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.
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.