Almost everyone focused on Joe Paterno as responsible for this scandal. But as I pointed out at the time, he reported the incident to his superiors, and it was those superiors who decided to sit on it and cover up.
In particular, it was the President of Penn State who authorized the coverup, at the athletic director’s urging. The buck stopped with him.
And, as I noticed at the time, one of that President’s announced policies when he took over was to push for more gay rights at Penn State. Well, I guess he did.
But as you can see from the comments, pro and con, the discussion immediately drifts to Paterno and the Catholic Church, although neither bears the responsibility for what happened. The idea seems to be to deflect responsibility from gay rights to Catholic priests, and so far it has been a pretty effective propaganda ploy.
Paterno had the obligation to report this to the police. Paterno accepted and enabled the crimes. His name should be removed from anything associated with the university, beginning with that awful statue.
Good points. Paterno was routinely attacked by the media...especially the sports media...when he was the only one who reported the abuses. His superiors knew about it, and failed to do anything.
Also, not only Paterno was attacked because the media wanted to defend a pro-homosexual administrator.....they were also keeping under wraps the Syracuse pedophile scandal....which ESPN sat on that info for years. Many of ESPN top reporters and announcers are Syracuse grads.
Paterno will be vindicated. The PSU admins and their attorney can’t cross-examine a dead guy....and many around PSU still support JoePa
BS! He (Paterno) reported this “incident” to his “superiors”; the very same people BTW who had just as much as a vested interest in keeping the scandal quiet and under wraps as he did. Follow the money and the overwhelming urge among all these men including Paterno to protect the “reputation” of the program at all costs. Even at the cost of those boys.
As someone who grew up in PA and a big Penn State fan and someone who once held Paterno in great respect, he dropped the ball on this big time.
I am a supervisor in my job. If one of my direct reports came to me with an eye witness account of a sexual assault in the workplace, especially the rape of a child, and I reported this to my supervisors and they then did absolutely nothing about it, how could I then continue to do nothing about it myself, allow the accused to continue to bring children into the facility, never question my superiors on the outcome of the investigation, help to keep it under wraps and act like nothing ever happened and simply wash my hands of it because I “reported” it to someone higher up on the corporate or university food chain.
Sandusky’s predictions was not a great secret among those who were in a position to know about it but many of those people turned a blind eye and washed their hands of it. How many boys might have been saved from being molested if someone like Paterno stepped up and did the right thing instead of what was minimally required of him under procedure?
...“[this house] ought to be burned down and the ground sown with salt.” ... --Luke, "The Haunting of Hill House"
From the transcripts of the Grand Jury Report:
Q: I think you used the term fondling. Is that the term that you used?
Mr. Paterno: Well, I don’t know what you would call it. Obviously, he was doing something with the youngster. It was a sexual nature. I’m not sure exactly what it was.
Q: When did you — did you do something with that information?
Mr. Paterno: Well, I can’t be precise. I ordinarily would have called people right away, but it was a Saturday morning and I didn’t want to interfere with their weekends.
>>>>>Almost everyone focused on Joe Paterno as responsible for this scandal. But as I pointed out at the time, he reported the incident to his superiors, and it was those superiors who decided to sit on it and cover up.<<<<<<<
Apologists for Paterno have no shame. The following is an excerpt from the investigation into Penn State’s cover-up.
“E-mails show that vice president Gary Schultz, athletic director Tim Curley, and president Graham Spanier had initially settled on a plan in which they would speak with “the subject” — Sandusky — as well as his Second Mile charity and the Department of Welfare.
Those emails took place 16 days after McQueary offered his account. But Curley backed out of that plan in a second e-mail exchange.
“After giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe [Paterno] yesterday,” CNN quoted Curley from an obtained e-mail, “I am uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps. I am having trouble with going to everyone, but the person involved.”
The Athletic Director “backed out of the plan to go public” after he spoke with Paterno. There is no way this cover-up doesn’t stick to Paterno. It has to.
Not the way it looks now. Paterno's direct superior, Athletic Director Tim Curley, had decided to address the matter with Sandusky and to report Child Welfare and The Second Mile. According to one of the emails, Curley says that after meeting with Paterno, he decided to address the matter with Sandusky only.
And you really have to drop this bit about Paterno reporting this to his superiors, plural, unless you're saying Paterno was a liar. In Paterno's GJ testimony he makes it perfectly clear that after thinking for a day, he contacted only Athletic Director Tim Curley and nobody else. He says he never addressed the matter with anyone except Tim Curley.
Q: To whom or with whom did you share the information that McQueary had given you?
Mr. Paterno: I talked to my immediate boss, our athletic director.
Q: What is that person’s name?
Mr. Paterno: Tim Curley.
Q: How did you contact Mr. Curley?
Mr. Paterno: I believe I did it by phone. As I recall, I called him and I said, hey, we got a problem, and I explained the problem to him.
...
Q: You indicated that your report was made directly to Tim Curley. Do you know of that report being made to anyone else that was a university official?
Mr. Paterno: No, because I figured that Tim would handle it appropriately. I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Mr. Curley and I thought he would look into it and handle it appropriately.