This is all Monday Morning Quarterbacking (excuse the pun). In your mind, yes you go directly to the police, you don’t even bother telling the AD. Especially after the fact when you know it really did happen.
But in real life, that’s not how it works. You go to authority. When authority says don’t worry about it, a lot more people listen than you’d like to admit. I bet a very large amount of people burning them at the stake would have looked the other way as well if they were in that position.
The more I think about how it went down the more I think about the effect deferring to authority has on other people. Kind of like the old psychology labs where they had a doctor instruct subjects to give the person in the other room harsher than normal shocks. Most people would go along with it even when they knew it was wrong, just because the authority figure said to do it.
I think the situation was so big and had such large consequences that I can easily see why everyone did what they did. I think we’re dealing with a very uncomfortable part of human nature that nobody wants to admit.
I’m going to go on a limb and say what I believe to be the truth, despite how bad nobody here or anywhere else wants to hear it: YES, THEY DID THE WRONG THING. BUT A VERY LARGE PERCENTAGE OF PEOPLE WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME EXACT THING IF THEY WERE IN THEIR POSITION.
It hurts. But welcome to planet earth. Authority rules. This is an extreme example of what it could do to otherwise good people.
It turns out that much of the story surrounding the Kitty Genovese story is a complete myth and that she didn’t have dozens of neighbors who knew what was going on but ignored it.
And when people do the wrong thing, either legally or morally, they suffer the consequences of those wrong decisions. Just because it’s a human failing to make mistakes doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t suffer due to those mistakes.
Maybe Paterno “just” made a mistake, a human failing of not knowing what to do next with the ongoing years-long information that Sandusky was more than likely raping children in the Penn State athletic facilities. That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of that terrible, terrible mistake, either legally, morally, or socially.
Absolutely true. But I do believe the knowledge of human nature should be brought into this debate before labeling everybody else involved as scum.
It seems the angry mob decided to turn it’s rage more towards Paterno and company, rather than the actual abuser. That’s an interesting story itself. I think everybody needs to take a deep breath and relax despite the nature of the crimes. We all need to put this in perspective.
Complete myth? Read it again. And the 2nd link while your at it. Diffusion of responsibility is much more pertinent to this situation than Kitty Genovese, I was using her more as a well known, sort of related example.
He’s right. Diffusion of responsibility may be a real phenomenon, but the Kitty Genovese murder is a lousy example because few people had any idea what was really going on. It might be true that Paterno and some others thought they had done everything they needed to do by reporting the crime to their nominal superiors, but that doesn’t mean everybody would do the same. It means if you’re an idiot with a poor sense of priorities, you might make the same mistakes- and if so, you also deserve to go to prison or be sued by the people who suffer because of your lack of attentiveness.
There is a simple, obvious and boring answer to your “interesting story”: we aren’t bothering to express our contempt for the rapist because nobody’s trying to defend him. Nobody’s trying to pretend that Sandusky is a victim, or claim that raping children is what anybody would have done, in his position.
There are a SIGNIFICANT number of people on this message board who have advanced “knowledge of human nature.” Don’t believe that the reactions with which you disagree are a result of people have less “knowledge of human nature” than you.
As others have said, there’s plenty of anger to go around here. If you’ll read other threads on this situation, you’ll note that the vast majority of people at some point will comment that McQueary, Sandusky, Curley, Schultz, Spanier, and a whole host of other people are also the targets of people’s contempt and anger.
We ARE putting it into perspective - the perspective that recognizes that a well-respected, incredibly powerful public figure who was given information by someone he respected that someone ELSE he respected had been seen anally raping a 10-year-old. That powerful public figure obeyed the letter of the law, but failed to intervene in any other morally or ethically meaningful way.
Agreed. The fact that Sandusky left that locker room under his own power is a testament to just how much of a coward McQuery is. This was not a lover’s spat that you might be weary of getting involved with. This was a grown man sodomizing a little boy.
At the very least, he should have called the police immediately. What’s there to talk about with his father or with Paterno?
It would be one thing witnessing a revered coach banging an employee or a football player on school grounds. He could have claimed that there were both adults so it would be reasonable to assume that was a consensual thing going on, even if it would be unprofessional, etc, etc.
But a 10 year old kid?
He considered his future PSU paycheck and the social status associated with it, more important than the welfare of a child.
That’s disgusting, and I bet that’s not the only “well respected” college sports franchise that is guilty for ignoring basic human decency in order to collect their millions of $$.
The guy is garbage and not only should be fired but thrown in jail as well, just like I say the current pope should be. Both are poor excuses for human beings!
However, I think it had less to do with $$$ at that moment and more to do with the magnitude of the situation. Honestly, that’s a HEAVY situation to walk in on. That was a BIG PRESSURE moment, bigger than many people ever experience in their life. And he cracked. Dropped the ball.
When a car is about to hit you some people freeze and some people get out of the way. He froze. It sucks. It’s why we love heroes.
As much as I like to sit here and type all tough on my laptop about how I would beat the rapist up and called the police and saved the boy, there’s no telling how I would react in that moment. I like to think I would have at least called the police, but sometimes we do strange things when the pressure is on.
This is a really crappy situation no matter how you look at it. If his assistant coach wasn’t a child rapist, Paterno would’ve retired and died a legend. Instead he was thrust into situation which would expose his shortcomings as a man, at such an advanced age. Life sucks sometimes. And nobody deserves to be put on the spot like everybody involved has been. But that’s life.
It is sad. It’s sad that Paterno valued his paycheck, the AD, the head of campus police, those involved with the charity who suspected Sandusky, the coach who walked in on Sandusky “wrestling” with victim 1 late at night in a high school, etc.
This isn’t a one or two or three man crime. I smell a trend. A trend that tells me a lot more people let it go than just Mcqueary and Paterno. A lot of people looked the other way.
I’m not defending these people. I don’t know what I’m doing. But my gut is telling me that they reacted like millions of people would have. I think the way they reacted was a lot more “normal” than people want to believe.
The conscious, well thought out long term reaction in tolerating and accepting an abuser for such a long time after witnessing the abuse is quite another.
McQ and his father are the poster boys of sports worship… anything goes as long as they get the paycheck and can brag that the son has a job with an esteemed football franchise.
Can you see it? His father had to be so proud for the son that had a coaching job with PSU! What an accomplishment that was!
I disagree with this opinion completely. You have no evidence for this and your filling in the holes the way you want to.
How do you let something like this slide for 10 years? By having the pressure of Paterno, your staff, the football team, the tradition of the team, the university, the administration, fear of nobody believing you, and questioning yourself every night before you go to sleep whether or not you should tell the police. You let it slide for a month, then 6 months, then a year and suddenly it’s easier to just let it go away rather than bringing it all back.
Come on. Sports worship with his father? You can try to label him as some “other” person, some sub-human who is not like you and I, kind of like how we like to label killers as “evil”. But the truth is you and I are just as capable of acting the same way.
I have never walked in on someone abusing a child and hope I never do. And you may be right that none of us know how we might have reacted, but here’s the thing.
I believe I do know what I’d have done after the fact, because I know what I have done when I’ve made a mistake far less harmful than the ones we’re talking about here. I apologized. I owned up. I tried to make amends. I lost sleep over yelling at my step son when I caught him stealing quarters from our coin jar. I apologized to him for not handling that better and sought his forgiveness.
So, with respect, you may be right. Maybe I would have put my position and my paycheck ahead of the welfare of the boy I saw being abused. Maybe I would have had no problem sleeping at night every time I saw Sandusky being interviewed about his good selfless deeds at the second mile. Maybe I would have greeted him with a wave and a smile every time I saw him at the PSU Facility. But I just don’t really think I could. I sincerely hope I never have to learn that I could behave with such indifference. And dare I say, cowardice.