One thing that puzzles me is why, after the 1998 accusation to the campus police that led to Sandusky’s apparently forced retirement, Paterno and others at the university allowed him to have access to the campus and have an office there. I can understand why self-interest — avoiding a scandal — might influence them to let him retire and fade away quietly. If they really believed he was sodomizing children, though, rather than just involved in inappropriate horseplay, why didn’t they separate themselves more completely from him — if only to protect themselves and the university?
If they had, his later arrest and conviction over a decade later would have been an embarrassment to his former university, but people wouldn’t be talking about tearing down Paterno’s statue and giving the university a death penalty. I haven’t bothered to follow the details of this story, but that sounds to me as if Paterno and the other Penn State authorities thought Sandusky had shown poor judgment, but didn’t really believe he was molesting children.
If I remember correctly, in the documents that Freeh release one was the request by Sandusky to have access to all the facilities. On the paper, in what has been identified as Paterno’s writing, is something to the effect of: Sandusky yes, Second Mile no, liability issue.
This is speculation but they probably gambled if they didn’t let Sandusky bring children on campus then they would be in the clear. Don’t forget, they treat Sandusky like he was the victim in all of this. They never gave a seconds thought to the kids beyond the liability problems they might pose for Penn State.
Barring him from campus also poses problems, when they bar him people are going to ask why he doesn’t have access to these places. After all it was clearly normal for former Penn State officials to have the use of the facilities on campus after they retired. It would raise a lot of uncomfortable questions. The campus is a public place, to really bar him they need a court order and to get that order they’d have to give a reason why. The best solution for the Penn State gang of four was to pretend nothing was wrong and that Sandusky retired because he was just too caring a guy who dedicated too much of his time to helping under privileged kids to be head coach and hope the whole thing disappeared until they were dead and gone.
I don’t really agree with the second paragraph, once they made the decision to cover up the crimes the damage was done. Their university in general and Paterno specifically would be wearing future assaults no matter where they occurred. The gambled that the assaults would only become public long after it was possible to prove that they took place and that they would have deniability.
If I may I ‘d also like to comment on your Paterno serial killer analogy. For that analogy to be correct, Paterno would have to be killing star players on other teams just before they had a big game against Penn State. Spanier, Curley and Shultz would have to have helped plan and carry out the killings. And of course the reason they did it would have to be to protect Penn State’s football industry. Other lower ranking people in the Penn State organization would have to know about the killings but they would have to remain silent about them out of fear of what Paterno would do to them.
Nothing any other team has ever done is 1/1,000th as vile as this. If any program ever deserved to be shut down it is this one. If anyone on the Penn State board had a shred of decency they would have killed the program or they would be resigning and announcing that the reason why was the other board members refused to shut down the team. If Penn State fans had a shed of decency they would demanding that Paterno’s name removed from anything associated with the university and they would be doing a lot of soul searching about what kind of cult has been created at Penn State. That none of that has happened, that Penn State fans and students are tired of hearing about the rapes and want to get on to important matters like next years football season and celebrating the wonderfulness of Jopa, clearly shows that attitudes that lead to the cover up are alive and well at Penn State. That alone is reason enough to end their playing days.
Sorry that my reply is so long
In the indices of the Freeh report, there are several letters and memos from Sandusky to University officials at the time of his retirement. There are what some (myself included) call veiled threats that if the University wants him to keep his mouth shut, they should give him what he wants. That includes the aforementioned access to school facilities, as well as being set up to coach middle school football, a request that was signed-off in the margins of the retirement agreement by Paterno himself, with the notes, and I quote “6th, 7th and 8th grade children” in Paterno’s own handwriting. That, along with an unprecdented one time payment of $168,000 to Sandusky as part of his retirement certainly makes it look like Sandusky had them by the shorts and knew it.
Clearly Paterno and the University just didn’t care that young boys were being raped and sodomized, and were prepared to provide Sandusky with a steady stream of victims to buy his silence. As for Sandusky, his behavior with his requests leads me to believe that the University was covering his tracks for a longtime, and he felt more than comfortable in blackmailing them because of it. Whatever else he feared, he did not fear exposure by Penn State. He knew they had as much to lose as him.