<p>According to an article in USAToday, Spanier and his attorney going on offense means that they believe he is likely to be charged with a crime soon and are thus beginning to argue their case before the public.</p>
<p>Spanier expects everyone to believe that he planned to report Sandusky to CPS, Second Mile, etc, over “horseplay”? And how would that leave PSU vulnerable to anything?</p>
<p>Really bad decision making. Again.</p>
<p>I believe Spanier’s legal fees are covered by an indemnity policy the university has for execs and trustees, not tuition dollars.</p>
<p>He has said he was abused as a child. When he said “conjured up things from my childhood” I didn’t expect him to finish the sentence with towel snapping. </p>
<p>The Onion has covered the scandal-
[Additional</a> Findings Show Every Penn State Student, Alumnus Also Knew About Ongoing Child Molestation | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source](<a href=“http://www.theonion.com/articles/additional-findings-show-every-penn-state-student,28842/]Additional”>Additional Findings Show Every Penn State Student, Alumnus Also Knew About Ongoing Child Molestation)</p>
<p>Spanier’s statements make it clear he is either a liar or the most incompetent and inept university president in history. I think he’s a liar. He covered Sandusky’s butt for a decade, now he’s covering his own. Unconscionable!</p>
<p>No one would ever describe Spanier as incompetent and inept so, there you go.</p>
<p>Jeffrey Toobin (who wrote the New Yorker article) was on CNN a while ago and played a couple of taped excerpts from his interview with Spanier.</p>
<p>Toobin asked him about his feelings about the abused boys and Spanier said he was very sorry for them. But THEN he went on to say how sorry he was for himself, for Penn State students, for the Paterno family–that Penn State was like a big family.</p>
<p>And Toobin noted, as diplomatically as he could, that a lot of people would have trouble comparing what the abused boys went through to HIS, Spanier’s, suffering. </p>
<p>But there you go: Spanier seemingly had to be prompted to think about the boys who ended up being raped BECAUSE Sandusky didn’t get reported and sent to jail in 2001, but he really wanted to talked about his own suffering. I guess it’s good Spanier is suffering at least somewhat. But the false claims of innocence are sickening–claiming the Freeh investigation was a “witchhunt,” etc. etc. Where is the honour of owning up to your mistakes, your moral failure?</p>
<p>I guess he figures he just needs one person out of 12 to believe that if you get a report of “horseplay” between a middle aged man and a 10 year old boy at night alone naked in a shower, then you don’t need to ask any questions. And that your story is credible and you’re not lying. </p>
<p>Ugh.</p>
<p>completely agree with you Janesmith. and can’t stomach how he claims that since he himself was abused, that he’d be the first one to report suspected abuse. truth is many abuse victims, do NOT see abuse. but still sickening how he’s taking the victim role in this. I hope if he’s indicted that a jury doesn’t accept that he didn’t ask enough questions so he could ascertain what McQueary actually witnessed. I read in the link I posted that he didnt’ even know it was McQueary until the grand jury period. How does that pass the common sense test? You’re a university president and you don’t want to know if the person who reported a concern, is credible? sheesh…nope this guy is not incompetent, he’s outrageously arrogant to think he can lie like this.</p>
<p>…especially since the abuse Spanier claims is that his father used corporal punishment to discipline him. He’s not even claiming he was sexually abused as a child.</p>
<p>Universities do carry big insurance policies to cover extraordinary legal fees, but in the case of PennState which did not have in-house counsel, it might be a different set-up. The officials there, especially Spanier, were naive when they testified before the Grand Jury, thinking that the university retained attorney was representing them personally, looking out for their best interest. In-house counsel would have told them differently, and in that sense Spanier and the others were ill-served legally when they appeared before the Grand Jury. It is all a sorry mess.</p>
<p>“You’re a university president and you don’t want to know if the person who reported a concern, is credible?”</p>
<p>I think from Spanier’s perspective, and in his mind for the good of the program and the school, the less he knew about it, the better. Also, this wasn’t the first time this issue had come up. Credibility was probably a given. He just didn’t care to know more.</p>
<p>I’m not sure exactly why but it bothers me a lot that Spanier “came out” as a victim of abuse as a way to reinforce his innocence. I’m not saying that his proclamation is untrue but it seems that he has exploited his own history as a way to weasel out of his responsibility. I support any and all victims of any kind of abuse in their freedom to tell their story. They should tell or not tell according to their own comfort level and they should tell anyone that they feel they want to. But Spaniers “unburdening” is so self-serving that it, to me, disrespects the experiences of abuse victims. It especially disrespects his own experiences and trivializes them. Sad.</p>
<p>EPTR—you really captured what I was feeling about Spanier’s identifying himself as a victim.</p>
<p>Maybe he saw the outpouring of sympathy for the real victims, and thought, “I’m gonna get me some of that.” Gross.</p>
<p>Lol, LasMa. Yup!!!</p>
<p>A brief summary of Spanier’s current media offensive:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/24/graham-spanier-penn-state-s-next-indictment.htm[/url]”>http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/24/graham-spanier-penn-state-s-next-indictment.htm</a></p>
<p>He still hasn’t answered the obvious question:</p>
<p>
Zero empathy for victims is apparently Spanier’s go-to response when alerted to pedophiles at Penn State:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Interesting. From the article above: </p>
<p>“…Nor did they ask about another case in which Spanier may have turned a deaf ear to warnings of a pedophile on the Penn State campus. Phoenix-based private detective Paul McLaughlin has said that more than a decade ago—in February 2002—he telephoned then-president Spanier to caution him about a Penn State professor who had abused him as a boy for about three years. Some of the abuse, he told Spanier, took place in the professor’s Penn State office.
“I offered evidence of this professor’s abuse in the form of tape-recorded admissions and informed [Spanier] that my only concern was to protect children and the community from this professor,” McLaughlin tells The Daily Beast. “Spanier’s response? He threatened to have me arrested…[He] called my accusations ‘hearsay,’ praised the professor’s reputation, and treated my report to him as a blackmail or an extortion attempt.”
At the time, the accused professor was considered one of the nation’s leading experts on autism in children. McLaughlin says he was motivated by the worry that the professor might still have easy access to underage boys—boys who might have difficulty articulating sexual abuse.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office and the state police had already told the private detective there was nothing they could do, as the statute of limitations on his complaint had elapsed. Working from his home in Phoenix, McLaughlin said he had already tried to warn the Penn State Human Resources Department as well as a faculty dean, but no one would listen.
“I was kind of like a drowning man trying to clutch onto a log or some kind of life preserver,” McLaughlin remembers of the day he finally called the president’s office at PSU. “To think of how many children had been abused since me! I was in full panic mode when I called Spanier.” As he was getting the brush-off, McLaughlin said, he offered to send Spanier the professor’s taped confession so he could hear for himself the man admitting to past abuse. McLaughlin said he was dismissively told, “Don’t bother,” before Spanier hung up.
“My opinion is that Spanier was more concerned with how my report would reflect on him rather than discovering and removing a serious threat to children,” McLaughlin concluded
In 2005, after another victim came forward to buttress McLaughlin’s claims, the professor and two other men were indicted on multiple counts of child sexual abuse in the state of Maryland. The case was also featured on the television program America’s Most Wanted twice. Ultimately, the charges against the professor were dismissed. That professor, who is still employed by Penn State, has denied the allegations….”</p>
<p>Whether the allegations were true or not, Spanier apparently had no interest in any investigation. Sounds familiar.</p>
<p>not only did Spanier dismiss McLaughlin’s claims, but his reported response, of threatening to have McLaughlin arrested demonstrates the bullying and arrogance with which he managed as president.</p>
<p>why investigate when you can simply dismiss the charge outright, why involve HR when you can unilaterally brush off the accusation. His flatout praise of the professor sounds similar to his praise and support of Curley and Schultz.</p>
<p>The link posted did not work for me. See if this one is better:</p>
<p>[Graham</a> Spanier: Penn State?s Next Indictment? - The Daily Beast](<a href=“Graham Spanier: Penn State’s Next Indictment?”>Graham Spanier: Penn State’s Next Indictment?)</p>
<p>Read end of article. Bizarre!</p>
<p>^^^Bizarre is a great word to describe Spainer.</p>
<p>it is his utter arrogance, thinking he can pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes that sickens me. seriously, holding himself as a sensitive expert on child abuse while covering up abuse. painting himself as an idiot child as mini says. I never even met Sandusky, I didn’t know it was McQueary who witnessed “horseplay”. </p>
<p>I had previously read about the sex fair that was held at Penn State, and his claim that he supported free speech, when it was way more than speech that was going on.</p>