<p>JHS - good job of laying out the legalities. The bottom line is that the public is holding these people to a higher standard -the standard of avoiding even the “appearance” of impropriety. That is the standard attorneys are held to. Is it the standard we should hold coaches, teachers and school administrators to?</p>
<p>Interesting::</p>
<p>About 50 minutes before it was about to begin, Penn State administrators canceled Joe Paterno’s weekly news conference in which he was expected to field questions about a sex abuse scandal involving a former assistant coach.</p>
<p>Paterno’s son Scott tells The Associated Press on Tuesday that the decision was made by President Graham Spanier’s office.</p>
<p>Scott Paterno says his father was disappointed and was prepared to take questions about the scandal as well as the upcoming game against Nebraska.</p>
<p>Rocked by an alleged child sex abuse scandal, Penn State issued a statement late Monday saying that Paterno will only answer questions about football Tuesday during his regularly scheduled press conference.</p>
<p>JHS, I don’t pretend to know a thing about all the legalities of this case. Right now, this is in the Court of Public Opinion --hence, the strong reactions. I can tell when something stinks.</p>
<p>So Joe Paterno kept up a relationship with a man he knew was raping children. Imagine you found out your neighbor knew the high school coach was raping children in the showers at your high school and this neighbor stayed friends with the rapist and helped him get access to children and the high school. Would you stay friends with that person? There is no moral defense for Paterno. If I had a picture of him in my office and was big PSU football booster, I’d burn the picture. Raping children? How can anyone let that go? Wouldn’t you wring the person’s neck? Wouldn’t you go after the neighbor who let that go on with a shovel?</p>
<p>Bottom line is that paterno knew this guy was a monster and didn’t do anything about it. </p>
<p>Legally, may be he’s innocent, but the guy is indeed scum. He let this guy destroy young lives.
…and the GA who saw him in the shower…what a coward. How does anyone not stop it. This guy was an ex player…and he stays on at Penn State and collects his paycheck…disgusting.</p>
<p>Blow it up…everyone should be fired…</p>
<p>there is quite a bit about this investigation now airing on ESPN’s Outside The Lines for anyone who is near a tv.</p>
<p>I agree with JHS that at the press conference I saw yesterday I thought the prosecutor was trying his case in front of the camera.</p>
<p>Joe Paterno doesn’t just have to answer to the legal system, he has to answer to the board or trustees. They can hold him accountable for not doing enough given what he knew, which is what I think they will do.</p>
<p>Penn State should be careful about how it proceeds here.</p>
<p>Contrary to my normal admonitions about the world needing more accountants, in this case, they need a very good outside counsel who can give them some thoughtful advice. Just as in the Duke Lacrosse case, (where I believe the administration panicked because of the possibility of a lawsuit against the university), I don’t think moving quickly here is going to help the university. It could well hurt them.</p>
<p>Forget the legalities.</p>
<p>Someone witnessed a 10 year old being raped by a 50 year old man in the college gym showers and just walked away. WHAT???!!!</p>
<p>His superiors were notified and were not outraged, disgusted and moved to immediate action. WHAT!!!???</p>
<p>Everyone conveniently forgot about it and let it go another decade???!!!</p>
<p>How do these people live with themselves? There is not a shady area here, no moral dilemmas. Put yourself in these situations and ask yourself how you would act. HOW DO YOU WITNESS AN ASSAULT OF A CHILD AND NOT STOP IT, BY FORCE IF NECESSARY?</p>
<p>I am not reading all of the comments / stories / etc about this situation…it is just too disheartening.</p>
<p>dadx: I think it safe to say Paterno will have the best counsel money can buy. He has a reputation to burnish and this kind of thing does’t look good does it?</p>
<p>JHS: appreciate your knowledge and professionalism; however, the young victim in the shower is known in grand jury documents as “Victim 6.” There were most certainly other children raped at the hands of Mr. Sandusky so attempts to minimize are not going to fly.</p>
<p>From the grand jury report:</p>
<p>“The mother of Victim 6 confronted Sandusky about showering with her son, the effect it had had on her son, whether Sandusky had sexual feelings when he hugged her naked son in the shower, and where Victim 6′s buttocks were when Sandusky hugged him in the shower. Sandusky said he had showered with other boys and Victim 6′s mother tried to make him promise never to shower with a boy again but he would not.”</p>
<p>Why do we think Paterno knew he was a monster? The grand jury seems to have accepted that Paterno didn’t know that.</p>
<p>Why do we think Paterno kept up a relationship with Sandusky? There’s no evidence he had any relationship with Sandusky after he fired Sandusky two years before this incident. Of course, Paterno could have barred Sandusky from the football locker rooms . . . and it’s not clear to me he didn’t. Of the 8 victims in the grand jury report, this one was the last one who visited Penn State with Paterno.</p>
<p>I don’t want to defend Joe Pa here too much, since I think he gets waaaaaay too much extra credit most of the time. But the image being presented in the posts here – that Paterno knew his friend was raping little boys, and he passed the buck and covered it up – isn’t borne out by anything we actually know. I suspect Joe Pa felt conflicted towards this one-time successor whom he had fired some years back, wanted nothing to do with him, and delegated to some minions the task of dealing with his drama (which as far as Paterno knew then was nowhere near as heinous as we know now).</p>
<p>Snowdog: The shower rape victim was Victim 2. No one has identified Victim 2, and it’s clear they don’t know who it is. The only person who says there was a rape in the shower is McQueary, and the only person who says he reported it as such is McQueary. Everyone else, including Paterno, says at the time McQueary didn’t make clear what he now says he saw. Victim 6 was, I believe, the 1998 victim who was touched inappropriately in the showers by Sandusky, and whose case was investigated by the university police (and that probably contributed to Sandusky’s firing a few months later). That incident was certainly troubling, but it was nothing like what McQueary now says he saw four years later. It’s not clear to me how much anyone other than Paterno knew about the 1998 case in 2002.</p>
<p>I haven’t read one post saying Paterno ‘knew his friend was raping little boys’… What is being said is it was obvious Sandusky , was at the very least ,spending way too much time with young boys,even AFTER it was known he was allegedly fondling boys…And Paterno either was aware of this(likely) or should have been aware of this…either way, he dropped the proverbial ball on this</p>
<p>Right. I’m not saying I know Paterno knew this guy was a monster. I’m only saying Paterno had enough suspicion to have done more than he did. And I’ve also said that I think the GA likely was more graphic than Paterno is admitting.</p>
<p>[Renaissance</a> Fund dinner honoring Spaniers postponed due to scandal | Penn State | CentreDaily.com](<a href=“http://www.centredaily.com/2011/11/08/2978837/renaissance-fund-dinner-honoring.html]Renaissance”>http://www.centredaily.com/2011/11/08/2978837/renaissance-fund-dinner-honoring.html)</p>
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<p>Is this the timeline…?</p>
<p>1998 Sandusky investigated by University police for ‘fondling’ a child.
1999 Sandusky fired by Paterno probably because of 1998 incident.
2002 McQueary reports to Paterno about another Sandusky incident.
2002 Paterno notofies his ‘boss’.
2002 Police never informed about incident by admin.
2002-2011 Sandusky still welcome on campus.</p>
<p>Sorry, but if I heard 2 reports (one a first hand account) about someone fondling a child, I would label that person a monster. Paterno clearly had reason to believe that this person was a monster.</p>
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<p>My point is simple. You said that if they had gone to the police in 2002 it would have been a “minor embarrassment.” I strongly disagree. It would have been a huge firestorm in 2002, especially since there was a record of abuse allegations going back to 1998. All concerned with the football program and Sandusky’s charity would have been enveloped in the mess–as they are now. Now, of course, it is even worse, and it is their own fault. As I said, the fact that it would have been a huge deal then is still no excuse for not acting to curtail Sandusky’s behavior as soon as they became aware of it. (Not to mention seeing to it that his victims were cared for.)</p>
<p>Had trouble reading the accounts of this. Just too painful and sad.</p>
<p>We have a number of friends who are Penn State alumni and we feel badly for them. It is still a wonderful school, one that inspires ardent love from its graduates.</p>
<p>I have read nothing that says Joe Paterno was aware of the 1998 investigation by the university police which was dismissed by the Center County D.A. after the investigation.</p>
<p>Could someone show me where it states this as fact not conjecture?</p>
<p>Schultz stated he knew about the investigation in 1998 but I am not sure who else stated they knew about it.</p>
<p>JHS…parterno is Penn State…he knew darn well what was going on…why do you think sandusky left in 1999?.. Do you find it odd that paterno left sandusky’s retirement party after 5-10 minutes?</p>
<p>qdog: I was responding to posts ## 264, 265, and 269</p>
<p>youdon’t: I can think of several different possibilities: (1) At the time, McQueary didn’t actually think he had witnessed a rape, and so he didn’t present it to anyone that way, and he didn’t act like that’s what he saw. Only later did he decide that he had seen actual sex and told people about it. (2) McQueary was clear on what he saw, but too euphemistic in what he told Paterno, Curley, and Schultz, and they didn’t press him to be more explicit. In effect, McQueary admitted to the grand jury that was the case with Paterno, but he says he was more clear with the others. (3) McQueary was more clear with Paterno, too, but Paterno couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and so softened it in his mind. (4) McQueary is telling the truth now, and these people really are pondscum, including Paterno, except the AG calculated that if she went after Paterno she would lose the grand jury and have trouble proving that he really heard the bad stuff. </p>
<p>I’m not saying (4) is out of the question, but I think it’s rash and unfair to leap to that conclusion. I also think it is a little frightening for the AG to be making that accusation if she doesn’t have a crime she can prove. (I’m talking about the administrators. It looks like she can prove plenty of crimes against Sandusky; he is going to die in prison, and that’s fine with me.)</p>
<p>There’s this sense in many posts here that people have a general duty to investigate the conduct of other people they know and to bring them to justice if they suspect something wrong. That’s certainly the way the system is designed in North Korea, but it’s not how our system usually works.</p>
<p>geeps (and sax): I agree that Paterno is Penn State. I think the grand jury report makes clear that Paterno, and maybe Schultz (?, I can’t get it open any more) knew about the 1998 investigation. And if you read my posts you know I also believe that contributed to Sandusky’s “retirement” (that, and probably the fact that he brought a boy with him to the Alamo Bowl that year). In 1998, unlike 2002, Sandusky was effectively Paterno’s #2; it would be ridiculous to suggest that he wasn’t paying attention to the investigation. In 2002, Paterno probably felt he could say, “Hey, I already washed my hands of this guy; you deal with it.”</p>
<p>But the 1998 conduct and the 2002 conduct (as reported by McQueary and accepted by the grand jury) are miles apart. The worst thing he was accused of doing in the 1998 incident was picking the kid up and washing the shampoo out of his hair. The kid’s mom got her hackles up, and with good reason, but that’s a pretty far cry from engaging in anal sex (and with a younger child, too).</p>
<p>Now we know that there was a steady stream of incidents dating from at least the early 90s and extending to 2007, sometimes involving sex (although never full-blown anal sex) and sometimes just inappropriate touching, and that on at least one other occasion a janitor saw Sandusky fellating a boy in the showers. But no one has suggested that Paterno, Curley, Schultz, or anyone else knew about them. I guess I’m willing to entertain the possibility, at least, that if they had known then what we know now, they all would have acted differently.</p>