<p>dadx, he was required by law to report the incident to his supervisor, and that’s exactly what he did, and no more.</p>
<p>goingmyway, he’s not whitewashing, true. If he did try to whitewash now, he’d be in all kinds of trouble. He went on the record back when the event happened, making clear that the event was sexual in nature. If he had tried to change that story at the grand jury, or in the trial, he’d be facing perjury charges. I don’t give him a lot of credit for telling the truth; it’s clearly in his self-interest to do so.</p>
<p>All of McQueary’s actions are completely consistent with someone who’s trying to cover his butt. They are not consistent with someone who’s trying to help children or put a predator behind bars.</p>
<p>According to the grand jury indictment, McQueary saw anal intercourse, and reported to Paterno “what he had seen”. The story begins to change when Paterno reports upward (or downward, depending on how one looks at it.)</p>
<p>Exactly. It’s almost as if they are debating whether it was consensual or not. So much discussion and emphasis on whether penetration occurred, etc. As if the whole thing is okay if it hadn’t. </p>
<p>This is part of what makes me so angry. Again, there was no question in McQueary’s mind about what he saw an yet, he did the minimum and carried on. As if he could just wipe his hands of it because he had told Paterno. It disgusts me.</p>
<p>So how did it take between the time of McQueary’s report and the suspension of Sandusky’s “visiting privileges” at PSU? How long did Paterno allow him around? And if his privileges were suspended, there was a reason, right? Curley, Schmidt, and especially Paterno had major business dealings with Board members of Second Mile for years following the suspension of privileges. You mean they said nothing to anybody there? Had they agreed to a conspiracy of silence?</p>
<p>But this I place almost entirely on JoePa; that’s exactly the “discipline” he instilled in his players (and McQueary was a star pupil), in his assistant coaches (and McQueary was on the lowest rung of that ladder), and everyone associated with the Penn State football program. According to credible accounts, the rules were clear: loyal Penn State football people were to report infractions, up to and including felonies, internally. Under no circumstances were they to go to outside authorities. JoePa would handle it. People who violated those rules and went outside the system were rats, traitors.</p>
<p>McQueary played by those rules, and maybe you can argue that was a moral failure on his part, just as Germans who were complicit in the deaths of Jews and many others during the Nazi era don’t get off with the excuse that they were just following orders. But accounts I’ve seen say that after McQueary reported what he had seen to JoePa, JoePa told him (and I’m paraphrasing here, but I’m sure of the content), “You did the right thing to tell me” and “I’ll take care of it from here.” McQueary, perhaps naively, perhaps looking mainly to protect his own tenuous career doing what he loved most, elected to trust the Coach. Those were the “values” that were instilled in the Penn State football “family” by the old man himself.</p>
<p>So to my mind, JoePa is actually a much bigger culprit here than McQueary, a young, scared, insecure graduate assistant who did what he had been taught and what he had been told, and who was reassured by the major authority figure in his life that he had discharged his duty in an honorable fashion and that his duties ended there, and that justice would be done, the Penn State way. JoePa, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier all failed him, in what will certainly be the defining moment of his life. </p>
<p>This was a kid–he was what, 25 or 26 at the time, in his first entry-level job after his football career fizzled–who trusted in the system he had been taught by a legendary and much-revered football coach. And it failed him, as it failed probably dozens, or possibly hundreds of young kids who were exposed to Sandusky’s predatory advances.</p>
<p>It’s easy enough from an armchair and with the benefit of hindsight and a whole heck of a lot more context than McQueary had at the time to say, “No, he should have immediately believed his own eyes when he saw things he never imagined possible, and he should have gone and punched out the man who in his own recently past playing days was JoePa’s powerful #2 and heir apparent in the Penn State football hierarchy, and was still widely admired as a saintly pillar of the community devoted to saving troubled youth. He should have saved the kid and called the cops (not Penn State cops because in retrospect they might have been compromised), and when his mentor and hero told him he ‘did the right thing’ to report it internally and he didn’t need to worry because the powerful people who ran the institution–the most powerful being JoePa himself–would take care of it, he shouldn’t have believed or trusted them, he should have followed up and reported it to external authorities, even though that went against everything he had been taught as a Penn State football player and now as a vulnerable graduate assistant. Surely I would have had the clarity of vision and the moral backbone to do no less.”</p>
<p>To which I say, b.s. McQueary is not blameless here, but he is also a tragic victim of a system he didn’t create, but into which he bought as a loyal member of the Penn State football “family.” Except now he is vilified both by the loyal supporters of that system, and by its critics–by the critics for not going outside the system at the time of the events he witnessed, and by supporters of the system for honestly testifying under oath as to what he saw and did at the time those events occurred.</p>
<p>bclintonk: I agree–thank you for the post. To make McQueary the fall guy is wrong. It’s those above him with the Penn St. power that allowed Sandusky to continue molesting boys.
Their reputation as well as the reputation of their precious school held more value to them than the safety of these young boys. </p>
<p>In addition, I find it very hard to believe that Sandusky’s wife didn’t know what he was doing with these boys all of these years.</p>
<p>I may get flamed for this but here goes. BclintonK described what we refer to around here as " the cult of Penn State" and it is what turns some kids off from even applying there ( I have two in my own house). A friend coined the term when he returned from a tour where the tour guide ( pre-scandal) was gushing that she even got to see Joe Paterno like he was a demi-G-d or something and led the tour on a rah rah Penn State chant.
It dovetails with a mentality that a) Penn State can do no wrong and b) you should never do anything to ‘harm’ Penn State even if that means going to outside authorities to report wrongdoing. Not exactly the ethics that you want to instill and reinforce when you send you kid off to college.</p>
<p>As so many have alluded to, violations had been going on for many years–and anyone who tried to bring attention to them was immediately shot down–witness Vicky Triponey who said that she had never, ever seen so much secrecy at any other University, and was fired from her job–but unfortunately it had to take something so big and so vile so bring out the truth. I can’t help but feel as though the reason why so many insiders are angry at McQuerey is not that he didn’t stop the molestation when he witnessed it, but that he involved Paterno–it’s almost as if he was expected to fall on his sword and not utter the coaches name or involve him in any way.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania prosecutors may seek to use unaired portions of an NBC News interview with Jerry Sandusky*in November in which the former Penn State defensive coach said, “I didn’t go around seeking out every young person for sexual needs that I’ve helped.”</p>
<p>You made some valid points in your post, but this one gets to me every time I read it. He was NOT a kid! He was 28 years old for God’s sake.</p>
<p>Exactly how old does a person have to be these days to be considered an adult and held to the standards of an adult, to own their behavior as an adult, to take responsibility for their behavior as an adult?!</p>
<p>This guy was pushing 30. He may well have been indoctrinated, he may well have been drinking the blue koolaid, and he may have been intimidated by both Joe and S., but he was nevertheless a full fledged adult and had options available to him that he made a conscious choice to reject.</p>
<p>Dottie Sandusky had to know for YEARS what her husband was doing. Its strange that so many are quick to tar and feather McQ but give Dottie a pass.</p>
<p>Right. Bclintonk, you do make some very good points and I understad that point of view. But what of the years between the incident in the shower and the grand jury investigation. In that decade, did McQueary ever wonder how many other children Sandusky had raped? Kids that would not have been raped had someone, anyone, done the right thing to begin with? </p>
<p>During that decade, McQueary went from 28 years old to his late thirties and became a husband and father. A father.</p>
<p>Nrdsb4, I’m with you. When you observe the rape of a child in progress, you need to act right then. Even if he was too shocked to intervene physically, and too intimidated to call 911, there are ways a person could react immediately within the Penn State system…call the Penn State police right that minute, go straight to JoePa’s house right that minute…anything but waiting until the next day.</p>
<p>I have no trouble believing that McQueary would have been fired, and perhaps blackballed from a football career, had he called 911 the way he should have. But Penn State was not the mob; they were not going to have McQueary’s family rubbed out if he blew the whistle. So I don’t see any moral middle ground there. Losing your job versus stopping the rape of a child is not a close call.</p>
<p>He’s not the “fall guy” for anybody else – everyone involved in the coverup is 100% responsible for his/her own actions. That includes McQueary.</p>