Posted on 01/16/2012 7:45:05 AM PST by Scoutmaster
Why didn’t Joe Paterno do more? Couldn’t he have stopped Jerry Sandusky? Did he deserve to be fired?
Those are questions that have surrounded the Penn State coach for more than two months, ever since he was dismissed over the telephone after 61 years in State College.
Based on comments here and his first media interview published this weekend, there seem to be three themes at the center of any defense of Paterno: 1. He did everything he was obligated to do; 2. You don’t know what you would have done in his situation; and 3. Joe wasn’t in charge, and therefore this was the responsibility of others.
There may be more, given the broad scope of the scandal and the various investigations. But these are the three points that seem to come up time and time again, including from Paterno and/or those close to him.
Let’s look at them one by one:
1. He did everything he was obligated to do.
Legally? Yes. Morally? Absolutely not.
If there was more that he could reasonably have done to prevent Sandusky from allegedly harming one more child in any way, he was obligated to do so. Not legally, but morally. And not just Paterno, but everyone involved, as there is an absolute moral obligation to protect children from predators.
That should go without saying.
It also leads us to the second point …
2. You don’t know what you would have done in his situation.
Very true. I have never been faced with a similar situation.
But I can say with absolute certainty that if one of my employees reported to me that a former high-level, high-profile employee of mine was behaving inappropriately with young boys in a building that was in my area of responsibility … well, I would have had the intellectual curiosity to have more than just one conversation with my superiors about it.
Instead, this is what happened, according Paterno’s talk with the Washington Post:
Paterno contends that ignorance was the context with which he heard McQueary’s disturbing story in 2002. McQueary, sitting at Paterno’s kitchen table, told him that he had been at the football building late the evening before when he heard noises coming from the shower.
“He was very upset and I said why, and he was very reluctant to get into it,” Paterno said. “He told me what he saw, and I said, what? He said it, well, looked like inappropriate, or fondling, I’m not quite sure exactly how he put it. I said you did what you had to do. It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do. So I sat around. It was a Saturday. Waited till Sunday because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. And then I called my superiors and I said: ‘Hey, we got a problem, I think. Would you guys look into it?’ Cause I didn’t know, you know. We never had, until that point, 58 years I think, I had never had to deal with something like that. And I didn’t feel adequate.”
At that point, Paterno set up a meeting for McQueary and Curley, the athletic director, and Schultz, who oversaw university police. McQueary has testified that he gave both men a far more graphic description of what he witnessed, which he believed to be Sandusky sodomizing a boy of about 10, who had his hands against the shower wall. At the preliminary hearing for Curley and Schultz on Dec. 16, McQueary said he had been reluctant to go into similar “great detail about sexual acts” with Paterno, out of respect for the coach, who was 75 at the time.
Schultz and Curley have maintained that McQueary failed to impart the seriousness of what he saw to them as well. They never told police about the allegation, instead informing Sandusky he could no longer bring children to university facilities. Prosecutors say Sandusky continued to abuse boys for six more years.
Paterno has said, “In hindsight, I wish I had done more.”
Paterno’s portrait of himself is of an old-world man profoundly confused by what McQueary told him, and who was hesitant to make follow-up calls because he did not want to be seen as trying to exert any influence for or against Sandusky. “I didn’t know which way to go,” he said. “And rather than get in there and make a mistake . . .”
He reiterated that McQueary was unclear with him about the nature of what he saw — and added that even if McQueary had been more graphic, he’s not sure he would have comprehended it.
“You know, he didn’t want to get specific,” Paterno said. “And to be frank with you I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it.”
A look at the bold comments:
“It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do.” So far so good.
And, finally:
3. Joe wasn’t in charge, and this was the responsibility of others.
From the Washington Post story:
But after 61 years on the campus, Paterno cleared out his office in the space of one day. It was an end he was unprepared for. Yet it came with the realization that as the face of the university, people assign him greater responsibility than other officials.“Whether it’s fair I don’t know, but they do it,” he said. “You would think I ran the show here.”
Wrong. Paterno did run the show. He ran the football program. He was the coach. He was the boss. And it was a football facility that was at the center of one of Sandusky’s alleged acts.
By almost all accounts he was a good boss, a great man.
But, when he failed to take the necessary steps to protect children and the reputation of the organization he led, his fate simply had to be the same as other leaders whose institutions have apparently failed:
Joe had to go.
I make this statement not to excuse the inaction of Joe Paterno, but simply shine the light on the bigger picture which the media refuses to see.
It is possible that some in the media do see the bigger picture, but still refuse to talk about it because of political correctness. If we don't start talking about the homosexual aspect of this, it will never get any better. There is a huge push to normalize this behavior. This is how gays produce progeny. There are many powerful people in very high places that continue to push the homosexual agenda, bit by bit, every day. Graham Spanier and the Penn State Board of Trustees are perfect examples, but it's not just there. It's all over the country, in every nook and cranny of our institutions and government.
The reason is they did not want any of this criminal activity (and bad PR) be made public. Once exposed to the light of day there was no way to manage this disaster for PSU. They were also afraid that Sandusky was only one node of this gay pedophile cancer and how much it had spread and who would also be named.
No, Sandusky did not act alone. There were others who enabled him to prey upon children and get their share of the “boy booty”. This has the markings of a ring of male pedophiles, men with connections and money and positions.
The real question is whether or not there is enough public rage (and political will) to get this whole evil story laid out before the public for all to see. The Gay Mafia will want to see this story killed ASAP because it threatens their positions.
Unless Paterno knew that Curley and Schultz were lying he was not involved in the cover up.
If JoPa is squeaky clean, OK; if he's dirty, then he needs to pay. The same goes for each and everyone who, covertly or overtly, covered things up. Sandusky’s wife remains either in deep denial or shares his guilt as an enabler of his disgusting pedophile activities.
If the Gay Mafia can successfully block this investigation, then I'd be in favor of shutting down all PSU sports programs for 10 years and fire all the staff. The only way to get to the bottom of this is with severe means: give up the pervert pedophiles or sacrifice PSU’s money making athletic programs. Given the choice of ratting out the perverts or losing millions of dollars (and their precious sports programs), what do you think will be the choice? [My bet is they'd give up sports to save the perverts.]
I’m in favor of shutting down the entire school.
BUMP what you said.
Paterno was an old man TEN YEARS ago, and Sandusky wasn’t even with the football program anymore. The whole situation was an alien planet to him, a man sexually abusing a boy. He told TWO people up the chain of command, including the guy in charge of the freaking campus POLICE. And yeah, maybe he should have followed up and maybe this and maybe that... The thing is, before you point a finger at another man and acuse him of being a chold molester, you better have seen it with your own two eyeballs. Like McQueary did, for example.
But no... people like beating up on Joe Paterno because it somehow makes them feel good about themselves. They are smug little people without lives, eager to throw stones at people who have achieved the kind of greatness they themselves could never hope to achieve.
So yep, you’re right. The real cowards - - McQueary, (who was the eyewitness!), Curley, Schultz, and Spanier (who were the people in a position to actually DO something about Sandusky) get to fly under the radar while the ankle biters go after the old football coach Paterno. It’s disgusting.
The bottom line is: unless PSU feels REAL pain, this whole disgusting mess will be covered-up and whitewashed. Either kill all PSU sports programs for 10 years and fire coaches and staff or kill PSU outright and start over.
I suppose he never watched Deliverance?
I respectfully disagree.
First, the laws in at least eighteen states require all adults to report any creditable allegation of child abuse to either police or child protective services. Not if you saw it with your own two eyes. Just if you hear about it and it's credible.
Second, let's drop back to the concept of a heinous crime generically. A young man (26 I believe) that you've known at least since high school, that you coached in college, who is your graduate assistant, tells you he saw somebody raping a woman, or knifing somebody, or killing them, or bludgeoning them with an iron pipe.
Would you tell him to call the police? Paterno didn't. Would you call the police? Paterno didn't. And John McQueary and Dr. Jonathan Dranov didn't, either.
Who was the real coward? Who should be catching 1000% more flack that he has? Mike McQueary. Who were cowards and cover-up artists before Joe Paterno? McQueary's father, John McQueary. And John McQueary called his boss, Dr. Jonathan Dranov to the house (news reports saying 'he was there' leave out the detail that John McQueary called him and asked him to come over). Neither of those two grown men apparently told Mike to the police.
It wasn't just Joe Paterno.
Everybody was trying to keep things in-house and trying to keep the police out of this.
Just for the record, John McQueray and Dr. Jonathan Dranov were administrators of a medical clinic to which Sue and Joe Paterno gave over $1 million dollars.
But, no - you're supposed to call the police with any creditable allegation of child abuse. You don't have to see it. Just like you don't have to be the first-hand witness of a suspected murder.
I think it's because it's a name they've heard of and some of them come from states where the football coach really does run the university.
And also there are a lot more stories about Paterno in the popular media than there are about Spanier, Neisworth et al., and that kind of puts me in a conspiracy frame of mind.
If you really want to be upset about something why not write about how police handled the Sandusky matter that was reported to them?
In hindsight, Paterno should have called police but because he handled it the way he did does not mean that he was party to a cover up or was morally culpable of anything. A failure in judgement fine, after all hindsight is 20/20, but that's not what you are saying. You are saying, that he's a bad, bad person only interested in protecting his football team.
Somebody else on this thread said that Paterno was only trying to protect his "friend" Sandusky without comprehending that they didn't particularly like each other.
Paterno needs to be defended.
And remember, most states do not require adults to report allegations of child abuse to law. "Creditable" is a matter of judgement, not objective criteria.
What puzzles me is that Paterno is about the only one who did anything half-way right in this matter. The duly sworn LEOs did not. The university administration did not. So why the anger at Paterno?
I have never watched “Deliverance” to this day, though I’ve always meant to. Still, I think your point of JoePa’s denial bears some merit. Who hasn’t heard of Adam Walsh? We’ve all known that child predators existed, and that many of them did these horrible things to little boys as well as little girls. I can’t imagine that JoePa hasn’t heard of THAT. Being generous here, I’m thinking that maybe JoePa in his own way is trying to say that he didn’t think child predators looked like Sandusky, ie. someone you work with and thought you knew well. The fact is that they look just like your neighbors and co-workers.
A very good friend’s next-door neighbor was a prominent lawyer who was caught trying to meet up with a 13 year old girl in one internet sting. A cop and handcuffs met him instead. He was an “upright” citizen with a beautiful wife and a couple of children, lived in a nice home, drove a fancy car, etc. etc. He was also a pedophile!! It tore the family apart, and now he’s lost everything. My friend trembles when she thinks about the times they had him and his family over to visit (parents socialized while the kids played). She never suspected a thing. Pedophiles aren’t supposed to look like doctors, lawyers, coaches, teachers, and otherwise successful people, right? Wrong! Pedophiles can be anybody!
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