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The story apparently begins as early as 1994 or earlier, but let’s start in 1998. Jerry Sandusky worked with troubled youth as part of a charity called The Second Mile, which he helped found years earlier; Joe Paterno was actually on the board at some point, perhaps as a honorary trustee. Jerry Sandusky played for Joe Paterno from 1963-65, and served on his coaching staff starting in 1969. By 1998, Sandusky had served as defensive coordinator for years, was a close personal friend of Joe Paterno’s (for almost thirty years), and was the ‘heir apparent’ to replace Joe Paterno.

However, in 1998, the University Police conducted an investigation into incidents (plural) involving Sandusky showering with preteen boys in the Penn State football locker room showers. Sandusky would have been in his mid-50s. There’s nothing appropriate about that. Forget molestation. When you’re a man in your 50s working with troubled boys, showering naked with them is not therapy. It’s wrong. The GJ documents are careful to tell us that University President said he never saw the 1998 report; those document are frighteningly silent about whether Joe Paterno was interviewed in 1998, knew about the investigation, or saw all or part of that file or report.

Based on complaints by a mother, a DA looked into allegations of molestation but decided he did not have enough evidence. I may be wrong (I do not have the stomach to go back and read the reports again), but I do not believe the University Police report file was available to the DA, and I do not believe the University Police reported Sandusky to legal authorities.

This was Paterno’s defensive coordinator and friend and assistant coach of thirty years. It was the Penn State football locker room. What’s fairly clear is that Sandusky’s problem with little boys was widely known after (or before) the investigation. It would be disrespectful of Joe Paterno to think he was so naive and disrepected that everyone else would know and not tell Paterno.

Well, within months, Sandusky unexpectedly announced his early retirement. The official story is that Paterno told him that he would never be the head coach at Penn State. That’s probably true. And he was probably told that because . . . he showered with little boys.

Instead of disassociating completely with Sandusky, Penn State or Joe Paterno - because Joe Paterno was, as far as anyone who knew and understood the program believes, the athletic department in 1999 - decided to grant Sandusky ‘emeritus’ status.

Instead of disassociating with him, they gave him an office in the athletic building, with keys to the facilities, a parking space, a phone, internet access, discounts on campus, a tuition discount for himself and his adopted children, the rights to hold sleepover youth athletic camps on campus, and the rights to bring boys with him to insider football program events, such as sidelines and pre-game banquets. If you envision a child molester as an old man luring boys with candy, then Sandusky’s candy was bringing boys to the Penn State facilities and inside the football program, and Penn State - with Paterno’s knowledge, or at Paterno’s instruction - gave Sandusky the candy.

I have to believe that Paterno, as a decent man, could have called the President of Penn State into his home (he was that powerful) and said “no man who showers with boys is going to have access to MY football facilities.” At the very least, Paterno could have kept Sandusky from bringing boys to special football events, such as pre-game banquets.

In 2000, a janitor caught Sandusky in the football showers again, performing oral sodomy on a preteen boy. He didn’t report it to the police because he was ‘too scared” (but he reported it to the other janitors). Whether scared of long-time hero Sandusky (whose defense won the 1987 Orange Bowl National Championship), or bringing shame on Penn State, or reporting Joe Paterno’s friend of three decades, we don’t know. But I find it difficult to believe that Joe Paterno, who ran his program so that he knew if his boys broke curfew, even if it was in a town twenty miles away, would have heard that his good friend and former coach had another boy in the football showers. It was never reported and Joe Paterno apparently did nothing to stop Sandusky from bringing boys around to football events, to keep Sandusky from having access to the football showers, or . . . anything.

In 2002, Mike McQueary, former star QB for Penn State and then a graduate assistant, walked in on Sandusky anally raping a preteen boy in the football showers at 9:30 on a Friday night. McQueary didn’t stop Sandusky (who had been a coach when McQueary played) or rescue the boy. He didn’t call the police. He called his father and the decided that McQueary should report the incident to Paterno . . . the next morning. McQueary did.

Here’s an open part of the story. Paterno says he was only told that there was “fondling” and “maybe something of a sexual nature.” McQueary told his father it was anal rape. McQueary told the AD, Curley, and the Senior VP of Business and Finance, it was anal rape. Why wouldn’t he tell Paterno that?

Both the Grand Jury presentment and the GJ findings are very careful not to disclose what McQueary says he told Joe Paterno.

Paterno waited one day to call the AD, Curley, to whom he ‘reports’ on the organizational chart. Of course, in real life in 2002, everybody really reported to Paterno. Paterno was the man with the power that came with respect, 34 years of coaching, and National Championships. In fact, when Paterno was 78, the Trustees of the University asked Paterno to retire. He simply said no. That’s how powerful he is. Keep that in mind when people say Paterno reported this to his superiors. There may have been an organizational chart, but until the Trustees were forced to act and fired Paterno yesteday under this intense national spotlight, Paterno had no superiors at Penn State for two decades or more.

Curley and Schultz did nothing. They never reported the incident to the University Police, state youth protection, or any law enforcement. Sandusky kept his office in the Athletic building and emeritus status until this Sunday. He held sleepover camps for boys (although on the University’s other campus) through the Athletic Department until 2008.

Joe Paterno says “I fulfilled my legal duty. I reported to my superior.” And then he never followed up. He never asked about police involvement, or why Sandusky was still around, or hosting camps, or why Sandusky wasn’t charged with anything. Nobody at Penn State even tried to find out the identity of the boy who was raped.

The Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner stated publicly that Joe Paterno had a moral duty to report this to the police.

But for nine years, Joe Paterno, whom I believed to be a righteous, decent, moral man, hid behind the “I told my superior” and watched as Sandusky still roamed freely. He either didn’t ask any questions . . . or he didn’t care what was heard.

And now, we find that as of yesterday, there are twenty known victims of Sandusky, while there were only eight in the indictment. And we wonder why the indictment and these details were held until Joe Paterno could pass the All-Time Wins As A Division I Coach record. Because they were held.

But it wasn’t an incident in the showers in 2002. It was an unspeakable pattern of activities resembling Hell in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Something that you would think could only come from the mind of a depraved novelist. It was a group of powerful men with moral authority who chose not to use that moral authority and not to act, or to act only to cover this up.

It was the total abdication of all moral authority by a man that tens or hundreds of millions of people had viewed as the Nation’s Grandfather for at three decades.

And it was a world concentrated on how a football program and football coaches would be affected when at least twenty young boys had been unspeakably violated. And, just as when nobody at Penn State bothered to ask the name of a boy raped on a shower, most people lost sight of them