Posted on 11/14/2011 5:51:11 AM PST by Colofornian
And that would be a reality just for violating common-sense on-field football protocol when victories are at stake...
YET...when it came to exercising common-sense off-field safety protocol when children's lives are at stake...
...oh...ho-hum...who cares...?
The police did nothing "off-field." The district attorney did nothing "off-field." What exactly do you think the Penn. State officials should have done "off-field." Be specific, please.
It is a shame that such a few caused such damage to individuals and PSU.
1998 correct
2002 they were never given the chance. Penn State admins & coaches handcuffed them by not coming forward.
You can also add btw that public welfare did nothing "off-field" in 1998...a public welfare agent interviewed Sandusky in '98
Course of action they should have taken:
Allow me to cite three Scoutmaster posts as he does a better job than I do of being succinct...these are all from previous threads:
(a) Under 23 Pa. C.S. Section 6311, which is the Pennsylvania Child Protective Services Law, when a staff member reports abuse, the person in charge of a school or institution must notify the Department of Public Welfare by telephone and in writing within 48 hours. Joe Paterno isn't the person in charge of Penn State; his obligations to report Sadusky to legal authorities were moral and not legal. By the way, nobody at Penn State notified the Department of Public Welfare.
(b) "Schulz never told the University Police, child welfare, or any law enforcement. Nobody at Penn State did. Not McQueary, Paterno, Curley, nor Schultz. Nobody even tried to find out the identify of the preteen boy who was anally raped."
(c) Scoutmaster added on another thread that Penn State's take was "we're not going to report it to the University Police, child welfare, or any law enforcement agency, or ask the name of the boy, or confront him..."
I agree with you. It is Most likely that all of the people on the football admin team followed the policies laid out by the legal beagles of Penn State.
The fact that the DA did not choose to go to court is a problem and much of the problem can be laid at his feet.
Just wait out more information before condemning Joe Paterno and the other people who have been fired. They may be innocent of any wrong doing, but guilty of following policies which have been in palce for decades and which have seemed to be effective in the past.
You are correct in that "we do not know the whole story."
Yet...
* The Penn State Board of Trustees don't know the whole story. [Yet they acted because it was necessary to do so]
* Perhaps even the Penn State admins & coaches don't know the whole story. [We certainly have not likely heard from ALL of the victims]
* Media who report segments on air or who write stories and columns don't know the whole story.
* Police who arrest suspected criminals don't know the whole story.
* Parents who discipline their kids often don't get the whole story from their kids.
I guess I find it curious that you suggest a standard that isn't seemingly applied very often when it comes to holding others accountable.
Gov. Corbett sits on the Board of Trustees. There was a report I read on Sat. about Corbett contacting Board members to advise them of the severity of the situation. Corbett was the AG when the investigation was launched in 2009. Obviously Corbett couldn't divulge the particulars of the case, but his viewpoint would have beeen very persuasive to the other trustees.
PA Ping List
Post #6 applies to some degree to your comment here.
Look, I agree with this stance when it comes to the NCAA holding Penn State accountable. ESPN interviewed its president late last week and he said the NCAA will wait until the criminal investigations are done before they come in and spank Penn State (obviously he didn't use the word "spank") with NCAA by-law violations.
[Note: He didn't mention by-law 2.4...but that would be one example that Penn State could be "written up" by the NCAA...for failure to practice ethics such as "honesty" and "responsibility" off the field.]
The reason why this otherwise "can't wait" is because this isn't simply a "Penn State" problem...it's a major cultural problem (one that goes beyond Penn State).
Certainly it includes the culture at Penn State. When this story first broke, the Attorney General's office pointed to the Penn State "culture" as problematic. (An obvious understatement)
Read the Washington Times article about the profanity that a lone protestor had to suffer Saturday from Penn State fans. At Penn State’s stadium, profanity, scorn greet one father’s protest
Or read this Sporting News article: Culture of indifference ultimately cost Paterno his job
The Culture of indifference...apathy about boys being raped.
That columnist says: The culture of indifference that resonates still to this very day at Penn State. That was Paterno early Wednesday afternoon, releasing a statement and proclaiming he would retire at the end of the season—and that the Board of Trustees “should not spend a single minute discussing my status.” In other words, I’ll tell you when I’m leaving; you can’t fire me. Just like in the spring of 2004, when Curley and Spanier arrived at Paterno’s house and asked him to retire. Get the hell out of here, Joe said. Just like the loyal students camped outside Paterno’s house Tuesday night, chanting “Joe must stay”; cheering a man who could have stopped so many more senseless attacks by a sexual predator had he just dialed 9-1-1.
Sorry...but the culture doesn't wait for investigations to be completed, indictments to come down, etc. It moves daily.
This actually has the earmarks of people who knew that there ws a wrong committed but who were put in legal chains by policies that turned out to be ineffective.
I think we should just wait before we drop the dime on these people. My own suspicion is that there may be a person whose name we have not heard yet who is the main culprit in making sure that the attempts to put a stop to this failed.
... you do know he’s already been fired?? You’re fighting last weeks war.
Read the last half of post #9, if you would.
The culture of indifference that led to all of this is still largely in place.
I don't think anyone wants the reality as that would interfere with the chest-beating over what they would have done.
The University Police found out about Victim #6 from the victim's mother in May 1998. On May 13 and May 19, 1998, the University Police and the State College Police Department eavesdropped on two phone calls between the victims mother and Jerry Sandusky.
Those are the calls in which Jerry Sandusky admitted showering with the boy and said that he had done it with other boys. Sandusky said he hugged the boy, but when asked if his "private parts" touched the boy, said "I don't think so . . . maybe." Sandusky apologized but refused to promise that he would not shower with other boys. (Grand Jury Presentment pages 19-20).
Note that the known extent of Victim #6's abuse was showering once and having Sandusky hug him. The victim's mother spotted the wet hair when her son came home and questioned the boy, then called the University Police.
Note that Sandusky never admitted that his genitals touched the boy.
There was a "long investigation" by the University Police, according to the GJ Presentment. The DA/State College's investigation also involved a similar incident involving an eleven year-old named 'B.J." If that's all that the DA had, given how prominent Sandusky was and how well-known The Second Mile was at that time, you may be able to understand why Sandusky was not prosecuted.
Anyway, we don't know how long a "long investigation" took.
But Sandusky coached the entire 1998 season and one year later, in May 1999, Paterno told Sandusky he would not be Paterno's successor. Maybe that's when the investigation was completed. A few days later, Sandusky announced his resignation, effective at the end of the 1999 season. Sandusky coached the entire 1999 season.
So the police, both the University Police and the State College Police did something. I'm not saying they did enough. But that's what they did.
If you're in a mood to be queasy, Sandusky was bringing a boy (Victim #4) with him as his 'date' to pregame banquets to sit at the coaches' table during both the 1998 and 1999 seasons. I wrote about that here.
Thanks.
I have no purpose in exonerating anyone, let the chips fall where they may, but I’m not sure that any Penn. State officials had any legal standing to do anything.
I think the focus now should be on the operations of the local police, politicians and courts. I think they were all in on it.
I'm frightened by the potential scope of this. Penn State had an official working and sponsoring relationship with The Second Mile. Sandusky was still holding sleepover camps on Penn State's secondary campus as recently as 2008. The Second Mile was a major charity and whether you speak of judges, prosecutors, politicians, policeman, or businessmen, they have links to Penn State *and* The Second Mile *and* Sandusky. It's like any other college town, except more so.
This wasn't just called Happy Valley; it was Happy Valley, where Mike McQueary grew up playing touch football with Jerry Sandusky's kids in the vacant lot across from Joe Paterno's house, before playing football for Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky, before become a graduate assistant for Penn State and the football program, and before witnessing Jerry Sandusky anally rape a preteen boy in the same showers where McQueary showered after setting the passing records that still stand at Penn State from when he was the starting quarterback.
It's like the stereotype of incest in a West Virginia 'holler' - I seriously was going to say without the sexual overtones, but . . . without the family sex, unless something happened involving Sandusky's adopted kids or all of those Sandusky foster kids.
I see that the biography page for Wendell Courtney, the attorney who simultaneously represented both Penn State and The Second Mile during the joint 1998 University Police, State College Police Department, Centre County District Attorney, Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare investigation of Jerry Sandusky, has been sanitized of all mention of The Second Mile, even though he continued to represent The Second Mile. And I see that Mr. Courtney continues to work with the Special Olympics. And the page still prominently mentions his work for Penn State.
I shouldn't have, but when I looked at the biographies of the other attorneys at McQuaide Blasko, where Courtney still practices, I shuddered that one mentioned he used to be a BSA Cubmaster and an Assistant Scoutmaster, and a second says he actively coaches lots of youth sports.
I said early last week that the more I put things together, the more it resembled a Hieronymus Bosch painting of Hell. I surprised even myself when I started to assemble a very simple timeline of just the 1998 investigation and Sandusky's retirement. He coached two full seasons during it . . . one after he announced his retirement. He was bringing a boy to spend the night with him at the official Penn State pre-game getaway for each home game. The boy was sitting with him at the coaches' table during the pregame banquets and was being sexually abused in the shower and room afterwards. And this happened the entire 1999 season after Paterno told Sandusky that he wouldn't succeed Paterno, and at the bowl game. I need to quit looking, because I keep finding another little figure in absolute torment. Like in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
You can bet some politicos are in on it as well.
LOTS of German military & concentration camp guards had no "legal standing" to do anything. (That hardly exonerated anyone)
What it comes down is that I've rarely seen more so-called "conservatives"...
...utter an angle of essentially the ethics of "whatever is legal is moral" equivocation approach...
...than what I've seen tens of FREEPERs claim over the past week.
Sorry...but doing the bare minimum (ostensibly to cover your legal butt) isn't very becoming of conservatives to offer as "ideals" -- especially when so many laws are dumb downed these days by rogue judges & less than standard-bearing legislators.
If you're talking sex with little boys, that almost goes without saying doesn't it?
And I'm not minimizing your statement at all; that's my cynical way of agreeing with you and observing life."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.