’m sure that coaches and assistants get crosswise with each other all the time, and Paterno would have had to give that possibilty at least some consideration.
So, in the end what Paterno did was what anyone in his position and with no more firsthand knowledge than he had should have done, and that is report it to his superiors to be investigated. There is no way at this stage of the game that I’m willing to regard Paterno as a villain in this situation. It may turn out that he is, but for now I’d say the way he has always lived his life suggests that any villainy on his part be proven rather than presumed.
No, he didn’t. Strictly speaking, he did what the law requires. The law does not expect him, or any other university officials, to investigate claims like this. They expect university officials to report them so they may be properly investigated.
The outrage is about the failure up and down the line of University staff, Paterno among them. Personally, I think McCreary bears considerably more responsibility than anyone else. He failed to intervene, he failed to call 911, and even though he reported it to his boss, he failed to follow up when it was clear they had buried the report.
I’ve thought all of those same things. At least the Catholic priests took the kids to the rectory or on camping trips. Sandusky had to have been something like a serial killer that leaves clues in an attempt to say, “catch me so I won’t continue.” As you pointed out, that’s where the malfeasance of the PSU Athletic Dept. plays into the whole sordid mess. They could have stopped it but didn’t for whatever reason they saw fit to employ at the time. Obviously, they were more concerned about their aura, legacy and reputation than they were about the safety of children being abused by one of their own.
It’s my understanding that Paterno did report it to the people who are actually equipped to investigate and evaluate such claims. What I’m attempting to explain is why Paterno didn’t instantly jump up and go storming off to make a citizen’s arrest of Sandusky and perhaps shoot him on the spot, which is what some of this thread’s posters seem to feel he should have done, and that the fact he didn’t makes him just as bad as Sandusky.
Seriously, reason has left the building in this thread. If it somehow makes you people feel all warm and fuzzy inside to throw Joe Paterno, Penn State and everyone associated with it under the bus, even after years of support, and consider them as evil as Sandusky himself - which some of you have claimed - then knock yourselves out. But trust me, there’s not a hair’s breadth of difference between the way you’re behaving and the way Nancy Grace does on her show, and that’s not a good thing.
No, people are angry because Paterno must have known there was no followup investigation to the allegations, and did nothing more than the bare minimum the law required, knowing that his superiors at the university didn’t even do that much.
Do you not see what you’re doing here? First of all you claim that Paterno did not have to consider the possibility that McQueary had it in for Sandusky. Upon what do you base that claim? It seems to me that he would have to consider all reasonable possibilities in evaluating McQueary’s claim, and he has most certainly seen other instances where one coach or assistant has lied about another. To ignore that possiblity would have been irresponsible.
Secondly, on the one hand you acknowledge that the law required Paterno to report the allegation, which he did, so that the proper authorities could investigate the allegation. And then on the other hand you’re excoriating him for not taking the law into his own hands and taking action outside the purview of those same authorities even though he knows less about what happened and has less evidence than they do.
Like I said, reason has left the building.
As for me, I’m out. I’ve spent too much time on this as it is.
What people were those?
I base it on the fact that he has specific legal responsibilities to report, which he did in fact do. And he did nothing more, at least as far as we know now. To many people, that level of integrity and responsibility required more than the minimum. At minimum, he was also aware that his superiors were themselves violating the reporting requirements, and he did nothing about that either.
You’re the one who’s been talking about his sterling reputation for integrity. And apparently a whole lot of people, including many of the posters here, agreed with you. A reputation is not really a legal concept, except in the narrow sense of some civil lawsuits. It’s a social construct, and Paterno had built his over a long career. And now, he’s destroyed it, by ignoring a situation that allowed children to be harmed right there in his own premises.
It really doesn’t matter if you agree or not, as a reputation is more or less entirely a matter of opinion. This thread is mainly of people who are shocked by his failings, and deeply disappointed in them. And rather than telling us we’re a bunch of dumb shits, it would be preferable if you would just STFU and go away and leave people com commiserate in peace.
And I agree, you’ve spent WAY too much time here. Go get some rest.
It’s his understanding that the University Athletic Director has the authority to investigate and evaluate these sort of claims. I always thought they ran the athletic department and scheduled future games for the volleyball and soccer teams, but apparently where SA lives they investigate child rape claims. Here, we call the police.