The story, while lacking many bombshells, adds to our understanding of how Paterno says he handled the allegations McQueary brought to him.
"He was very upset and I said why, and he was very reluctant to get into it,” Paterno said. “He told me what he saw, and I said, what? He said it, well, looked like inappropriate, or fondling, I’m not quite sure exactly how he put it. I said you did what you had to do. It’s my job now to figure out what we want to do. So I sat around. It was a Saturday. Waited till Sunday because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. And then I called my superiors and I said, ‘Hey, we got a problem, I think. Would you guys look into it?’ Cause I didn’t know, you know. We never had, until that point, 58 years I think, I had never had to deal with something like that. And I didn’t feel adequate.”
Many have wondered why Paterno, the most powerful figure in the Penn State community, didn't personally do more instead of merely reporting the accusation up the chain of command.
"I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was,” he said. “So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way. ...
"I didn’t know which way to go,” he said. “And rather than get in there and make a mistake ...”
Paterno also portrayed himself as being too much from the old world to really understand what McQueary was telling him. McQueary, the former Penn State assistant coach, testified to the grand jury that he witnessed what he believed to be a sexual encounter between Sandusky and what appeared to be a 10-year-old boy in a locker room shower at the school's football complex. McQueary has said he was reluctant to get into too many details with the then-78-year-old Paterno but that he later described in more detail what he saw to school administrators.
“You know, he didn’t want to get specific,” Paterno said. “And to be frank with you I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best."
To me, that defense rings false. There's no question Paterno is from a different generation, one in which certain types of sexual behavior were often not spoken about. But no matter what age you are, you should be able to quickly ascertain that any sexual activity between a man and a child is both wrong and illegal. There aren't many ways to go when it comes to that, except to do everything in your power to stop it.
Agree. He might have been telling the truth, but I believe he left out many details. The one question I would ask JoePa would be: “When McQueery came to you about the shower incident, was that the very first time you had heard any disturbing report about Sandusky that related to children?”
“I never heard of rape, and a man”.
Calling shenanigans on that quote. Child rape is nothing new. It isn’t something “invented” by our generation. My FIL (if alive would have been 100) knew this existed. My Dad (if alive would have been in his 80’s) knew it existed. Ask any elderly man you know if such a thing exists... he will tell you yes. The “old world” defense is very hollow. IMHO.
Since he never was actually fired by Penn State as they led everyone to believe, but is in fact negotiating his retirement benefits, I’m sure he will be getting the best of care. However the doctors may be surprised at the shriveled-up thing they ultimately find where his heart is supposed to be.
No sympathy.
When you work with kids you have a duty to protect them from crap like this, and there is no way this went on for so long without at least some suspicion!
Bull squeeze unless he grew up in a convent! No adult can be this naive.
If people actually shelter their kids enough that they don't know what to watch for it is a form of abuse.
My father was born and raised a backwoods West Virginia boy. He was not quite 10 years older than Paterno. He warned me as a child to be wary of men becoming friendly in public places. Especially public restrooms. I recall a case when a young boy needed to urinate in a public restroom, and asked my father to hold him up to a urinal as they were too tall for him. My father refused, but hustled a man out of a stall so the boy could go in a toilet that he could reach.
My father explained his actions to me as it not being proper for a man helping an unfamiliar boy in that way and would likely be seen as him molesting the boy (this was in the late 1960's).
My father -- of approximately Paterno's same age -- was a cautious man in that regard. When he heard of a child -- male or female -- being molested or raped by an adult, he was ready to exterminate the adult.
I think my father's awareness and actions were common for that generation. I don't believe Joe Paterno.
Would it be mean-spiritied to say "Karma"?
I yelled, and he let her go. I heard footsteps going towards the door and the door slam open. I imagined and maybe even heard the first step or two of her running down the hallway.
I finished rinsing my hair because if I had any trouble, I didn't want soap running into my eyes. At that time, I had more hair and rinsing took a few moments. I went to the edge of the shower area and looked out. One of the dorm floor jerks was standing smugly at the urinals relieving himself. I could tell by his posture and body language that he was all proud of himself for having bullied a girl.
That kind of stuff isn't all that uncommon in dorms. Frequency doesn't make that behavior right, but no one can stop that stuff. Idiots will be idiots, and too many stupid coeds will hang out with idiots. As I thought about whether to make a report, I realized that nothing would happen to the guy. I could hear a defense attorney asking, "So, the angle of your view meant that you could only see a slice of their bodies about four inches wide? You admit that you had to wipe shampoo out of your eyes to see at all? Would you say that the hard tiles of the shower room create many echoes and a great deal of noise from the running water? Would someone have had time to leave the bathroom and someone else go to the urinals while you were rinsing your hair?" I realized that making an issue of what I had seen was pointless.
That experience makes me wonder many things about Mike McQueary and what he saw or didn't see. He had the advantage of not having shampoo in his eyes, but what did he really see? Did he dimly see figures moving in a steamy shower and just make assumptions about what was happening or did he really see a rape? He has said since that time that he made sure that contact was stopped before leaving the room, but if he really saw a rape, why didn't he remove the victim from the presence of the rapist? I was not in a position to be sure of who was involved with what I saw. He could have been sure if he'd acted. The victim I saw was a legal adult and bears at least some responsibility for her company. I'm sure the guy would have argued that they were just joking. If there was anal sex in the shower at Penn State, no one can argue that anyone was just joking, and the victim's being a minor means that he wasn't responsible for hanging out with idiots.
Because Mike McQueary's story has so many problems, I can understand Joe Paterno not pushing things farther than he did. I can understand turning the investigation over to the university and assuming when no action was taken that they found too many inconsistencies in that story to believe that McQueary really saw anything. In spite of what everyone says about Joe Paterno's power, I can see him as a guy who didn't exercise that power but tried to keep things within proper channels. I can believe that he trusted those channels to do the right thing and is primarily guilty of misplacing his trust. We live in a society where "privacy" dictates that all kinds of things not be disclosed. If Joe Paterno didn't hear back, I can see him thinking that he wasn't told because he wasn't supposed to hear the outcome.
This allegation would have been he final nail in the coffin. He was 26-33 over those 4 years [his worst] All he was he was thinkig was how do I save my job and legacy.
He´s an enabler. We ought to be hearing his pathetic hand-wringing from prison.
The more I learn about Paterno’s handling of this, the angrier I get. He treated this heinous act like some low level DMV bureaucrat. Pass it along, and it's no longer my problem.
Paterno was a campus god, he could have demanded action.
To me, that defense rings false. There's no question Paterno is from a different generation, one in which certain types of sexual behavior were often not spoken about. But no matter what age you are, you should be able to quickly ascertain that any sexual activity between a man and a child is both wrong and illegal. There aren't many ways to go when it comes to that, except to do everything in your power to stop it.
I want so badly to believe JoePa's version, but logic tells me I can't. He knew that McQueary caught Sandusky showering with a boy and touching him at a minimum. Wasn't that enough? While this was a topic that wasn't discussed in polite company, it was talked about to the extent that every grown man and grown woman knows it exists. He told the Grand Jury that "fondling" or "something of a sexual nature" was what he inferred from the brief description that McQueary gave him.
I still think that he could have done something more, and surely if this was one of his own grandchildren, he WOULD HAVE done something more. University procedure be damned. Too many people were more comfortable looking the other way, and pretending that Sandusky was an upstanding citizen, when the fact is, there were at least rumors of his deviant behavior.
You know how JoePa said of Nixon, "How could Nixon know so much about college football in 1969 and so little about Watergate in 1973?". Well, I want to know how JoePa could know so little about Jerry Sandusky, especially in 2002 and beyond. Is that too much to ask?