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.