There is more to this story than we are hearing in the news. It involves a missing DA. The article below states a student told Joe about abuse of another student and implies Joe told it to the Athletic Director who with another executive broomed the allegation. Earlier allegations were known to the police and DA. I still think Joe is the convenient scape goat.
Paterno spent 40+ years cultivating his image as the very face of the PSU football program. Rightly or wrongly, he took the credit for all the good that came of that, but an inescapable consequence of having put himself in that position is that (rightly or wrongly) he will find himself in the middle of the bad things as well.
It wasn’t just a student who told Paterno, he was a graduate assistant and now is the wide receivers coach at PSU. Paterno did tell the AD. None of them did the right thing, and they all are culpable. They are all fired, so Paterno isn’t a scapegoat, just the name people recognize.