We already knew that the beloved head coach Joe Paterno was summarily fired, that the President of the University had to resign, and that a Senior Vice President and the Athletic Director still face criminal charges for failure to report the abuse.
But it's even worse than was publicly known before.
Freeh's team conducted 430 interviews and examined 3.5 million emails and other documents -- an investigation that was far more extensive, and covering a longer period of time, than the Grand Jury investigation that let to Sandusky's conviction on 45 criminal acts involving 10 boys over a 15 year period.
Tracking the email exchanges between the principal administrators (Paterno, the Athletic Director, the Senior VP, and the President) plus the head of campus police has been very revealing of the cover-up and their motives.
In addition to the cases that were part of the trial, Freeh's report says that several janitors at the gym had also observed Sandusky abusing boys -- but were afraid to report it for fear of losing their jobs. One of them, a Korean War veteran, recalled seeing Sandusky raping a boy and said it was the "most horrific" thing he had even seen.
After a mother reported her son's accusations:
IN 1998, SANDUSKY WAS 'DISCREETLY INTERVIEWED" BY THE CAMPUS POLICE AND CONFESSED, NOT ONLY TO THIS CRIME BUT TO HAVING DONE THE SAME WITH OTHER BOYS IN THE PAST.But it was the subject of much talk and emails among those four administrative officers -- about how to handle it. Their concern was about the effect on the athletic program and the university, not about the boys.
AND YET, EVEN THEN, NO ONE REPORTED IT TO THE LOCAL POLICE OR CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES -- AND NO ONE ELSE TALKED WITH SANDUSKY ABOUT IT.
Sandysky was allowed to retire the following year -- and to keep an office on campus and to continue using gym facilities, where he further abused boys he brought there from his Second Mile program.
There are unmistakable parallels here with the Catholic Church child abuse scandals:
(1) Both show a misplaced concern for the abusers and the reputation of the institution rather than for the children;
(2) Both institutions have their own internal "police" and seem to feel immune from ordinary laws;
(3) Both involve male-only domains that center on a fervent allegiance to a shared cause and institution that they feel must be preserved.
(4) Both involve worship at the altar of a god. With the Catholic Church, it is the Almighty God of Heaven; with Penn State, it is the Almighty God of Football. The gods come first, the men come second, and the children are the forgotten victims.
It's a bad combination.
Ralph
There's something in this report that I didn't grasp completely at first. Joe Paterno knew about the 1998 incident in which Sandusky was accused of abuse -- and confessed to it, as well as to having done it before.
ReplyDeleteSo when Assistant Coach McQueary reported to Paterno what he had seen Sandusky doing to a boy in the shower in 2001 -- it should have come as no surprise to Paterno. And still he helped cover it up and did not report Sandusky to the outside authorities.
That is extremely damning of those, including Paterno, who could and should have done something about it at the time.