Posted on 09/23/2014 7:20:57 PM PDT by FlJoePa
Penn State students and fans Saturday showed support for late coach Joe Paterno with a “Joe-Out” – wearing clothing or displaying images of the Hall of Famer at the Nittany Lions' football game.
As a Penn State alumnus, I am proud of my university and I remain proud of the work that JoePa did on and – more importantly – off the football field, with respect to inspiring students and improving academics at the institution.
Yet there remains in the public sphere this erroneous belief that JoePa was a conspirator in the alleged cover-up of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Sandusky, a former Penn State coach, was charged in fall 2011 and convicted in 2012 of molesting boys over the previous 15-plus years.
Three years later, I await someone to show proof that JoePa was culpable. Even the infamous Freeh Report that looked at the scandal has not given any evidence that JoePa was a conspirator.
In talking to non-Penn Staters about the scandal, I have discovered that many of them have a tremendous misunderstanding of JoePa’s role in the matter. That does not sit well with me, considering JoePa did as much as – if not more than – to advance academics at Penn State University. Yes, that’s academics, not athletics. (For more, read this column written in 2007.)
None of this, of course, exonerates Sandusky or the three former Penn State administrators charged in an alleged cover-up. Sandusky is a monster. The others await their day in court.
Rather, this is an attempt to clear up misunderstandings about Joe Paterno and his role in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Here are 12 things that most people do not know about JoePa and the scandal:
1 – Jerry Sandusky was not a coach at the time of the shower assault in 2001 in the Penn State football building. Sandusky was retired. JoePa was no longer his boss.
2 – Sandusky, as a professor emeritus, had access to any building that he desired at Penn State. In other words, he didn’t need permission from JoePa or anyone else to go into the football building.
3 – Sandusky targeted his victims through his charity, The Second Mile, and not through Penn State or its football program. The Second Mile, much more than Penn State, deserves blame for this tragedy.
4 – JoePa did not cover up the shower assault, and this is what investigators and the authorities have said and continue to say.
5 – JoePa, in fact, told his boss about the incident, which is the law.
6 – JoePa actually went one step further and also told the man who is in charge of Penn State’s police force about it.
7 – Penn State’s police force is an authentic police force, with about 50 armed police officers, arrest powers and with official jurisdiction over the Penn State campus. It has the same powers and responsibilities as any municipal police force in the state. In other words, Penn State police officers are not like security guards at a mall; they are the real thing and have made thousands of investigations and arrests over the years.
8 – JoePa didn’t just tell his boss and the man in charge of the police about the incident. JoePa also asked them to look into it.
9 – The Freeh Report was commissioned by Penn State’s trustees, who were looking – and still looking – to justify what they did. The Freeh Report has been proven to be faulty and is an interpretation based on supposition and circumstantial evidence – not a finding of fact or a verdict rendered by a jury. For more, click here.
10 – There is not one shred of evidence in the Freeh Report or anywhere – that we know – that shows JoePa covered up anything with respect to Sandusky.
11 – To this day, JoePa is the only person to have apologized for what happened, saying that in hindsight, he wished he would have done more. The key word is hindsight, as JoePa did not know at the time that Sandusky was a predator.
12 – Does anyone honestly believe that if he had known Sandusky was a serial molester that JoePa would have been silent? Furthermore, how could JoePa have known? Trained professionals in child abuse and law enforcement officials did not know.
Having said all of this, it is important again to note that Penn State, the institution, is not absolved of any wrongdoing. Innocent children were irreparably harmed, and a jury will determine whether the former administrators charged with a cover-up will be convicted of those charges.
But one thing is certain, and few non-Penn Staters in the public know it: By all evidence that we have seen, JoePa did not cover up any crime.
How many schools would award a retiring assistant coach the specific, written privilege of bringing young boys onto campus and into the athletic facilities,
No such contract was ever negotiated.
a few months after an investigation was conducted by the police into whether the coach had sexually molested a young boy on campus, in the athletic facilities?
The investigation was conducted by both the police and the PA DPW. Both parties concluded there was no molestation, after listening in on a conversation between the boy's mother and Sandusky.
Does it really require clairvoyance to see the irresponsibility and potential dangers of such an act?
Yes it does.
You live in a world where anyone can accuse you of a crime, and immediately you're guilty of it, even if an investigation turns up no evidence. In fact, it's worse than that, because in your fantasy world, not only are you guilty once you're accused, but you must suffer the penalties as if you were convicted. And indeed, it's far worse even than that, because in your world, not only is an accusation alone enough to bring a conviction down on the perpetrator, but an accusation refuted by available evidence is enough to bring down the penalties of conviction on the accused, the police, the child welfare agencies, and anyone who might have heard a rumor of the incident.
Thankfully, we don't live in your idiotic little world. Louis Freeh, the NCAA, and the PSU board of trustees are about to discover that fact. Throughout the spring and most of the summer they've been arguing that Freeh's report is nothing more than opinion which does not have to be defended as a finding of fact. [Think about that the next time you cite Freeh as a source of some kind of authority on one of these threads. "Judge" Freeh himself doesn't stand behind anything he's written in his so-called "report."]
Ironically, they're right about that, but since Freeh's fact-free diatribe was used to cause actual harm, they will now have to defend its conclusions in court. It's a shame that you and all the other fact-free haters don't have to do the same.
But what you will not be able to do is continue to propagate your lies on FR as long as there are people here actually conversant with the evidence.
You'd like that to be true, because otherwise you've got nothing.
Bill Kline, original author of this article knows as much about the "assault" as you, me, and for that matter Joe Paterno. You may think that makes you as guilty of a crime as Sandusky, but it doesn't.
All that anyone knows is what McQueary told them. That goes for Schultz, Curley, and Spanier as well.
I know you want to ignore what I actually typed because you've got nothing, but Kline's claim that an "assault" happened is as fact free as yours. McQueary -- by his own admission -- never told Paterno about an assault. Did he tell Curley or Schultz? He almost certainly did not. And all the hearsay cherry picking in hindsight doesn't make it so.
I don't have to pass judgement on the quality of McQueary's statement [or its downstream interpretations], because twelve people who listened to McQueary's testimony under oath didn't believe him. The alleged assault in the shower was one of only a few charges upon which the jury failed to find Sandusky guilty. Your case rests upon a very thin reed: the hearsay interpretation of a single witness who's told multiple, conflicting stories over the last few years. I'd give it up if I were you. But by all means, continue to make a fool of yourself.
Gee, I don't know. George Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder. He must have been guilty. Have you sent him any letters in prison?
By the way, three years later, where is the trial of the people supposedly involved in a "cover-up?"
It is pathetic to see the child like hero worship for an enabler of the horrific and long term sickening child sexual abuse that St. Joe Paterno knew about and continued to allow and cover up at Penn State. Yep, sad to see people here on FR help push along that cover up....and you are one of them.
Tell it to Sandusky’s victims. Those who might not have been had Paterno done more than just what he had to do. I know I would have. But then again, that’s my standard.
You have no proof that he knew any such thing.
That's not what you initially claimed the contract said.
You keep playing this game where you make one claim, and when your statements are shown to be demonstrably false, you scale them back. Initially, you claimed that McQueary told Paterno of an assault. You knew that wasn't true, and when you were called into the street, you retreated into to a claim that about "molestation."
The same thing is going on here. You originally claimed that Sandusky was given a free reign to bring boys onto campus. Yet that is not what the language of this contract says at all.
You are a liar; I'm content to let anyone reading this thread see how you make one hyperbolic claim after another, and once you've been shot down in flames, claiming that some much milder -- and usually innocuous -- fact backs up your original exaggerated claim.
I'm sorry that you or your children were denied your application to Penn State, or that Penn State beat your football team, or whatever your reason is for telling these lies. But at some point, you need to stop lying. There is no evidence whatsoever that Joe Paterno knew about a sexual assault, and what he did know about, he put his intern in a position to report.
Let me remind you, yet again, that Louis Freeh has maintained in his court pleadings that his "report" is nothing more than a set of opinions. That is the extent to which Judge Freeh is willing to support his own "report." So quoting it -- through a proxy no less -- is not impressing anyone who knows the actual facts in evidence.
That's a ludicrous attempt at analogy. George Zimmerman was the victim of a political show trial for the crime of defending himself against an assault with a deadly weapon. Graham Spanier et. al. are accused of complicity in crimes which were demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law to have been committed.
By the way, the trial of Spanier et. al. is being scheduled. Story linked here.
Note the judge who ordered them tried included McQueary's testimony in making that decision.
Don't you wish those who sent you out with your talking-points to try to whitewash Saint JoePa's reputation had warned you not to bring that up?
What solid proof do you have that your hero is innocent? Other than your child like hero worship for St. Joe that are driving your feelings, where is your solid proof he is innocent? “I have never blown the whistle on anyone yet”, says Joe Paterno, “and I never will”.......Yep, the child sexual abuse enabler knew. He knew it all along and with those words from his own lips, from long years earlier, he screwed his own pooch for what was to come. He had conditioned himself from long ago to never inform if it ever came down to a scandal involving himself or Penn State.
Nodescription of an assault;”
Naked in shower
Arms around from behind
Slapping sounds
But JoePa said he didnt know a man could bonk another male ...
And you’re obviously far too devoted to Paterno and his legacy to consider any other side of the story. You’re denying facts that emerged from that case, but your intransigence on the subject make you unable to bear any thought that Paterno could ever be at fault. Got it.
You nailed it VA. NO way St. Joe is guilty of ANYTHING!!!!Freakin’ pathetic isn’t it? Their groupie like rock star devotion to the child sexual abuse enabler, St. Joe Paterno, is really something. Of course when they are chanting nightly, (You KNEW JOE....You KNEW....You KNEW.....You KNEW!!! Why did you let it go on for YEARS?), to their St. Joe figurines and dolls that sit next to the lighted candles, they already know the answer and will just not face the ugly truth.
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