<p>You are Jerry Sandusky. You run the Second Mile show pretty much out of your own hip pocket.</p>
<p>YOU know in your own mind you are running the organization as a front for your own activities as a serial sexual predator.</p>
<p>Once you have made the decision to do that, why the holy flaming<em>leaping lizards would you hesitate about breaking piddling NCAA rules or Paterno’s legacy?</em></p>
<p>“Please explain. Are you saying Sandusky had something on Paterno from the 1970s??? If so, what was it, and how do you know this?”</p>
<p>Went over that 2,000 posts ago.</p>
<p>Second Mile wasn’t just Jerry Sandusky’s “hip pocket” operation, and the decision of Penn State leaders to cover for Sandusky wasn’t just to protect Penn State football. Legally Second Mile and Penn State were separate entities, but Second Mile was a Penn State operation through and through, and people like Paterno and Spanier thought they needed Second Mile. The relationship was symbiotic. Second Mile couldn’t have existed without Penn State, but Penn State also benefited enormously from Second Mile as a hard-to-resist charity for troubled kids that drew in wealthy and powerful donors from all over the state and brought them into, or kept them in, the Penn State orbit. Many Second Mile donors and board members became Penn State donors. Others were already Penn State donors, but Sandusky’s golf outings and fundraisers provided easy opportunities for Paterno and other Penn State bigwigs to rub shoulders with wealthy and powerful Pennsylvanians, all in a spirit of charity and good works. The opportunities created by Second Mile maintained and deepened those relationships, mostly for the benefit of Penn State, but in some cases it also led to lucrative business and investment opportunities for Paterno and other PSU bigwigs.</p>
<p>Consider:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sandusky founded Second Mile in 1977, the same year he was appointed Penn State defensive coordinator, effectively Paterno’s second-in-command</li>
<li>Paterno and four of his highest-profile former players served on Second Mile’s Honorary Board, along with numerous other prominent Penn State alums and several Penn State trustees</li>
<li> Current and former Penn State football players, coaches, and various other Penn State bigwigs were featured attractions as participants in Second Mile golf tournaments (held annually on Penn State’s golf course) and other Second Mile fundraisers, and a big part of the “work” Second Mile did on behalf of disadvantaged youth was in fact little more than p.r. for Penn State and its football program</li>
<li>For many years Penn State and Second Mile shared the same lawyer, Wendell Courtney, a private practitioner in State College who essentially served as Penn State’s general counsel while also providing both pro bono and paid legal services to Second Mile up until 2010, when Penn State hired its first in-house general counsel. About the same time, Courtney slid over to become, in effect if not in name, Second Mile’s general counsel</li>
<li>Courtney’s wife Linette served for many years as the head of Penn State’s development office (=chief fundraiser), while serving simultaneously on the Board of Directors (not the Honorary Board, the real Board) of Second Mile where of course she had access to all the wealthy and powerful people on both the actual Board and the Honorary Board of Second Mile
*The two institutions had interlocking directorates. Several current and former Penn State Trustees served on either the Board of Directors or the Honorary Board of Second Mile. Bob Poole, head of one of the largest construction companies in Pennsylvania, simultaneously served as Chairman of the Leadership Gifts Committee for Penn State’s capital campaign, on the Board of Visitors for Penn State’s business school, Chairman (for 17 years) of the Board of Directors of Second Mile, major donor to both institutions, recipient of tens of millions in construction contracts from Penn State (and additional millions from Second Mile), and co-investor with Joe Paterno and others in a $125 million retirement village project built on Penn State-owned land overlooking Beaver Stadium where Penn State plays football. That project, said have been Spanier’s brainchild, ultimately failed.</li>
</ul>
<p>One project that hasn’t failed is the ongoing development of Penn State’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, which houses Penn State’s medical school in Hershey, PA, with ongoing support from the $7.5 billion Hershey Trust, Hershey Foods (in which the Trust owns a controlling interest), the M.S. Hershey Foundation, and other major donors. The (now retired) CEO of Hershey Foods was a longtime Honorary Board member at Second Mile, and various Hershey entities were also ongoing financial supporters of Second Mile.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/penn_state_milton_s_hershey_me_7.html[/url]”>Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center continues to move forward in wake of Jerry Sandusky scandal - pennlive.com;
<p>The Hershey organizations’ support for Penn State has been controversial. The Hershey Trust, set up to manage the estate of chocolate magnate Milton S. Hershey (including Hershey Foods and other for-profit Hershey businesses), is directed by Hershey’s will to devote its resources solely to support the Milton S. Hershey School, a boarding school for “disadvantaged youth” in central Pennsylvania. In a chilling parallel to the Second Mile scandal, the Hershey School was rocked by a pedophile scandal in 2011 with the criminal conviction of the son of a longtime Hershey School employee. The pedophile had been overnighting in student group homes at the school while his mother was on duty, serially abusing Hershey students over a period of more than 20 years.</p>
<p>[Sex-abuse</a> case shatters Hershey School](<a href=“http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/94387849.html]Sex-abuse”>http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/94387849.html)</p>
<p>Local police and Hershey School officials were alerted to the abuse at the school as early as 1989 but didn’t follow up.</p>
<p>[Hershey</a> School abuse investigation lapsed](<a href=“http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/95202994.html?page=1&c=y]Hershey”>http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/95202994.html?page=1&c=y)</p>
<p>A short time after the Hershey pedophile convictions, former Pennsylvania Attorney General LeRoy S. Zimmerman resigned from his positions as CEO of the Hershey Trust and chairman of the board of the Hershey School. The Trust was also under investigation at the time for alleged misuse of Trust funds; that investigation continues.</p>
<p>[Hershey</a> chairman LeRoy S. Zimmerman resigns from all boards](<a href=“http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20111129_Hershey_chairman_LeRoy_S__Zimmerman_resigns_from_all_boards.html]Hershey”>Hershey chairman LeRoy S. Zimmerman resigns from all boards)</p>
<p>Pennsylvania has some work to do.</p>
<p>Another illuminating and mind-boggling post from bclintonk. When there is that much money and power at stake, the fates of a few child victims evidently are a non-factor. They were mere cannon fodder in a high-stakes, big-bucks war.</p>
<p>A problem with the Hershey Trust is spending the money they have to spend each year to remain tax-exempt. Isn’t it 5% of assets or something?</p>
<p>That’s not Penn State’s problem. </p>
<p>Penn State is a massive bureaucratic blob that no one is currently in charge of.</p>
<p>Not that Spanier was in charge of anything, but he at least had some sort of nominal control and could theoretically do something.</p>
<p>The trustees just kind of sat there being trusteeish.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that Penn State is in institutional chaos right now.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ok, sorry Mini. I haven’t keep up with this thread from start to finish, but I’m very interested in your claim, because it would make sense. Any chance you would be willing to guide me to a post #??? Thanks.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Here’s the story about abuse victims from the 1970s coming forward:</p>
<p>[Jerry</a> Sandusky case: Three men say they were abused in '70s or '80s | PennLive.com](<a href=“http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/07/jerry_sandusky_case_three_men.html]Jerry”>Jerry Sandusky case: Three men say they were abused in '70s or '80s - pennlive.com)</p>
<p>iirc the rest is mini’s speculation, but hey, he could be right.</p>
<p>Penn State, which local reporters sometimes jokingly refer to as “the Kremlin,” has taken its own public flogging for a lack of transparency. </p>
<p>Louis J. Freeh, the former FBI director who led the review, argued that the board was simply not positioned to receive bad news. It was not until March, a year after The Patriot News, a newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa., first reported on a grand-jury investigation of Mr. Sandusky, that Penn State’s board established its Committee on Audit, Risk, and Legal Compliance. Before that time, there was no system for receiving regular reports on risks, the Freeh report says. In short, Penn State’s trustees did not create formal opportunities for the airing of hard truths—publicly or even behind closed doors.</p>
<p>[Virginia</a> and Penn State Boards Showed Perils of Secrecy - Administration - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Virginia and Penn State Boards Showed Perils of Secrecy”>Virginia and Penn State Boards Showed Perils of Secrecy)</p>
<p>How did they function until this year, without identifying risks at the university?</p>
<p>the mushroom theory of governance, I suppose?</p>
<p>I am not buying the “gawrsh, I wonder what sodomy means” thing. At all.</p>
<p>I am flabberghasted that Spanier is still at PSU, wasn’t he the one making notes about “other children?” and “Pandora’s box?” in the margin of his notes?</p>
<p>I’m not buying it either Naturally. Did Paterno have no awareness of rape in prison, was he oblivious to the child sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church? Seriously, just because people didn’t talk openly about sexual abuse as we do now, doesn’t mean his generation had never heard of such things. And many people, particularly well read people, learn as they age, and welcome new information. why would we accept that Paterno could work well into his 80’s but then excuse him for being old? can’t have it both ways.</p>
<p>Plus all the talk about “sodomy laws repealed” in the newspapers (i.e. the laws meant to make “being gay” illegal). I mean, he was in his 20s in the 1950s, wasn’t that when Joe McCarthy was accusing people left and right of being communists and homosexuals? And the word “sodomy” never came up??</p>
<p>My parents are about Paterno’s age and they understand the concepts of child abuse, sodomy, etc. They may not talk about them at the dinner table, but they don’t talk about murder at the dinner table either–that doesn’t mean they don’t understand what “stabbed” means. My impression is that the older generation understood WHAT child sexual abuse was; they just couldn’t fathom that it could happen in “nice” communities by “well-respected” people.</p>
<p>I think they did a simple cost/benefit analysis, decided that the benefits outweighed the cost and turned a blind eye. Maybe they thought those particular kids were just expendable, collateral damage. There are a lot of people who see others who are less fortunate as expendable, collateral damage.</p>
<p>^ I think you are correct and it is truly sad. And I agree about Spanier. He should not be able to continue to fly under the radar.</p>
<p>I tend to agree, even if someone is unclear of what specifics sodomy covers, most people have a working definition. Especially most Catholics with the child abuse scandal…I can still see asking an adult son for a defination. </p>
<p>Doesn’t change anything, Paterno knew something bad was happening to the children who were with Sandusky.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It suggests an extremely insular, poorly run, backward organization where decisions were made informally by a handful of officers, with minimal oversight by a compliant Board of Trustees cobbled together to make sure every political interest was nominally represented.</p>
<p>It also just blows my mind that Penn State didn’t even have in-house legal counsel until 2010, when they decided, apparently in response to the Sandusky investigation, that they needed a professional on-staff. At which point they hired one Pittsburgh lawyer whose background was in civil litigation. Until then they relied on a local private practitioner in State College, Wendell Courtney, who apparently had other legal business at the same time. </p>
<p>In contrast, a school like the University of Michigan has a 20-attorney office of general counsel, divided into 4 divisions: one for the medical school and health systems, one for technology transfer, one for development, and the largest division for general purpose Central Campus matters. And they still go to big outside firms for help on major matters. Not the way they did things in sleepy little Happy Valley.</p>
<p>
Wasn’t Paterno the in-house counsel?</p>
<p>In a lighthearted way…I think the following explains how this whole mess ever got this far…it’s it the lore/love/adulation of FOOOOOOOTTTBALLLLL…</p>
<hr>
<p>The year is 2024 and the United States has just elected the first woman as President of the United States.</p>
<p>A few days after the election, the president-elect calls her father in Pennsylvania and asks, "So, Dad, I assume you will becoming to my inauguration?</p>
<p>“I don’t think so. It’s a long drive; your mom isn’t as young as she used to be, we’ll have the dog with us, and my arthritis is acting up in my knee.”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry about it, Dad, I’ll send Air Force One or another support aircraft to pick you up and take you home, and a limousine will pick you up at your door,” she said.</p>
<p>“I don’t know. Everybody will be so fancy. What would your mother wear?”</p>
<p>“Oh, Dad,” she replied, “I’ll make sure she has a wonderful gown custom-made by one of the best designers in New York .” </p>
<p>“Honey,” Dad complained, “You know we can’t eat those rich foods you and your friends like to eat.”</p>
<p>The President-elect responded, “Don’t worry, Dad. The entire affair is going to be handled by the best caterer in D.C. And I’ll ensure your meals are salt-free. Dad, I really want you to come.”</p>
<p>So her parents reluctantly agreed, and on January 20, 2024 arrived to see their daughter sworn in as President of the United States.</p>
<p>The parents of the new President are seated in the front row. The President’s dad sees that a Senator is sitting next to him and leans over and whispers, “You see that woman up there with her hand on the Bible, becoming President of the United States?”</p>
<p>The Senator whispered in reply, “Yes, sir, I sure do.”</p>
<p>Dad says proudly, </p>
<p>“Her brother played football at PENN!!!”.</p>
<p>“Wasn’t Paterno the in-house counsel?”</p>
<p>Pretty close. It seems that Courtney was attorney for Second Mile, and seemingly the football program, and perhaps also JoePa’s private attorney. He may have (for all we know now) have been the money launderer from JoePa to Second Mile for the former Professor Emeritus’ child sex trafficking operation. All protected by attorney-client privilege.</p>