Posted on 02/10/2013 7:10:13 AM PST by Uncle Chip
A report commissioned by Joe Paterno's family calls the July 2012 Freeh report that was accepted by Penn State trustees before unprecedented sanctions were levied by the NCAA against the school's football program a "total failure" that is "full of fallacies, unsupported personal opinions, false allegations and biased assertions."
The Paterno family report, which targets nearly every conclusion and assertion the Freeh report made about Paterno in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, states that while former FBI director Louis J. Freeh has had an honorable past and good reputation, his investigation -- especially as it relates to Paterno -- relied on "rank speculation," "innuendo" and "subjective opinions" when it concluded that Paterno concealed facts about Sandusky in part to avoid bad publicity.
Freeh was hired on Nov. 21, 2011 and paid $6.5 million by Penn State University trustees --
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The Paterno family immediately roundly and loudly rejected the report, and, four days after its release, instructed its lawyer to form a "group of experts" to conduct a comprehensive review of the facts and conclusions. The Paterno family asked its attorney's law firm, King and Spalding of Washington, D.C., to start "a comprehensive review of the report and Joe Paterno's conduct. They authorized us to engage the preeminent experts in their field and to obtain their independent analyses."
The law firm hired former U.S. attorney general Richard Thornburgh, former FBI supervisory special agent and former state prosecutor James Clemente, and Dr. Fred Berlin, a treating physician, psychiatrist, psychologist and expert in sexual disorders and pedophilia at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine. The family's report attacks Freeh's conclusions, assertions, methodology, investigative abilities and choices, disclosures and independence.
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(Excerpt) Read more at espn.go.com ...
<>True or false? “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”<>
Would that include MBNA, its directors, and vice chair Louie Freeh who were financiers of Sandusky’s Second Mile Charity:
MBNA To Sponsor Sandusky Testimonial Dinner And Roast
February 28, 2000
University Park, Pa. — MBNA America has agreed to be the lead sponsor for the MBNA Jerry Sandusky Testimonial Dinner and Roast, scheduled for Friday, April 14, 2000.
Hosted by Penn State Intercollegiate Athletics, the event will be held at the Bryce Jordan Center and will kickoff the annual Blue/White Weekend in University Park. The dinner and roast will be attended by an impressive lineup of past players, coaches, Penn State administrators, and others who wish to share their thoughts and some untold stories about the retired Penn State Nittany Lion football coach.
Net proceeds from the event will benefit The Second Mile through a newly established Second Mile/Jerry Sandusky endowment fund. Longtime defensive coordinator for the Nittany Lions, Jerry Sandusky, 55, retired last year after 32 years as a member of the Penn State football coaching staff to devote more of his time to The Second Mile.
http://www.psu.edu/ur/2000/sanduskydinner.html
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Louis Freeh, the man hired by Penn State University to run “an independent investigative review into all aspects of the Universitys actions with regard to the allegations of child abuse” by Jerry Sandusky, spent five years and collected millions of dollars as a senior executive of a big financial company that enjoyed a long-running business relationship with Penn State, its alumni association and Sandusky’s boss, former football coach Joe Paterno.
Freeh, who headed the FBI for eight years until 2001, spent the next five years as vice chairman at MBNA Corp., where his titles included general counsel. Penn State’s announcement notes his earlier FBI service, and his previous, short stint as a federal judge, but does not mention his years spent working for MBNA, which paid the school millions of dollars for access to students and alumni. Freeh journeyed to Penn State in 2005 as featured speaker at a Penn State assembly where his colleague Ric Struthers, who managed the lucrative relationship between bank and school was guest of honor.
Struthers, later head of Bank of America’s credit card unit, is the highest-profile national businessman on the board of Sandusky’s Second Mile Foundation, which a Pennsylvania grand jury report alleged Sandusky used to find abuse victims.
Other PSU news
True or false? "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized." "In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the university -- Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley -- repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse,"
Thanks — You’re right.
Don't go away uninformed and angry, annelids.
Paterno's legacy already had come into serious question prior to the Freeh report. Former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, a contemporary and friend who is second in major college football wins behind Paterno (409 to 377), believes Thursday's report has permanently tarnished Paterno's image. "Here's a guy who makes one terrible mistake, one of the most terrible in college athletics," Bowden said during a phone interview with the Patriot-News. "I'm afraid that will be his legacy. When people talk about Joe in the future, it will all come back to this."
Freeh said Sandusky's conduct was in part a result of the school's lack of transparency, which stemmed from a "failure of governance" on the part of officials and the board of trustees. He said the collective inaction and mindset at the top of the university trickled all the way down to a school janitor who was afraid for his job and opted to not report seeing sex abuse in a school locker room in 2000.
“You are blinded by your idyllic love for Paterno.”
If you read this thread, you will know I do not love Paterno and don’t much like him.
“Ive cited links numerous times and sycophants like yourself are still unable to admit that Paterno was a mere mortal failure.”
citations and links are not evidence. When you find some, if ever, just post it. I am willing to accept any actual facts that prove your claim. You haven’t provided them.
“You sycophants would sell your own children to Sandusky.”
Here is where you veered your car off the road and went hurtling down the cliff, before crashing and burning. I used to think it was just liberals who make emotional arguments and false accusations. Your post proves conservatives fall into this trap also.
Here’s a tip. When you idolize, you demonize.
You people are the jokes of rational argument and common sense.
It would be hilarious were it not for the number of children that were abused after 2001, that didn’t have to be, were Joe Paterno to merely live out the rules of integrity that he espoused.
2001 -- isn't that the year that Louie Freeh joined MBNA, a major sponsor of the Sandusky Second Mile Charity where all of the kids who he abused came from???
Louie has so many skeletons in his closet that they are all falling out. One of those is his time at MBNA sponsoring Sandusky's child exploits at the Second Mile for years.
No wonder he didn't interview the directors at the Second Mile and left them off the hook. They might have pointed back to him.
You can believe compromised unethical prefabricating Louie Freeh all you want.
Those of us who disdain those things will go with Thornburgh's report.
Are you ridiculously implying that MBNA and PSU are one and the same? LOL!!!!! Is every sponsor affiliated with PSU and Second Mile guilty by association? Your desperation is pathetic.
Not every sponsor had a seat on the Board like MBNA.
And not every sponsor with a seat on the Board had a vice chair and general counsel subsequently paid $6.5 million to fix blame for Sandusky's child exploits on anyone and anything other than the charity where you had a seat on the Board.
You spend over 6 years sponsoring, financing, promoting, supporting a child molester and his charity and then you are paid millions to produce an investigative report.
And in that report you white wash the culpability of those at Second Mile clear out of it.
And in that report you fail to mention your own previous involvement with Sandusky and the Second Mile that would compromise its objectivity??
And you don't see anything wrong with that???
WOW!!!
You are desperately deflecting.
Alinsky demonization of Freeh now lol.
Can't you answer the simple true or false question, emoter? I've posted it a number of times and you continue to mindlessly spin.]
True or false? "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized." "In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the university -- Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley -- repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse,"
Paterno's legacy already had come into serious question prior to the Freeh report. Former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, a contemporary and friend who is second in major college football wins behind Paterno (409 to 377), believes Thursday's report has permanently tarnished Paterno's image. "Here's a guy who makes one terrible mistake, one of the most terrible in college athletics," Bowden said during a phone interview with the Patriot-News. "I'm afraid that will be his legacy. When people talk about Joe in the future, it will all come back to this."
Freeh said Sandusky's conduct was in part a result of the school's lack of transparency, which stemmed from a "failure of governance" on the part of officials and the board of trustees. He said the collective inaction and mindset at the top of the university trickled all the way down to a school janitor who was afraid for his job and opted to not report seeing sex abuse in a school locker room in 2000.
"Officials and board of trustees"........Hadn't you previously claimed the BOT wasn't implicated?
“You people are the jokes of rational argument and common sense.”
This is simply name-calling. I will take this as your admitting you’ve got nothing.
“It would be hilarious were it not for the number of children that were abused after 2001, that didnt have to be, were Joe Paterno to merely live out the rules of integrity that he espoused.”
It apparently does not matter to you that the charges in ‘98 were investigated by police and child welfare and there was not enough evidence to more forward. Somehow, that implicates Paterno... got it.
Alinsky???
Did he have a seat on the Board of Sandusky's charity as Freeh's superior at MBNA did???
Did he sponsor and finance Sandusky's child exploits as Freeh's MBNA did???
Surely the Board knew about Sandusky, and if the Board knew then Freeh knew.
What did Freeh know and when did he know it???
Someone needs to send him a subpoena.
Let me get this straight:
MULTIPLE Penn State admins, already having their associate Penn State admins (3 for now) in deep cow dung for protecting a child-rapist for 8-10 years, made an administrative decision to hire an "unethical" report-"prefabricator" on this matter.
Hmmm...IF what you say is so with this indictment of yours, then the Penn State admin culture is MUCH worse than the rest of us thought [& it's frankly pretty hard to sink lower when that group is treading water & drowning in the sewer culture of sanctioning child sexual grooming & repeat sexual abuse]
If this indictment of yours is true, then on TOP of what already Penn State has evidenced to the world ...
(a) The Commonwealth of PA needs to cut off the 10% of funding that Penn State receives (minus any accountability it has back to the state);
(b) Ped State...Corruption State...needs to be booted out of its Conference...lest its reputation drag down the rest...tho, to be honest, the University of Indiana already sullies it enough via its total sanctioning of Kinsey & HIS pedophilia...The Big 10 IS the pedophile capital of the country!!!
(c) Serious discussions need to be held about whether its football program should ever be allowed to revive itself, lest it continue to permanently contaminate every B.A. & grad degree that its grads receive...
I think Penn State needs to conduct a total exorcism of its administrative program and simply ask EVERY admin & sports-related employee that was present as of 2011 to voluntarily retire...and if they fail to do that, the Board of Trustees -- before stepping down themselves -- should fire them...
You've painted a DEEP, DISTURBING picture of even more corruption at this "pit"...
Which translates into that the NCAA didn't even begin to go far enough in its sanctions...The NCAA needs to come in with "Round II" of its penalties and wallop 'em again!
It does blow any possible claim of impartiality by Freeh out of the water. Whatever his actual relationship with Sandusky was, this connection shows that he did have a vested interest in how his report concluded.
Why weren't they fired?
And doesn't this add even another level of indictment vs. the Penn State admins & the Penn State culture in general?
Where is the missing hue & cry from the Nittany Lion grassroots to kick these two out vs...going on a full two years now of paying Curley's salary for him being sidelined by criminal non-activity???
I guess we see how "provoked" State College culture is about child abuse when they continue to line the pockets of the Penn State AD...and allow Spanier access to the classroom...
Here is the article announcing the hiring of Louie Freeh. Notice how his curriculum vitae magically ends at 2001 —
http://live.psu.edu/story/56476
They knew they were wrong to hire him and they didn’t think anybody would notice or make an issue out of it or ask what he was doing from 2001 through 2006.
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"Nike co-founder Phil Knight reversed himself regarding former Penn State gridiron coach Joe Paterno after a new report that criticized the original pedophilia investigation commissioned by the school.
Last July's findings by former FBI director Louis Freeh found Paterno should have done more to stop Jerry Sandusky, his assistant coach who was convicted last year on 45 counts of child sexual abuse.
Knight had been one of Paterno's most ardent supporters but said after the Freeh report that "it appears Joe made missteps that led to heartbreaking consequences."
snip.................
But Knight, who released a statement Monday via ESPN, said that after the Paterno family's rebuttal report, "it is clear that the findings of the Freeh Report were unjustified and unsubstantiated."
Knight said his rebuke of Paterno was made without having read Freeh's report in full and that when he later examined it, "I was surprised to learn that the alarming allegations, which so disturbed the nation, were essentially theories and assertions rather than solid charges backed by solid evidence.
"On reflection I may have unintentionally contributed to a rush to judgment.
"When this tragic story first unfolded Joe cautioned all of us to slow down and carefully gather the facts before jumping to conclusions. We owed it to the victims, he said, to get to the truth. It was counsel we all should have followed."
Knight also blasted the National Collegiate Athletic Assiociation (NCAA), which has member schools that have multi-million-dollar sponsorship deals with Nike. The NCAA hit Penn State with a four-year ban from lucrative bowl games, a $60 million fine and the wiping out of 112 Paterno victories from 1998-2011.
"The NCAA's actions are exposed as totally unwarranted," Knight said. The NCAA acted outside its charter and rendered judgment absent any kind of investigation or judicial hearing. It was simply grandstanding."
Thanks for the ping!
The knee-jerk chattering class, acting like a mindless lynch mob, found a big convenient target and tore down Joe’s statue along with his reputation. And now the smug little bastards can feel all good about themselves. I maintain that history will vindicate Joe Paterno.
The rest of that Penn State crew, however - - well, those trials should be VERY interesting. If their strategy was to throw the old dead guy under the bus, the Thornburgh report just made that gambit a lot tougher to pull off.
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