<p>“As to the calling the police- the point has been repeated that the call should have been made the the child protective services. They can then contact the police.”</p>
<p>The call should have been made to the police and the police would have called child protective services.</p>
<p>Also, if the police were not called until the day after the attack, they would have put a team of investigators on it right away to check all of the Second Mile records, phone records, entry logs, security tapes to identify kids that might have been with Sandusky the day before and they would have canvassed all of the parents whose kids were involved with Second Mile to determine what child might have been with Sandusky that day.</p>
<p>I graduated in '88 and felt the same way. Fun for a while but it got very old. By senior year I could not wait to graduate and get out. I went to football games freshman year and then realized I didn’t care about football. I did look up to Paterno; he was a celebrity and it was fun to spot him walking around. I’ve reconnected with some of my Penn State friends in the last couple of years (on Facebook) and was a little taken aback to see how many of them have tremendous affection and nostalgia for “Happy Valley,” even the ones who seemed to be having pretty crappy experiences at the time.</p>
<p>I am absolutely sickened, disgusted and horrified by what happened at PSU. Paterno absolutely deserved to be fired and he deserves to go to jail. Penn State should shut down its football program for a few years and focus on academics for a change.</p>
<p>tutu-
Totally agree. But what is still hard to parse out is what is the procedure in reporting up the chain in the university system and who should have contacted the PA Child Protective Services. It sounds like as the story was reported up the chain it got changed/reworded, kinda like that old game of “telephone” where, at the end, it sounds nothing like what it did at the outset. It is hard to tell who may have said “thank you for telling me- I will take care of it” and the person (GA, Paterno or whoever) assumed that the right thing would have been done and authorities would be notified. Again, this is a stretch, but it is possible. Please don’t flame me–just positing a theory.</p>
<p>And sure, all of us can claim what we “would” have done if we happened on an awful situation, but in those split seconds, none of us can really know what we would have done unless we were there. Have any of you been in an emergency situation and sondered if you could have handled it better? I have. A runner in a very popular 10K collapsed in my lap as I sat on a crowded sidelines of the event. I screamed “medic!!” and people came running pretty quickly, including people trained to handle medical emergencies. I am not CPR trained, so may have made it worse if I tried to put him on the ground and do it myself. If he was injured I could have made it worse by moving him. In those split seconds it is hard to know what to do. Could I have handled it differently? Probably. Would the outcome have been different? Do not know. But it still haunts me 10 years later.</p>
<p>“What actually happens if you call the police and tell them that you (or somebody who told you) saw X raping a child yesterday, but you can’t identify the child? What, exactly, would the police do, and when would they do it? This is not a rhetorical question–I really don’t know the answer.”</p>
<p>There is an investigation. Sandusky would have been questioned. All the boys involved in his charity would likey have been questioned. Years ago I worked at a Home for Girls and one of the girls made an accusation of one of the therapists. Each girl was questioned. Child Protective Services are called in. It is taken quite seriously, with good reason.</p>
<p>Mosr college students are ready to get out by the time they are seniors regardless of what school they attended. They have grown and matured and are ready for the next phase in their life. It’s not because it’s a big “football” mentality. It’s because they are not 17-18 yrs old anymore.</p>
<p>One of the really harmful and morally troubling aspects of the way this was handled in 2002 is that for everyone, from Paterno to the other administrators to McQueary and his father, it was treated as an issue about Jerry Sandusky and his relationship to Penn State. The victim can’t be identified today (unless he comes forward) because no one took any steps then to identify the victim – something that would have been easy to do at the time, but really hard nine years later. If your first thought is “We have to get this kid some help!”, then figuring out which kid it was would be a top priority. But if your first thought is, “What are we going to do about Jerry?”, the kid just becomes part of the scenery.</p>
<p>The reason why the mandated reporter law tells you to call DPW, not the police, is that it’s more about getting the proper outcome for the child than it is about catching and punishing a criminal. Different orientations, and it makes a difference.</p>
<p>By the way, you know who is due for a huge hunk of public vilification?: The management of Second Mile. The general counsel who knew about the 1998 investigation, because he handled it as Penn State counsel. The president who was told that there was an issue in 2002. Those guys don’t have a football team, so they aren’t so much in the limelight. But I don’t understand why they aren’t getting indicted, too. And they CLEARLY were mandated reporters for Second Mile kids. One of Curley and Schultz’s defenses to the mandated reporter count may well be that they TOLD a mandated reporter, and had a reasonable expectation that he would report it.</p>
<p>You are required to call Child Protective Services. But it doesn’t matter if you call the police first. The police would involve Child Protective Services if you call them first. The point is to call either Child Protective Services or police so SOMETHING is done about it.</p>
<p>Had the GA called the police on the spot, the child would have been in his presence, for heaven’s sake. He would have received needed medical attention and psychological support. I know that sometimes people are shocked and frozen, but this is not ambiguous. The only appropriate course of action was to stop the attack and call the police. Now, if he thought, maybe, kinda sorta, there was some horseplay, something that made him uncomfortable, that’s a different kettle of fish. But that’s not what happened. He knew what he was seeing and could have stopped it and chose not to for whatever reason. If I were married to him, I think this would end my marriage. I couldn’t be married to a man I could never respect, admire or honor. There are bad things and then there is walking away from a child being raped.</p>
<p>This is what I can’t get over, as well. So yeah, the D.A., who apparently told the detectives to drop the case, is mysteriously missing and presumed dead, and then his laptop and hard drive found in the river, but what about the detectives that interviewed the victims in 1998? And is it common for the university detectives to take orders from the D.A.? They dropped the investigation at his request. Shouldn’t some kind of report exist that gives reasons or at least documents what went on leading up to the dropping of the case?</p>
<p>I really am clueless about how this works, but it seems that one man ( the now dead D.A.) had a lot of power in deciding whether or not to proceed- even when there were 2 victims at that time. Is the system really so vulnerable to pay-offs and favors that one person can call off a very serious investigation that would result in prison time for the perpetrator if he were convicted?</p>
<p>A lot of attention is being paid to the firings of Paterno and the university administrators, but I want to know the details of how years of abuse was shoved under the rug by many, many people, including law enforcement. Many knew what was going on- including university detectives and the Department of Pennsylvania Public Welfare in 1998- (according to the GJ report) yet nothing was done to stop the abuser.</p>
<p>Paterno has 2 choices. He can flat out admitt the truth that he was told what happened in that shower and he made a horific moral error by not ensuring that Sandusky never had the opportunity for contact with children again. I think doing so will actually restore some belief in the dignity of the man.</p>
<p>The other option is to deny that he was told what Sandusky was doing in that shower-that Sandusky did not retire at age 55 in 1999 because of any connection to the charges brought against him in 1998. That all Paterno knew was some vague refrence to a shower in 2002. His statements will be proved to be false and he will be forever remembered a pathetic, self-obsessed human being.</p>
ohiomom-
Understand the statute has been updated, but my question is whether this specific procedure is still the one to follow. I believe it is, or was at the time these incidents occurred.</p>
<p>I’m not saying people need to join some Paterno lynch-mob hivemind mentality. I’m saying Paterno isn’t blameless and too many people are making excuses for him because of his otherwise sterling reputation/contributions. The fact of the matter is that who you are is irrelevant. If you know there’s abuse going on right under your nose, then you get to the bottom of it and make sure it doesn’t continue happening on your watch. </p>
<p>There’s really nothing vague about what McQ told him. It’s not like McQ is going to witness anal rape and then come to Paterno and tell him what happened in a game of telephone or charades or something. Paterno knew what was going on, and he reported the incident. Curley and Schultz played dumb and were called out on it; it seems pretty clear they were trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug.</p>
<p>But you don’t get to hold onto a legacy and reputation of someone who goes above and beyond when you’re willing to settle for the legal bare minimum, especially when such massive moral issues are on the table. No matter how you slice it, Paterno knew what was going on, but just didn’t want to get too involved. He felt that by reporting it to the AD, he had done his duty and due diligence.</p>
<p>Others disagree. I mean, it’s a scary situation. But just because the situation is scary doesn’t mean it’s okay to sit back and never follow up or wonder why Sandusky wasn’t getting ****canned by the police. I mean, let’s get priorities straight here. This is child rape and child abuse. When you know something like that is going on, you go to the police, especially if the higher-ups aren’t doing anything about it.</p>
<p>And, let’s face it – he’s Joe Paterno. People would have listened.</p>
<p>“ohiomom-
Understand the statute has been updated, but my question is whether this specific procedure is still the one to follow. I believe it is, or was at the time these incidents occurred.”</p>