<p>Although the grad student was 28 and not 22 or 23, as I had initially thought, he was still apparently at the beginning of his career. He was bothered enough to go to his dad and they did take steps to report it up the chain. My understanding is that only “mandated reporters” are required to inform the police, others are to tell their direct supervisors, which it seems the student did. The same situation applies in schools - teachers inform principals and they are supposed to call the police. The grad student is the least culpable person in this scenario but, I would bet, the one who is feeling the most guilt and remorse.</p>
<p>I, too, wonder why Paterno took no steps when he saw that Sandusky was still around, although it seemed as if they banned the young children from the campus so maybe nobody else ever saw anything again.</p>
<p>Regardless, it’s a horrible situation all around.</p>
<p>Paterno has demonstrated a ‘letter of the law but not much interest in it’ attitude before. When several of his players stormed a private home a few years ago and beat up and severely injured at least one innocent student, the student’s father went to Paterno, who punished by players by making them clean up the stadium. Fairly lame action and no real consequence for the perpetrators.</p>
<p>I’m completely disgusted after reading the grand jury report. </p>
<p>I’m also somewhat confused about the timeline. It seems that Sandusky was quietly removed from the potential succession, and the department, at some point. Was this withint the year after the grad student reported what he had observed to Paterno?</p>
<p>The main incident in question regarding the university administrators occurred in 2002. According to the Grand Jury report in 1998 the university’s police conducted an investigation into Sandusky after a victim’s parent complained of inappropriate behavior in the shower. </p>
<p>Ultimately the DA would decide against pursing charges and the case was dropped, even though the report states Sandusky admitted, in a conversation “eavesdropped” by a university detective, to showering naked with the child and stating that “I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness.” Also in a conversation monitored by the university detective the report states that “Victim 6’s mother tried to make Sandusky promise never to shower with a boy again, but he would not.” </p>
<p>The exact reasons for not pursuing the case are unclear. </p>
<p>The PA AG’s website also states that: “the 1998 report involving Sandusky and boys in the showers was reviewed by University Police and Child Protective Services, with the blessing of Wendell Courtney, who at the time served as University Counsel and was (and remains) counsel to The Second Mile.” </p>
<p>The Second Mile is the children’s charity that Sandusky founded and the primary source of Sandusky’s alleged victims. The Grand Jury did not charge the consul with any wrongdoing, but it’s yet another senior official that was allegedly well aware of the serious allegations against Sandusky. </p>
<p>Oddly, the DA that investigated the 1998 allegations would go missing in 2005 and hasn’t been seen since.</p>
<p>He was pronounced dead this past summer, but no trace of him was ever found. They found his car and his computer’s hard drive, damaged beyond the point of data recovery, at the bottom of the Susquehanna River.</p>
<p>There is no indication that the DA’s disappearance and the Sandusky case are in any way linked, but it certainly seems like there are a lot of strange skeletons in closets in Happy Valley.</p>
<p>“Although the grad student was 28 and not 22 or 23, as I had initially thought, he was still apparently at the beginning of his career. He was bothered enough to go to his dad and they did take steps to report it up the chain. My understanding is that only “mandated reporters” are required to inform the police, others are to tell their direct supervisors, which it seems the student did.”</p>
<p>This is bogus. If the 28-year-old man was an eye witness to the crime, he had a moral obligation to call the police, not merely report to his supervisors. And I am talking about the REAL police from the town, or state troopers, or the F.B.I. - not campus police.</p>
<p>I would like to believe that I, at age 28, would at least shout “Stop It!” Simply calling the police and waiting for them to arrive would be a cop out.</p>
<p>^ He should have stopped it. He should have notified the police. But, he did report it to Paterno. At least he did something. Paterno and others should also have reported it to the police. They did not.</p>
<p>It’s all well-in-good to expect that someone with a two-decade-long relationship with a friend should report him for a deed he didn’t witness based on the word of a graduate student he may just barely know. Perhaps he should have. I suspect I would have wanted to confront him first.</p>
<p>But the grad student had no such excuse. (And again, simply reporting it to the police is itself a cop out.)</p>
<p>Perhaps, but the legal obligation would fall first and foremost upon the graduate assistant (a teacher?) who didn’t do his job, or meet what I would consider to be his moral obligation. He simply attempted to pass the buck. </p>
<p>Did he “have suspicion” or think the graduate assistant nuts? At any rate, he DID report it.</p>
<p>The “grad student” is now being reported by the New York Times and other major news outlets as being a current assistant coach with the team. </p>
<p>I don’t fault him for handling the situation the way he did. This wasn’t just anyone he saw commiting horrific acts… Sandusky was a major pillar of the community at that time. He reported it directly to Paterno who in turn reported it up the chain. </p>
<p>The “grad student” was then asked to meet with the athletic director and another university executive that oversaw the unversity’s police force. It is these two officials that are now charged with the cover-up.</p>
<p>I do agree, however, that when nothing happened to Sandusky the “grad student” should have done more even if he wasn’t legally required to do anything more than report what he saw to his superiors.</p>
<p>This whole thing is rapidly turning into a ‘who knew what when’ situation. The university president also seems to be coming under increasing scrutiny–particularly following his downright puzzling statements yesterday. </p>
<p>According to reports he reviewed and signed off on the ‘punishement’ for Sandusky but yet he claims to not have been fully aware of the extent of the allegations against Sandusky.</p>
<p>Latest reports say that the university’s board held an emergency session Sunday night and that the president will be making an “important announcement” in the morning. If the board wants to regain the public and alumni’s trust I’d guess they found the nearest bus and threw those implicated in front of it.</p>
<p>If the two men charged are guilty, I hope they go to jail. But I agree with juniebug. What I simply can’t understand, even though I’m well aware that there’s no legal obligation to be a “Good Samaritan,” is how any human being could see what that graduate assistant apparently saw – the ongoing rape of a 10-year old child – and not try to stop it, unless he was afraid for his own life or physical safety if he intervened. Afraid for his position with the school? Not good enough. </p>
<p>There were people ready to condemn all of mainland Chinese culture when all those people failed to intervene to rescue that 2-year old from the street before she was run over. This failure was (to me) no different in kind, only in degree. Am I being hopelessly naive to think (or hope) that if 100 people had been in the same position as that young man, the vast majority would have tried to do something?</p>
<p>Also: who finds out that a middle-aged man is taking showers with young children and doesn’t do anything about it? What possible innocent interpretation is there, even if no touching had been involved? A 2-year old taking a shower with mommy or daddy is one thing. This is something else entirely.</p>
<p>Unless he had a camera with him, he could have been framed himself. It would be his word against Sandusky’s word. I think he did a right thing going to Pertano. He needed a powerful person getting involved in this. He couldn’t do it by himself.</p>
<p>Paterno took the weak route on reporting this…covered his a$$ by ‘reporting’ it to his supervisor,but that is pathetic as anyone knows that Joe doesn’t report to anybody…He IS Penn State…and like others have mentioned,why didn’t he ask why sandusky got off with a slap on the wrist by PSU? I think there will be more to this story as it moves foward,coverups,perhaps some ‘promotions’, maybe some payoffs??</p>
<p>I’ve nothing new to add; we live in State College and really, you can’t imagine the horror and shock and betrayal and revulsion citywide. Students are calling for Spanier’s head after his appalling statement of support for these criminals. Conventional wisdom today is that the grad assistant did what he was supposed to do, but is going to take the fall, as well might JoePa. </p>
<p>“Wait and see” is just how society makes itself feel better about running up against <em>this</em>:</p>
<p>We believe, as a group, that we would “know” a predator in our midst. We believe, as a group, that we would do the right thing, turn our friends in, recognize suspicious behavior. We believe there is suspicious behavior to recognize, when in all actuality, that is not usually the case. Child abuse takes place because adults turn away from what they see but their brain cannot accept. Child abuse takes place because we think a family is after money, or fame, or revenge. Child abuse takes place because we think someone is "a good person’ so it isn’t possible. So next time your church, your scout troop, your social services charity demands a background check for all its workers, thank God they are putting up a fence around those children and being vigilant even when its volunteers complain and are “offended”. (I used to work for a church: UMC churches have a program called Safe Sanctuaries which requires background checks and people are always offended. I would tell them they had to have a check, or I’d find other volunteers. No exceptions. One guy was so offended he left the church. And was arrested a year later for groping a teenage girl…)</p>