I think the idea is not that it would be private to police and other law enforcement, just to the public at large. The idea being that this would encourage people to turn their friends in without having to worry that a false accusation would hurt their friends’ reputations.
I’m not sure why he disavowed it so quickly, unless you are assuming the police wouldn’t do anything unless the public pressured them to do so.
Never under estimate the power of the old boys’ network. I know someone that was fired from a contracting company who was banging a direct report and stealing money from the firm. His buddy at the company he was contracted at thought that was completely unfair so he hired him on knowing full well why he was fired.
He was fired two month later from that company for stealing.
Just what we need – the police ‘disappearing’ people.
He retired in 1999 because he was told - supposedly for reasons unrelated to all of this - that he was not going to become the head coach after Paterno. The athletic department and the school treated him quite generously and he never took another coaching job. I guess now we have a pretty good idea why: in addition to being set for life financially, he had everything he needed as a pedophile. He had unimpeachable PSU credentials and a local charity that provided him with a reliable pool of victims. He knew people in the area trusted him, the police weren’t too suspicious, and the school wasn’t going to move against him. What else could he want?
He didn’t have a job. They did, I think, take away some of his access to PSU facilities in 2001. I don’t think your proposal would have helped, and it still would have been a horrible thing to do.
I just want to understand clearly you’re trying to say. Firing Sandusky without comment would have been horrible because he would not be brought to justice and he could still continue assaulting victims. Is that what you mean?
No, they didn’t. It was in their “plan”, but they failed to follow through on it. He raped another boy in the same shower room six months after the one MacQueary reported.
They kept it a secret for so long because they wanted to protect Penn State’s reputation.
I just can’t get over the fact that nobody in the room- Paterno, Spanier, Curley, Shultz, nobody- played out the hypothetical:
"As bad as it might be for us the the University right now if this gets out, what do you think will happen if Sandusky keeps it up for the next fifteen years and continues molesting these kids, on campus, and it gets out that we knew about it at the outset and did nothing to stop it? It may be unlikely to happen, but in the risk/reward analysis, does it make any sense at all to sweep this under the rug now, considering the shitstorm that will land on University Park someday?
What we need to do now, right now, immediately, is proclaim loudly and publicly that we are cutting Sandusky loose, and why, and that we will do everything in our power to make sure this type of thing doesn’t happen again on University grounds, and distance ourselves from him and everything he has done so that we’re 1,000 miles away when the bomb goes off."
For the life of me I can’t understand why none of them thought it through. Stupid. Although it makes you wonder if Sandusky had something to leverage his position.
They did. The Freeh Group report includes this email in reference to the planned meeting with Sandusky after McQueary saw him rape a boy in the shower:
Spanier was saying that if they told Sandusky to stop his “inappropriate” actions and he did not listen, they would be liable later. Still, they didn’t tell the police or child protective services. Of course, Spanier was right. Sandusky didn’t stop abusing children, and Curley and Schultz are now being prosecuted for lying to a grand jury about what they knew and for not reporting the incident.
I have to say I’m curious as to why Spanier is NOT facing criminal charges (for the moment, at least). Even if Spanier didn’t testify, or he used vaguer term in his testimony so they couldn’t charge him with perjury, wouldn’t he too be considered a mandated reporter? It seems to me that Curley and Schultz could point to Spanier and say, “He’s our boss, it was HIS duty to report” – basically just what MacQueary and Paterno claimed.
I am not sure why he hasn’t been charged. And I’m pretty sure “duty to report” doesn’t mean you tell your boss. It means you tell someone equipped to handle the complaint, meaning the police or the child protective service agency.
The likeliest explanation IMO is that none of them thought Sandusky was really a hard core molestor. (Discussed at length in a Pit thread.)
I don’t think Curley & Schultz could point to Spanier. You don’t automatically get to point to your boss. You get to point to whoever the employer has designated as the guy who deals with such things. For a typical employee that would indeed be their supervisor. But once you get to the level of C&S, I don’t think that holds anymore. I don’t think Spanier was designated as the guy that C&S were supposed to report these types of things to. To the contrary, it was their job and not his to deal with these types of issues.
And that might get Spanier off the hook as well. Once C&S knew about it, I don’t know if Spanier had an independent duty to report it, since the guys who were supposed to deal with these types of issues had the information.
Of course, this is could be wrong etc.
I don’t really think it is either, but that’s what Paterno and McQueary both said and they didn’t get charged. Perhaps only “supervisory personnel” need to report, which would get McQueary off the hook, but certainly not Paterno.
So if Paterno could walk by pointing up at Shultz and others above Paterno, why can’t Schultz and his gang walk by pointing at the guy over them?
I’m not sure. It could have something to do with their job status- but it’s also true that the failure to report charges are secondary to the perjury charges. If Paterno were still alive, he probably would be charged with perjury based on what Freeh found.
I’m not sure about that, either. I may be wrong, but the evidence against Parterno may be hearsay. It’s the other people who referred speaking with Joe in their 1998 emails, but nothing directly from Joe. I wonder if he even used email. I don’t recall seeing a reference to any email he sent to anyone in the whole 14 year time frame.
Also, I have no doubt that had Curley and Shultz testified truthfully about their rationale for not reporting, they still would have been charged with not reporting even if they couldn’t be charged with perjury. The two charges are entirely independent of one another AFAIK.