You don't know that. We do know he did the bare minumum in reporting.
Please read those two sentences you just wrote, and then tell me how you can say what you've said with a straight face. Only in the insane world of the PSU/Joe Paterno haters can a man report a crime to the head of the police force and still be accused of "looking the other way," or "covering up." He reported the crime. That is not, by definition, looking away.
Hearsay testimony?
Yep. Please go look up the definition of hearsay, and then come back and talk to me when you know what you're talking about.
Paterno had no direct evidence of any crime. Only McQueary had that. That means that even had Paterno lived, he would not have been called to give testimony, because the only "evidence" he could offer about the shower incident was hearsay. He could give evidence to impeach or verify McQueary's bona fides, but he could not have offered any evidence of Sandusky's wrong doing personally. That's what hearsay evidence is.
he was told by a current assistant coach about things of a sexual nature he saw with a young boy in the shower.
Wrong. McQueary was an intern at that point. Not a coach. Not an assistant. As for what Paterno was told, if we take McQueary's latest sworn statement as "his story," he made it clear he did not reveal to Paterno what he suspected was going on, "out of respect for Joe."
Finally, your assertion that I'm a "Joegroupie" is idiotic. I didn't particularly care for Paterno's coaching for the latter half of his career; his whole Big Ten tenure was actually pretty awful (IMHO) considering the talent he recruited. What I am is someone who's actually conversant with the facts of the case, something that you have revealed you are not in just a few sentences.
I want you to take yourself out of hate mode for a minute and perform the following experiment. This happens tomorrow, not ten or fourteen years ago: You supervise a number of people, and a young intern who is the son of one of them comes to you with a vague claim about wrongdoing. The claim is "of a sexual nature ... and wrong." It involves someone who worked for you for years, who is highly respected for his work in the community. This is ALL YOU KNOW. What, other than putting the person who actually witnessed the crime in touch with the police to you see as your responsibility? Seriously.
You may now resume hate mode, casually slandering anyone you please on the basis of no evidence and the gift of perfect hindsight. [Yet with all that, you still seem unable to see the person actually responsible for the crimes, or to hold him responsible: Jerry Sandusky.]
I've consistently said that the best you can say of Paterno is he did the bare minimum to deal with this horrible situation (even he admitted that before he died). The worst you can say is that he knew and shielded the program from harm in order to justify his life of coaching (the position of the Freeh report and the NCAA). None of us know which of these is more true or where the truth fully lies.
Even the best way to look at this shows a deep flaw in Paterno. If the truth actually is that he was simply too busy, too fixated with his coaching to deal with this issue that his coworker and friend may have been a pedophile, that in itself is simply wrong. If the truth is that he didn't deal with the issue to shield the program and his coaching legacy it's more than horrible.
Now, none of us know what's true between these two positions, the truth is likely between the two but none of us know or will know what's true.
Joe Paterno is dead. He can't be tried. To hate him is silly, but to defend the indefensible as if Saint Joe was wholly correct in what he did (and didn't do) in this situation as some here are doing is simply disgusting.