Maybe I’m too cynical these days, but looking at this list of charges against Jerry Sandusky, there is simply no way all of that happened without multiple people knowing about it. It just doesn’t work that way. Someone else knew.
In fact we know someone else knew- Joe Paterno knew, and after reporting it, simply did nothing.
What is wrong with these people?
*** Update ***
I’m kind of shocked by the excuse-making in the comments. For the love of everything, read this report and get back to me (.pdf). Sandusky was caught by a GA having anal sex in the showers with a ten year old. The GA informed JoePa. Sandusky was then banned from bringing kids to the facility. That was it. This is quite clearly a cover-up that all involved participated in, and Curley and Schultz pretty clearly felt they could just lie under oath about what the GA told them.
trollhattan
They live in a morality vacuum. The only sin is losing.
MattF
Funny, that. When faced with an actual moral imperative, ‘Papa’ Paterno decided that funny Uncle Jerry needed to be protected more than those boys who just passed through.
There’s now one big cognitive dissonance train coming down the track, and we’ll see who among the believers is able to form the obvious inferences and who is not.
smintheus
And it’s not even a Catholic school.
mellowjohn
“What is wrong with these people?”
ummm… they needed to win football games?
c u n d gulag
I was a huge fan of Penn St and Joe Pa.
NO MORE!
Who did Sandusky think he was, a Priest?
And wtf thought it was a good idea to allow this guy to still run camps for kids after these accusations?
He was running his own Minor’s League.
Sick, sick, sick.
Everyone who knew about this and did nothing, needs to be prosecuted, lose their jobs, and go to jail where, take it from someone who taught in a Maximum Security, as people who aided or ignored the molestation of a child, they will not have a happy time.
Say it ain’t so, Joe Pa!
Sadly, he can’t…
Ellen
So f-ing horrible. And yes,I agree, Joe Pa and many many others knew I’m sure. I hope they all get what they deserve.
Gex
You’re in the tribe or you’re not. Sandusky was in the tribe. Members of the tribe really don’t have any empathy for victims of the tribe.
Yutsano
I hesitate to mention this, but I think it’s appropriate: there’s an element of homophobia here. If Penn State got wind of Sandusky’s crimes and realized they could be labeled teh ghey school their recruiting could go into the toilet. So they shut up everyone they could. There was massive CYA on several levels on this horrible happening.
elisabeth
Sadly Penn State will likely face less punishment as an institution than USC or Ohio State did for stupid shit.
stinkwrinkle
For god’s sake, he felt comfortable enough about the situation to TAKE THE KIDS TO HIS WORKPLACE TO MOLEST THEM!
With good reason, evidently.
Prison for everyone, and kill the program. Nuke it from orbit.
Emma
I read through the story at LGM and nearly threw up. So much concentrated evil.
piratedan
in fairness, Paterno kicked this to his AD, since JoePa may not have the ability to hire/fire or perhaps it was during a camp affiliated with the school but not of the school. AFAIK, Sandusky was no longer actively coaching for the University but was trading on his name association with the school. Could Paterno have done more, hell yes, he could have gone to HR, the police, Sandusky himself and I don’t know why he didn’t or couldn’t.
Linnaeus
If you read the report of the grand jury’s findings (which is profoundly disturbing), it’s pretty clear that multiple people in positions of responsibility knew that something was wrong and did nothing about it. It’s absolutely reprehensible.
The culture of an institution can exert a powerful influence on people who are invested heavily in it, not only for their personal gain, but also because they believe in the (good) values the institution represents and expresses. So when you’ve climbed up the ladder to some position of authority and become enmeshed in an institution’s culture, there are very strong incentives against doing things that will subvert that institution. So even non-monstrous people will find ways to rationalize doing (or not doing) things in support of something that they believe in, even when those same people would act differently in another context.
Depressing, I know.
BH
How in the hell does anyone see a man raping a boy and just go tell the coach? If I could keep myself from beating the hell out of the rapist, I would go straight to the police and be in the prosecutor’s office every day asking “When do I need to testify?” John’s right: there are a whole range of people involved in this thing who have no decency whatsoever.
Mark S.
@elisabeth:
They won’t get any punishment at all from the NCAA. It doesn’t fall into the heinous crimes like a star quarterback selling an autograph for $50.
I’m just looking forward to hearing stupid announcers and sportswriters say that the real victim in all this is JoPa.
RossInDetroit
The NYT has a pretty good article on this. It’s pretty horrifying. If there aren’t jail sentences for this, how could a parent feel safe?
Mark S.
@piratedan:
He absolutely should have gone to the police when he realized the AD wasn’t going to do shit about it. Same with the grad student.
JWL
@BH: Check out last night’s Lawyers, Guns, & Money’s blog. I got into a flame war with a moral cripple who dared to call me a liar for making your exact point.
pat
And what about the grad assistant who actually witnessed this? And called his dad? And his dad said to leave the building? Why didn’t he just call the police..??
Glenn
So, as I understand this, the second most expensive state college in the U.S. is going to be paying the legal bills of these psycho mofos.
Isn’t that special?
And why didn’t the witnesses try to stop the rapes? I’m not generally violent nor especially brave, but I would have stopped the assaults or died trying. What measly jock cowards!
RossInDetroit
Now we’ll find out if he’s a liberal or a conservative. If he’s widely defended as a good man because of his charitable work, and the accusers are slandered, then he’s a Rightie.
Narcissus
Our society is fucked up.
Mark S.
@JWL:
I’m glad joe from Lowell has found a new place to hang out at.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Can we haz real NFL Open Thread, please?
Roger Moore
@BH:
This. The most disturbing thing about the way the incident was handled is that everybody seems to have viewed it as a problem for the institution rather than a crime that needed to be investigated and prosecuted. Everything else they did wrong flows from that.
Charity Froggenhall
@BH: agreed. I think I read that the guy who witnessed Sandusky
“having sex with a boy”raping a child in the shower called his dad first, then went to Paterno. Why didn’t he just call the cops?Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
If I understand correctly, these fine people chose to overlook this man’s criminal and immoral behavior because of extraneous factors such as “he was a good guy” and “he’s on our side,” and they still retain “full confidence” in him.
I wonder if any parallels can be drawn between balloonbaggers and a certain actor in the political realm.
.
.
Lysana
I can understand the grad student being so horrified he couldn’t think of what to do past what he did. Not to mention trusting higher authority to deal with it. Why he failed to go to the police himself is an interesting question. I’d ask him whether he was talked to about it afterward. He wasn’t in a good power position to defy the football department, after all. I save my outrage for the ones who were told and did nothing past blocking Sandusky from
rapingbringing kids on campus.Lysana
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: You are a moral zero and a blight on this blog, even when I use the pie filter. Go die in a fire.
Taylor
Anyone who has dealt with any kind of bureaucracy knows that they always circle the wagons to protect their own. Always.
What is deeply ironic is that Spanier, the President of Penn State, who has provided “unconditional support” for the people who did nothing about this, has written numerous articles for the Chronicle of Higher Education on ethics.
What a hypocrite.
bin Lurkin'
“It is curious–curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.” -Sam Clemens
It would be my guess that the grad student didn’t call the cops because he thought the chances of him being believed by the cops were slim to none.
Dropping the dime on a powerful person in a situation like that requires moral, not physical, courage.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Lysana:
THIS!
Lizzy L
The grand jury report is dreadful — horrible. I cut the grad student who observed the rape a little immediate slack: he was quite possibly in shock, and his judgment was impaired. But I agree: when he (and his dad) realized that Nothing Was Going To Be Done about the rape of a child, he should have called the cops, and the media.
Of course, his life would have turned into a living hell for quite a few years. To begin with, no one would have believed him, and then he would have been challenged, attacked, perhaps sued…. That’s not offered as an excuse for his inaction, only a description of what I’m pretty sure would have happened. Institutions protect their assets pretty ruthlessly.
geg6
To be fair (and I’m no fan of his despite working for the same employer), I believe the real culprit who should be in jail is Gary Schultz, the senior vp for finance and business (in addition to Sandusky). He oversees the university police and should have reported what he knew to them. And he definitely knew since he and AD Curley are indicted for not doing so and then attempting to mislead the grand jury. Unfuckingbelievable. Those two have got to go, but Spanier is currently standing behind them. Ican’t imagine that will last.
Linnaeus
@Lysana:
According to the grand jury, he 1) initially reported the rape to Paterno, who then informed the AD (Tim Curley) the next day, and 2) was questioned about a week and a half after that by both Curley and Gary Schultz (PSU’s VP for Finance and Business). Curley and Schultz told the grad assistant that they’d look into it; the assistant was never questioned by anyone after that until the grand jury.
Suffern ACE
@pat: Well, if I were fair, were I the age of a typical grad assistant, I probably would have been in shock and called my dad too. But my mom would have gotten on the phone and said “for Christ’s sake, call the police!” He may have doubted what he saw. He was a grad student at a university. What does he know about dealing with the police or witnessing crimes?
AA+ Bonds
I wonder if one BJ’s big thinkers might want to do a post on this bit from Rogers, Elements of Diffusion (1995) as applies to liberalism.
Special emphasis might be put on the aspects related to affect (social prestige, satisfaction, etc.) that liberals tend to neglect or openly disdain when promoting their political technology.
genghisjon
It kind of lets you know where some atheletes get thier above the law attude.
catpal
didn’t you know? Penn State is like GOD in PA – they can do No Wrong.
All that Football MONEY and too many corrupt and Politically-connected Alumnus, and you too, will forget about multiple se-xual assaults, and child abusers.
and yeah, I absolutely believe that Mr. He-thinks-He-is-God Paterno, Football Team Staff, and most of the Penn State Board of Directors KNEW about Sandusky and his abuse, and continued to Cover It Up.
geg6
I meant say “to be fair to JoePa.”
oh, and RossInDetroit, I know for a fact that JoePa is a wingnut, but couldn’t say about Sandusky. Spanier is a Dem. Not that any that matters. I can definitely say that this is a case of the insanity that infects some Penn Staters, where they will fanatically defend and protect the university whatever the cost. Sick.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Linnaeus:
And there’s the story.
Suffern ACE
@genghisjon: Do athletes behave that differently from other college students, who spend their time with their noses to the grindstone that there is no time to get in trouble?
Jim
this reeks of the Catholic Priest abuse scandal obviously on a much smaller scale apparently perpetrated by one individual but covered up by many many around him.
Look, if the first incident had been dealt with swiftly and with force, perhaps there wouldn’t have been so many victims.
So Sad.
Of course the Christianists will shout from the mountaintops that is is all about the gays.
What the F&*K is wrong with you people who won’t take responsibility and protect the children!!!!!!!!!!
gogol's wife
@Uncle Clarence Thomas:
You are disgusting. just disgusting.
catpal
@geg6: They ALL need to go to prison for this.
Really? over 10 years of this criminal child abuse and only ONE or TWO arrested with Sandusky.
I have little Faith in PA Justice with too many Penn Staters involved are working in the PA AG’s office.
there will be MORE Cover Up to protect the Penn State MONEY program.
Nutella
@Roger Moore:
Everyone, from the grad student who witnessed a violent crime in progress and failed to report it to the police on up through the hierarchy, looked at it as a professional rather than a criminal problem. They all considered their own career success to be vastly more important than any number of raped children.
smintheus
@Linnaeus: Yes, exactly. I think that institutions that believe they are unique are especially prone to egregious corruption when so many people associated with them think they need or have earned the right to be exempt from the normal standards of behavior.
I worked once at one of the military academies, where this dynamic had turned the place into a morass of corruption, deception, and willful blindness to just shocking problems. The academy leadership invariably treated the messes there as PR problems, and closed ranks against attempts to actually address what was wrong.
MikeBoyScout
When things become sacred everything about them becomes fucked up.
All around us are sacred organizations, ideas, people.
When we empower them with sacred status we stop questioning them and very quickly question those with the audacity to question the sacred.
Sadly, Jo-Pa has forfeited nearly everything he once was in pursuit of a worthless record. Jo-Pa has become a caricature of moral and professional turpitude. That’s the record which will never be broken.
Maude
@Nutella:
This.
Brian S
@Nutella: I’m with the people who are cutting the grad student a break–he reported it to higher-ups at the university, and then trusted that they were going to go from there. Sure, he could have gone to the police first, and he probably deserves some criticism for not doing so, but the fact remains that he did report it. It’s the other fuckers who covered it up, and who should go rot as a result.
pat
When I was the age of that grad student, back in the Pleistocene, I might have been so shocked that I really did not realize what I had witnessed. I actually had no idea that men “did it” “that way.” But today, it is almost unimaginable that a young man would not immediately know what was going on. I have to suspect that he feared for his own position as a grad asst, but I would not like to accuse him of that.
But I love the idea of his mom giving him a well-deserved kick in the butt and telling him to go to the police already. Would that it had happened so…
(in reply to Suffern Ace, sorry that way back in the Pleistocene we did not learn the proper procedures to reply…)
Villago Delenda Est
Denial. It isn’t just a river in Egypt, you know.
Shade Tail
@Brian S:
Count me in on that as well. The average grad student is a mid-twenties sorta-adult, still-kinda-kid. I very strongly doubt his further inaction was malicious or CYA. It was probably ignorance of the law and/or naiveté. Also, he represents the larger school only insofar as he’s a student there, but he’s definitely not one of the folks in charge who are truly responsible for this crime.
JPL
Wow..I just read the NYTimes article..even the janitor knew.
gene108
@bin Lurkin’:
We’re so conditioned to mind our own business that it becomes hard to intervene in what’s happening around you.
You could have someone struggling to carry a load and people would just walk on by, rather than offer to help carry it.
Second, most folks don’t interact with the police, except in traffic violations. They just don’t know what to do in circumstances that are not directly affecting them.
Our fight or flight reflexes get really screwed up, when something strange that isn’t in directly affecting us happens.
I don’t know how to educate people about what to do or how to change people’s reactions to these incidents.
magurakurin
I spent a year in State College in 1984. It was a creepy, vapid hell whole of conformity. Worst place on Earth kind of vibes. Not surprised at all that the whole place was/is run by a bunch a baby raping old men. Joe Paterna was some sort of god-like figure then with his face visible all over the town like Big Brother. Jail is too good for Sandusky. Seppuku really, really needs to make a comeback here on Planet Earth.
suzanne
@Yutsano:
Bingo.
Plus there’s that whole delicious rape culture we live in. Must. Assert. Control.
Martin
@Nutella: However, that’s how universities are operated. There’s at least 3 other judicial systems inside of a university that operate independently of the police – student academic, student personal conduct, faculty conduct. Underage drinking is illegal but rarely goes outside of the student personal conduct system. And large universities like Penn State operate their own police forces, so there’s at least 4 systems internal to the institution, and that excludes what the hospital has, what the sports groups have for NCAA violations, and so on.
Obviously acts like this are criminal and should go to the police, but there is a broad sense inside of most large universities that they are completely self-sufficient and so long as you go up in the food chain, you’ve done what you need. To some degree that’s an attitude that is promoted. To some degree that’s an attitude that is inevitable with an overly complex system. But within a university, because the university has its own police force, everything is a professional problem.
Not 4 days ago I chewed someone out for not taking something to the police that should have been, but wasn’t, because they brought it to some other agency and felt they knew best who needed to know what. Had they worked for me (and not been new) I’d have fired them for that.
But Penn State deserves to be sued from end-to-end for this, and not a few people tossed in prison. This problem isn’t getting better, and isn’t going to without some high-level people going to the pokie. VATech shifted things a bit, but not nearly enough.
Quarks
Like others, I have to speak up a bit for the grad student – he did at least attempt to report what happened, which is more than pretty much everyone else involved did, and he had to know that going further meant the probable loss of his assistantship/degree. And most grad students are not among the wealthy of the country.
The better paid bosses, on the other hand…
TuiMel
@Brian S:
It seems to me that this witness / grad student had an opportunity to intevene and perhaps wrest the child from Sandusky. Yes. It would be hard to do. But, by Jesus, I hope that I would find it within in myself to go to the aid of a child who was being raped. Maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe the shock of it all would have been too much, and I would have called my dad, too. But, after that I would hope that both my dad and I would have been following up to separate this predator from any further victims and be sure that everything was being done to bring justice for the victim. I don’t see how anyone could do less and actually sleep at night.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
I don’t think this is denial; it was a coverup. They notified other organizations Sandusky worked for. That’s not what you do when you genuinely refuse to believe the guy has done anything wrong. That’s what you do when you know damn well he’s done something wrong but you’re hoping to bury it.
Ailuridae
@piratedan:
Ummm, wtf? Paterno’s legal and moral obligation here is clear: he simply has to go to police. End of sentence.
xian
what a creepy monster that troll is. joe in lowell over at LG&M is also a moral toad.
Sacrablue
As someone who was living in State College in the mid 80’s, I can say that the town was all JoePa all the time. My next door neighbor was a lifelong resident and well connected to the local law enforcement community. It wasn’t uncommon to hear about various players that were in trouble, but never an unkind word about any of the coaching staff. My neighbor and I both had sons in the local schools at the time, although all were too young to have been in school sports. I’m sure somewhere in my house in a shoebox, there are photos of the national championship parade that include JoePa and Sandusky. Time to clean out the attic, I think.
David Koch
They don’t call it “Happy Valley” for nutin
pat
On the other hand, having given it a bit more thought, I suspect that if the grad assistant had actually gone, on his own, to the police, he would have been thoroughly discredited by the higher ups in order to protect one of their own, and would have ended up in a legal nightmare.
So he probably did the most prudent thing by going to the higher ups.
And those higher ups ought to have their asses sued off. I will watch this for further developments.
ALS
What was he supposed to do, go out and get DNA samples? He told his boss and the head of the University Police, who both interviewed the witness. It’s up to them (ie, the institution and the police) to conduct an investigation, not Paterno.
Other than reporting it, what was he supposed to do?
Scott
@gogol’s wife: Now, now, you have to remember that ClarenceThomas troll has a much stronger grasp of ethics and morals than any of us lowlies. I mean, what’s the real crime here? Institutionally-protected child rapists? Or people who like the president?
Clarence has made his choice, and I’m sure he’s very happy with it.
JPL
We can assume that since 1998 and now there will lots of victims, certainly more than 8 and I second Martin.
Penn State needs to be sued.
For those who didn’t read the NYTimes article there is this nugget
Is this why he resigned in 1999? They let him keep his office on campus…wtf..
Suffern ACE
@Martin: When you have your own police force, and quasi legal system, I guess the tendency is to use that. Oddly, they basically thought the problem was solved when it was moved off campus. (I’m not certain if “oddly” or “typically” is the right word there.) I wonder if it had been, say, an emeritus professor of english using the facilities to run a program to tutor children if the results wouldn’t have been the same.
Thomas
The saddest part of this is the victims. The second saddest part is that if Penn State were actually in the national title hunt and were to win, I have no doubt the administration and the sports media would rationalize some way to forgive this.
Suffern ACE
@JPL: Yep. Jeez. Wasn’t he confessing to a crime with the real deal police force?
jon
@ALS: Figure out if the guy he works with abuses children? That would probably be a good start. Unless it’s shown that he investigated this and was lied to directly by the accused molester, he didn’t do enough.
All the busy schedules, recruiting pressures, booster dollar chasing, coaching, watching film, eyeglass fittings, and even meals over the ten years of alleged incidents don’t excuse not doing more than he did to figure out if his trusted assistant was fucking boys in the showers when he got a report that that was the case.
artem1s
Don’t know what the University or local law policy is, but when I was in college it was well known that local cops would not respond to incidents on campus. If you had a problem you HAD to go through campus security or the Dean of Women or Men. Of course this led to a culture of cover-up and victim blaming, especially when it came to sexual assault. The campus that I now work with has no such policy but its likely that the local cops’ first move would be to contact campus security first no matter what the offense. I don’t know why the grad student didn’t directly contact the police but its probable that the outcome wouldn’t have been much different even if he had.
In short, campus security and/or general counsel are paid to represent the interests of the university, not individual students. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t a responsibility to act but there are obstacles. It might have been near impossible for the grad to find a sympathetic ear who also had any authority to do anything about it. Here, I would probably go to the Women’s center first. At least they have some framework for dealing with similar incidents and would know the law and processes for forming an action plan.
Holden Pattern
I would suggest that here is a big part of the problem. The PSU police ARE the police for the university:
But then you look at the org chart (warning, PDF), wherein we see that the PSU police report up into the university hierarchy, which is not responsible in any way to the population of the university or its visitors, and which has certain incentives to protect the reputation of the university (and its football program).
That’s a structure designed to fail (for victims).
piratedan
@Ailuridae: and I say that… so your point is?
RSA
The grand jury report is pretty horrifying. The best we can hope for, I guess, is long-delayed justice of a sort: I counted up 373 years in prison and $600,000 in fines for Sandusky, if he gets the maximum.
Yutsano
@RSA: Which he won’t. I’ll be amazed if he sees a day in jail.
@Trainrunner:
Isn’t that really all that matters?
Trainrunner
Read the indictment:
The grad student saw Sandusky fucking the boy up the ass. This wasn’t soaping each other down in the shower. He testified that he saw Sandusky anally penetrating the boy.
The janitor, a Korean war veteran, saw something in the shower so disturbing that it made the janitor’s co-workers think the janitor was having a heart attack. The co-workers specifically mentioned that the janitor had seen war atrocities in Korea, but that what he saw in the Penn State shower was more upsetting.
This shit is crimes, and the cover-up is appalling. But I’m so glad I can’t get gay-married. You’re all safe.
Roger Moore
@jon:
I disagree. It’s not Joe Paterno’s job to carry out criminal investigations, and he’s not professionally competent to do so. His role in this should have been limited to reporting what he knew to the authorities, and that’s what he did. He may have been wrong to report it to University authorities rather than the regular police, and maybe he should have been more vigorous in following up to make sure it didn’t get dropped, but it was in no way his job to investigate the matter personally.
Gex
@Lizzy L: I know someone related to Jan Ganglehoff who was the whistle blower on the Gophers team that made the 1994 Final Four appearance. The amount of hostility she received from the University and it’s supporters essentially drove her to an early grave.
Ailuridae
@piratedan:
The point is that when you have information relating to a fantastically heinous crime you don’t kick the responsibility upstairs to your AD. Paterno did this because he is a complete moral craven. He was likely afraid to take a stain on his program – his refusal to act appropriately led to the subsequent rape of at least a half dozen more children. And of course this is after he had already acted completely cowardly in both 1998 and 1994 (and likely countless other times).
Everything about this from every actor after it gets to Paterno (him, the AD, Schultz and likely the University Presidents) reeks of a decision to prioritize the reputation of the football program and the college over the welfare of children. But hey if the trade-off to continue being called the patron saint of College football is the rape of a half dozen children I guess that’s all in the game. I can see how somebody wouldn’t be repulsed by Paterno’s (in)action.
Ailuridae
@piratedan:
The point is that when you have information relating to a fantastically heinous crime you don’t kick the responsibility upstairs to your AD. Paterno did this because he is a complete moral craven. He was likely afraid to take a stain on his program – his refusal to act appropriately led to the subsequent rape of at least a half dozen more children. And of course this is after he had already acted completely cowardly in both 1998 and 1994 (and likely countless other times).
Everything about this from every actor after it gets to Paterno (him, the AD, Schultz and likely the University Presidents) reeks of a decision to prioritize the reputation of the football program and the college over the welfare of children. But hey if the trade-off to continue being called the patron saint of College football is the rape of a half dozen children I guess that’s all in the game. I can see how somebody wouldn’t be repulsed by Paterno’s (in)action.
Ailuridae
@piratedan:
The point is that when you have information relating to a fantastically heinous crime you don’t kick the responsibility upstairs to your AD. Paterno did this because he is a complete moral craven. He was likely afraid to take a stain on his program – his refusal to act appropriately led to the subsequent rape of at least a half dozen more children. And of course this is after he had already acted completely cowardly in both 1998 and 1994 (and likely countless other times).
Everything about this from every actor after it gets to Paterno (him, the AD, Schultz and likely the University Presidents) reeks of a decision to prioritize the reputation of the football program and the college over the welfare of children. But hey if the trade-off to continue being called the patron saint of College football is the rape of a half dozen children I guess that’s all in the game. I can see how somebody wouldn’t be repulsed by Paterno’s (in)action.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Gex: Same with Jan Kemp at Georgia.
Roger Moore
@Holden Pattern:
Maybe a byproduct of this will be to reform the PSU police system. If they’re going to be real police with real power and responsibility, they need to be protected from pressure from the administration to make problems go away.
Professor
Is a criminal offence ever subsumed by the statute of limitation act? I know that civil actions if not brought within a certain legal prescribed period is subsumed by the statute of l;imitation act. Any ideas?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Ailuridae: You need to get a grip on how to post.
Jay C
@Linnaeus:
OK: a lot of your answers right there: Next question?
Ailuridae
@Gex:
1997, natch.
Jethro Troll
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who buys into the dumbass jock culture is complicit.
By the way, how’s the game going?
Snowball
@Gex:
I used to live in Minnesota at the time. Considering how badly she was treated, not only by the local media but also average people, it makes me wonder why anyone would ever take the risk of going to the authorities. The Minnesota case also involved a popular coach who had just taken his team to the final 4.
Yes, you are doing the right thing, but count on getting death threats etc and your life in your community will literally never be the same.
Dan
I say this as a longyime admirer of Joe Pa and Penn State- while he technically has superiors, he is far and away the most influential and powerful person at PSU. No way he’s not involved in the coverup.
Ailuridae
@Roger Moore:
Please read the finding of facts that was released yesterday. Or Dan Wetzel’s article on yahoo. There is nothing to indicate that a single actual police officer ever heard anything about the case. It died with Schultz. Which was likely what Paterno and the AD hoped for.
Ailuridae
@Roger Moore:
Please read the finding of facts that was released yesterday. Or Dan Wetzel’s article on yahoo. There is nothing to indicate that a single actual police officer ever heard anything about the case. It died with Schultz. Which was likely what Paterno and the AD hoped for.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Snowball: And Haskins was a saint compared to Mussleman.
SiubhanDuinne
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
You beat me to it. Different kind of situation, of course, but UGA made Jan Kemp’s life a living hell, and I always assumed the stress of that situation contributed to her young death.
Yutsano
@Professor: Yes, however an enterprising prosecutor could note this as a continuing pattern of behavior which means that the original offenses could still fall under the statute timeline.
IANAL however. I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Roger Moore
@Professor:
Yes. Most crimes have a statute of limitations, usually around 7 years, after which they can’t be prosecuted. There has been a strong movement recently to eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual abuse of children because the victims are so often intimidated into silence for so long. I’m not sure what the status of this is in Pennsylvania, but it’s likely that Sandusky will not be protected by the statute of limitations. I’m not sure about the same thing for the PSU officials who covered for him.
John
Just to note, the witness was a graduate assistant, not a grad student. A graduate assistant might also be a grad student, I guess, but in this case he was a (relatively) recently graduated former football player who was working for the football team as, essentially, a very junior coach. I’m not sure how that weighs on the situation, but it should be considered. Also, he was apparently 28 at the time, so not some callow just-graduated-from-college near adult.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@SiubhanDuinne: She gave a good bit of her settlement to a whackadoodle charismatic church in Oconee County, not that it excuses anything.
West of the Cascades
Time to stop feeling any sympathy for the graduate assistant … by keeping quiet, he “got his” from the institution … from the latest ESPN story on this abomination:
The two school administrators fielded the complaint from an unnamed graduate assistant, and from coach Joe Paterno. The Patriot-News of Harrisburg has identified the graduate assistant as Mike McQueary, now the team’s wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator. McQueary was out of town on a recruiting trip Sunday, according to his father, John McQueary, who declined to comment about the case or say whether they are the two named in the grand jury report.
JPL
@Suffern ACE: I just read the 23 page grand jury report. The coach made her son uncomfortable by touching and showering and reported it. She then called the police.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@West of the Cascades: He was a PSU quarterback, fucker needed to be kickin someone’s ass right then an there. Making him out to be some mousy grad student is bullshit.
Gex
@Ailuridae: Yup. The number 4 was floating around my head, but that was because it was the final four.
@Dan: Often the football coach is the highest paid employee in the entire state.
Louise
@ALS:
He was supposed to go to the cops, once he knew the investigation wasn’t happening. And if the cops, as some comments have noted, were answering to the Penn State campus police, then he should have gone to the state Attorney General, the press, whoever he could. You don’t stop until you know it’s being investigated. It’s that simple.
JPL
@Roger Moore: They are charged with lying to the grand jury. After reading the report, it’s pretty clear that they lied under oath. The President hasn’t fired them yet though.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Damned straight.
darren
I didn’t realize Paterno was Catholic.
Gex
@Roger Moore: Know who is the biggest opponent to removing a statute of limitations for sexual abuse of children? Good old RCC. If the sports nuts culture gets in on it too it will never happen.
Dr. Squid
@xian: Having read the thread in question, my question is: How badly did your ass get kicked that you felt the need to come over here to start something?
One of you two is morally crippled, and I don’t think it’s him.
Loneoak
Speaking of football perverts, does Cole not believe Sunday football starts before the Stillers game? WHERES MY OPEN THREAD AT!?
Mr Stagger Lee
@Thomas: The sports press thinks trading tattoos, jerseys, uniforms for cash is a bigger sin. Jim Tressel, Mike Leach, Bruce Pearl(basketball)
Kelvin Sampson(basketball) are considered disgraces to coaching in the ESPN/Sports Illustrated controlled sports media.
Villago Delenda Est
@ALS:
When your immediate superior in the chain of command fails to act upon your report, you go to the next level.
He failed to do that.
This is one step removed from “I was only following orders” in the copout pantheon.
ALS
@jon: “Figure out if the guy he works with abuses children”? I know Paterno kind of looks like Peter Falk but he’s not Columbo. It’s not his job to investigate the crimes of everyone he works with, nor would it be a good idea. He needs to report what he knows, and he reported it to the AD and the head of the University Police (who had jurisdiction).
Lojasmo
this guy needs abducted, and slowly dismembered, one joint at a time, with arterial occlusive ligatures to keep his blood pressure stable in order to keep him awake to feel every clip.
And the university needs to be sued to foreclosure.
Suffern ACE
@Ailuridae: See @JPL: post above. The police were investigating him in 1998. Sandusky admitted to misconduct in 1998, the police were involved then, and…nothing happened except that he had to resign from his job. It appears that he was still able to run his youth outreach program, and I am guessing that no one at the university (such as the Janitor, who witnessed in 2000, and the grad student in 2002) knew anything about that.
JPL
What surprised me after reading the grand jury report is how many people knew and did nothing. One of the victims is overseas serving in the military so has not been questioned and a few haven’t been identified.
Martin is right, Penn State needs their asses sued big time.
edit..they are probably writing checks now to other victims.
ALS
@Louise: Where is the evidence that he knew an investigation wasn’t happening? In fact, it seems like Curley and Schultz were telling everyone (Spanier, at least) that they had investigated and couldn’t prove anything. Schultz, remember, was the head of the University Police, and he knew.
I think Paterno should definitely be subjected to public questioning, but more needs to come out to determine the extent, if any, of his blame.
Ailuridae
@Suffern ACE:
I’m talking specifically about the 2002 McQueary case. By all indications neither PSU police or State College police were made aware of that allegation.
Martin
@Holden Pattern:
Yes, universities don’t have the kinds of checks and balances that we’ve come to learn work decently well to protect against these kinds of things.
Usually the campus police are a division of the city police, but a state campus isn’t part of the city, it’s part of the state, so jurisdictionally, things get a little fucked as the campus can negotiate with the city on how police operations on campus should operate. In my experience, these arrangements are done in good faith, but they simply don’t work well when the university administration becomes a target of a criminal investigation.
JPL
@Ailuridae: Schultz was head of campus police. That’s why Paterno went to both the AD director and Schultz. The president was apprised but not told it was sexual in nature..just inappropriate and assured that steps were taken.
ruemara
Stop calling this molestation. This fucker was a rapist. Having dealt with children who’ve been molested, abused and raped, I’d gladly strangle this bastard with his intestines. He felt comfortable enough to bring a 10 year old boy into the locker room shower and RAPE him. Universities will cut back on scholarships, research, benefits, pay, maintenance, computers and classes, but they won’t touch fucking sports. FUCK this man and Penn State. I hope they lose millions.
catpal
another member of the cover up I bet
“Retired Penn State Police Officer Ron Schreffler handled the 1998 case”
more like MIS-handled the 1998 case.
Ailuridae
@JPL:
Sorry, when you want a case investigated by the police you go to a police station and report a crime. When you’re an influential person and you hope a crime gets swept under the rug you call your
police commissioner buddyerr the Dean that overseas the campus police and assuage your own sense of guilt.Also, on the matter of the facts, Paterno went to the AD, the AD then brought Schultz in to a meeting with McQueary and Paterno. Paterno kicked it upstairs and then took a meeting. He had a reliable eyewitness that confirmed over 9 years of additional information that Sandusky was raping children (enough so that he took Sandusky’s resignation after the 1998 instance) and he elected not to report that information to the police. Its plain moral cowardice and valuing your friendship over the welfare of children. Paterno simply should have accompanied McQueary to the Penn State police. Anything less is completely unacceptable.
Ailuridae
@JPL:
Sorry, when you want a case investigated by the police you go to a police station and report a crime. When you’re an influential person and you hope a crime gets swept under the rug you call your
police commissioner buddyerr the Dean that overseas the campus police and assuage your own sense of guilt.Also, on the matter of the facts, Paterno went to the AD, the AD then brought Schultz in to a meeting with McQueary and Paterno. Paterno kicked it upstairs and then took a meeting. He had a reliable eyewitness that confirmed over 9 years of additional information that Sandusky was raping children (enough so that he took Sandusky’s resignation after the 1998 instance) and he elected not to report that information to the police. Its plain moral cowardice and valuing your friendship over the welfare of children. Paterno simply should have accompanied McQueary to the Penn State police. Anything less is completely unacceptable.
West of the Cascades
@ALS:
A graduate assistant (McQueary) reports an eyewitness account of Sandusky raping a 10 year-old boy to Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno reports it to the AD and Vice President. This happens in 2002. Then … the graduate assistant remains on staff, interacting with Paterno on a daily basis. Paterno allowed Sandusky to retain his office on campus.
How can you rationalize that Joe Paterno did not know an investigation was not happening? Someone on his staff saw former coach rape a 10 year-old boy … did McQueary and Paterno just report it up the line and then never, ever discussed the issue among themselves again, or asked the AD or Schultz “what have you done about this??,” or confronted Sandusky (with a crow-bar) when he came into the office he continued to keep in the football facility?
Paterno is the lynchpin in this cover-up, and should be fired, and McQueary should be fired. They’re as disgusting a set of participants in this process as the AD and Schultz.
David Koch
@Mr Stagger Lee: Mike Leach is a disgrace. He locked a kid with a concussion in a electrical closet for three hours as punishment for declining to practice with a bruised brain.
Mr Stagger Lee
@David Koch: I agree and I withdraw Leach’s name with Tressel and others.
Mary
To be fair to Paterno, I’m pretty sure he’s been legally dead for at least 15 years.
piratedan
@Ailuridae: ty for escalating my supposed feelings for all to see and how I’m in favor of covering it up and moving on all in the name of what is good for college football… I guess, although I say none of that and as far as I can tell, I myself question wth Paterno is thinking of when this comes to light. But then again, you don’t know me and don’t let me get in the way of your outrage, just please make sure you have it pointed at the right people.
gravie
@ gene108: The trial for a sensational murder in Bethesda, Maryland just wrapped up this week. A woman was murdered by her co-worker in a very gruesome, brutal and agonizing physical assault that lasted more than 15 minutes. In testimony, it came out that the people working in a store next door could hear the assault through the wall. They did nothing, even after pressing their ears to the wall to make sure it wasn’t just some consensual hanky-panky. We are conditioned to do nothing but I would hope that some of us could get over that and at least call the damn police.
PhoenixRising
Couple of educational items for y’all:
20 years of illegal bigotry against lesbian players by Rene Portland at Penn State finally resulted in her being fired after settling a lawsuit. To say that the athletic dept. has some problems in its reasoning related to homosexuality is a serious understatement.
Universities and college routinely screw up sexual assault investigations, so seriously that DOE recently issued guidelines that broadly translate from the lawyer to “stop minimizing crimes and blaming victims or we may have to sharply reprimand you under Title IX”.
So yeah, I’m disgusted but not at all surprised. This is exactly what you should expect from any Div I football or basketball program. Maybe letting the players unionize and collect wages would help, as this would open programs to all kinds of workplace regulations.
Ailuridae
@West of the Cascades:
You’re missing a page here about whether Paterno had any way of knowing a police investigation was going on … they never talked to him. He doesn’t need to know whether they talked to McQueary- if a previous employee of Paterno’s was accused of raping a child in a football locker room at Penn State yes the police would talk to the head football coach there. The argument that Paterno didn’t know that the investigation was quashed is simply absurd.
The machinations some are going through to defend Paterno here are eerily similar to the arguments made to defend Cardinal Law.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
This was an intense topic of discussion over lunch today. The best light I can put on it is that both Paterno and the GA are guilty of trusting the people they reported to enough that they failed to follow up.
It looks to me like the earliest we can confirm that Paterno knew anything was the investigation in 1998. I suspect the investigation led directly to Sandusky’s retirement, Without formal charges resulting from the investigation, it might have been difficult to deny him emeritus status.
In 2002, I can see the GA and his father deciding to approach Paterno. There’s already a history with him, trust built up. Paterno, appropriately, told the AD and the head of the campus police. It’s apparent from the President’s testimony that either he was lied to about the allegation or he’s coordinating his story with the VP. It’s possible they lied to Paterno as well.
We’ll know when the trial gets going. Paterno has reportedly agreed to testify for the prosecution.
lol
Well, this is what happens when you start legalizing gay marriages.
Liberals only have themselves to blame for all this.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Today’s Doonesbury on a similar topic…
Ailuridae
@piratedan:
How about you reread your initial, bull shit, equivocating post.
in fairness, Paterno kicked this to his AD, since JoePa may not have the ability to hire/fire or perhaps it was during a camp affiliated with the school but not of the school. AFAIK, Sandusky was no longer actively coaching for the University but was trading on his name association with the school. Could Paterno have done more, hell yes, he could have gone to HR, the police, Sandusky himself and I don’t know why he didn’t or couldn’t.
You pretty clearly think that in relation to the rape of a child in a facility you oversee possibly appropriate course of action include talking to your boss or talking to HR or having a sit down with the rapist, a friend of 35 years. I think that’s a completely morally bankrupt position.
drkrick
An awful lot of people on this thread seem to be pretty sure about who knew what when in more detail than any of the actual reporting I’ve seen. It sounds like the 1998 incident (which may have gotten the rapist fired, at least) was investigated by real police. Do we know why he wasn’t prosecuted then? If that had been pursued or at least made public the subsequent events probably don’t happen.
If the university knew about that, I don’t understand allowing him to continue to have an office on campus or to use university facilities to support his
charitable workrecruiting with kids. It sounds like there was a lot of double talk about what had been investigated by who when by the AD and Schultz, which has me uncertain about whether Paterno and Spannier are part of the coverup or among the targets of it.I can imagine a scenario where Paterno is part of the effort to keep the lid on this. I can also imagine a scenario where the AD and the Finance and Business guy are saying “for God’s sake keep Paterno in the dark, the old coot is probably crazy enough to go to the real police.” I don’t think there enough facts (as opposed to people who “know how this stuff works”) on the record to tell which is closer to accurate.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@David Koch:
Uhm, no, he didn’t. Adam James was sent to a shed, where it was darker and cooler, and where all of the players who might have sustained concussions were sent. And the door wasn’t locked
There were two other issues going on here: First, that Adam James was a horrible teammate, not only on the football team, but on the baseball team, too. He shrugged off weight-lifting and drills. He was, generally, just an asshole to the rest of the players. It wouldn’t surprise me if he and his father, Craig, former star at SMU and the Pats- and with an ESPN gig- made this public in order to let the kid transfer without losing a year of eligibility.
Second, the relationship between head coach Mike Leach and then-athletic director Gerald Myers was contentious at best. I think Myers was looking to get rid of Leach because of the $800K longevity bonus that would have kicked in had Leach, who had a damned good W-L record for the Red Raiders, not been shitcanned. And Gerald Myers was the guy responsible for hiring that pillar of moral integrity, Bobby Knight, as Texas Tech’s head basketball coach.
Mike Leach might be an abrasive s.o.b., but I think he got hosed for purely political and financial reasons.
Mark B.
When ass-fucking 10 year olds is criminalized, only criminals will ass-fuck 10 year olds. Seriously, I just think this is a whole lot more common than people think, but most cover ups are successful. Unfortunately. One more thing college football has in common with the Catholic Church.
Richard
This sordid case is really the ultimate illustration of the inherent corruption in high profile college sports.
With the huge money being made off football by universities, the incentive to look the other way when it comes to horror stories like this is just too strong.
Yutsano
@Mark B.: You think child rape is common in college football??
Ken Pidcock
I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I would have done in McQueary’s position. Yes, he does have the obligation, under any sense of justice and under commonwealth law, to report what he witnessed to law enforcement. But he couldn’t identify the victim, and couldn’t be sure that police could do anything with his report (they couldn’t in 1998). What he could be sure of is that Curley and Schultz (and, perhaps, Paterno and Spanier) would have seen him destroyed for threatening the program.
I’d like to think that I’d take pride in the persecution, but I’m not that naïve.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Lysana:
Spoken like a true balloonbagger. I’m a moral zero because I hold those responsible for the murder of 12-year-olds to account, and you prove your moral superiority by ordering me to go “die in a fire” for my troubles.
Tell me, Lysana, moral person that you are, if I hold a raffle with the winner receiving the right to light the match to be used to start this deadly fire, would you buy one or more tickets? Be sure to honestly express all your true feelings, because I’m going to copy the response and use it later as evidence.
Or you could apologize.
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piratedan
@Ailuridae: which was made prior to John posting his update that is damning as hell. I’m suddenly supposed to be omniscient?
Mark B.
@Yutsano: I don’t think it’s uncommon in any kind of organized activity which involves older men and young boys. Maybe I’m too cynical.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Scott:
This is a deliberate misrepresentation of my question. Balloonbaggers criticize the folks who ignored this child rapist’s crimes, yet you yourself are ignoring President Obama’s crimes. I am implying that the reasons are similar, and that you people are hypocrites of the highest order. My choice, on the other hand, is to criticize both criminals. For this action, I am invited to my death by the good, moral folks at balloon-juice.com, and lied about by same. Did you hear? There’s a raffle today.
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Dr. Squid
No, you’re a moral zero because you equate the murder of a 12-year-old and child rape with the actions of a politician that you don’t like.
Actually, you’re not a moral zero, you’re a moral negative, and the rest of us have to pay your way, deadbeat.
Brian S
@TuiMel:
I hope I would too, and I suspect I’d be able to because of my personal history as a sexual abuse victim, but I’ve also read enough about the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments to know that hierarchy is a powerful thing, and that it’s a bit arrogant to state that I would do a thing in a given situation. That’s why I’m willing to cut the grad student some slack, because he at least did something. Those other fuckers can die in a fire.
burnspbesq
@Lojasmo:
“this guy needs abducted, and slowly dismembered, one joint at a time, with arterial occlusive ligatures to keep his blood pressure stable in order to keep him awake to feel every clip.”
I hope you’re just talking shit to hear yourself talk shit, because If you sincerely believe that there is no meaningful moral difference between you and him.
ChrisB
I find it interesting that the report does not identify the graduate assistant by name even though it does name other adult witnesses.
I don’t know if someone else has said this but a graduate assistant is not a grad student. A graduate assistant helps coach the team, usually as preparation for his own coaching career (according to the grand jury report, he had an office in the building). Though perhaps not technically a member of the coaching staff, he was a member of the Penn State coaching community. He may well have played football at Penn State. Also according to the grand jury report, the graduate assistant was 28 years old at the time so it’s not like he was a 22 year old kid.
I can’t be that critical of the grad assistant, at least initially. He knew what he saw was wrong, immediately reported it to his boss, the head coach (and the person his father agreed he should see), and then repeated the allegations to the AD and another senior administrator, who said they would investigate. I don’t know that I would have expected anything more of him, initially. But given what he saw and how young the boy was, Curley’s response to him is disturbing. If all the administration was going to do was to take Sandusky’s keys away from him, that’s when you have to think about going to the authorities.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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@Dr. Squid:
You need to learn how to read, balloonbagger, because that is not what I did. What I did do is imply a parallel between you and your hypocrite friends who ignore President Obama’s responsibility for dronedeathing women and children, and hail him as a Good Man who retains their “full confidence,” just as those around the child rapist ignored his crimes and still retain “full confidence” in him. Any questions?
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Cassidy
@bin Lurkin’:
When I was in Baghdad, 2005, we stopped in a dirt poor village to drop off school supplies, food, etc. We had been to this village on many occasions. One of the homes was occupied only by women; mom and 2 children I think, the oldest being about 13-15. They never came out; peeked at us through the windows, but never left the house. Well, as we were passing out supplies, the other households were grabbing them up, as third world poor are wont to do, but none was going to this house. No one was taking it over to them. It was almost like they were shunned. So me and my buggy went over to the house and tried to coax them outside. We finally got the oldest daughter to be brave enough to come out and we led her to the supplies and started to help her grab a bunch, like everyone else. Out of nowhere, this male, a few years older comes running and leaps and plants a flying kick right into her midsection and starts screaming at her as she starts scrambling her way to the house. He advances on her ready to do more hitting. I reached out and grabbed this little shit, but as soon as he felt my hand he scurried. I then proceeded to stalk him down across the courtyard letting him know despite the language barrier that if I caught him, he was going to feel a lot of pain. Fortunately, children without 80 lbs of gear on their body can scurry fast and he hid inside his house.
My point is, doing what’s right should be a reflex. There are some things that are simply not debatable. Stopping a rape, be it man, woman or child, is one of them.
burnspbesq
@drkrick:
“An awful lot of people on this thread seem to be pretty sure about who knew what when in more detail than any of the actual reporting I’ve seen.”
Welcome to Balloon-Juice, where fragmentary evidence is all that is needed to pass judgments that will be carved in stone and made impervious to any subsequent evidence.
WaterGirl
@Cassidy: I have mostly been away from BJ for the past 8 weeks, but I have wondered several times how you are doing. Last I heard you were about one week from deciding to go back as non-military. Do you have a quick minute to catch me up on how you are doing? Or can you point me to a previous thread where I can catch up that way? Thanks.
Dr. Squid
@Uncle Clarence Thomas: Since that was the first time you bothered mentioning any 12-year old (I don’t make it my bidness to stalk you on other threads, sorry if that’s not white enough for you) the problem is more with your lack of writing ability.
BTW, national security and college football are not the same, no matter what they tell you down in the SEC.
Amanda in the South Bay
When I saw a picture of Sandusky being arrested, it was the Pennsylvania State Police that was carting him away. Geez is Penn State and fucking college football like the mafia in PA? Is every relevant law enforcement agency compromised?
As far as the grad student is concerned-geez, people in their early 20s aren’t goddamn children. If you’re old enough to join the military, you have the responsibility to report a rape to a real police department, not the joke of a campus pd.
As.
Karen
Homophobia?
The only way homophobia even enters into this is that stereotype implying gays and lesbians are pedophiles.
Do you mean to tell me that if the coach was found raping a 10 year old girl in the shower that he wouldn’t be prosecuted?
Or do you not realize that pedophilia really has nothing to do with the gender of the child, just that they love having sex with children?
Using the word “homophobia” anywhere in this circumstance is as disgusting as Uncle Clarence Thomas having to shove his psychopathic and fucknuts crazy as shit hatred of President Obama into this conversation.
Homophobia exists, don’t get me wrong. But to use that word when dealing with sex with children only validates what the anti-gay crazies already think is true.
ChrisB
@West of the Cascades: McQuery’s bio jives with that newspaper report. A State College resident and a graduate assistant in 2002.
http://www.gopsusports.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/mcqueary_mike00.html
Cassidy
@WaterGirl: As of right now, something happened with the PMC contractor bit. The recruiter said he would send me my travel info by the end of Oct., and I haven’t heard from him in weeks; full mailbox, no returned phone calls, emails, etc. Not sure what’s happened, but I’m gonna kick him in the junk if we meet.
I’m not transitioning well to civlian life, beyond the finances, so I’ve explored going back in. The Army said no unless I was willing to go SF, but I had to be Airborne certified and I’m not. Never saw the point of jumping out of airplanes. The Navy said I had too many dependents, as they’d want to being me in as a E-3 or E-4. Right now, I’ve got a packet sitting in Texas with the Air Force to see if they’ll take me; chance I’ll get to keep my rank also.
Aside from that, I’m waiting to hear from the Air Marshals and taking the CBP exam at the end of the month. Currently, I’m a manager trainee for a “sales and lease” corporation and spend my day coercing money out of lower income people to pay for overpriced furniture and electronics they probably didn’t need.
Cassidy
@Karen: In said commenter’s defense, ignorant people do confuse pedophilia and homosexuality as abhorrent sexual behavior, cut from the same cloth. Penn State doesn’t cater to us news junkies.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Karen: I took the homophobia comment to refer to a problem with Paterno, the AD, the VP, or all of the above accepting the details of the GA’s report. In the testimony, the GA said he was specific about what he saw, but neither the AD nor the VP would admit to hearing him say the words “anal sex”. They were also kind of vague about what Paterno actually said to them.
I’ve known people who literally couldn’t hear something that squicked them badly. It wouldn’t surprise me for that to be a contributing factor.
Dr. Omed
I would like to think that if I discovered a grown man anally raping a ten year old boy the first thing out of my mouth would be along the lines of “GET THE FUCK OFF HIM!” on the way to pulling him off the kid and beating him down to the ground. It might occur to me to call 911 after I got the kid away from him.
John
What crimes? I am about to give way to much attention to an obvious troll, but you are making a category error here. We all agree that raping children is a horrible crime. Schultz and Curley, I assume, would say (at least publicly) that raping children is awful and that we should do everything we can to see that those who do it are punished by the law. This makes them hypocrites, because they were in fact doing the opposite, as well as morally culpable in something which they themselves admit is a horrible crime.
People who support Obama do not agree with you that whatever nonsense you are claiming are “Obama’s crimes” are actually such, or that, I don’t know, building infrastructure or reforming our health care system are bad things at all. There is a difference between “being involved in a criminal conspiracy to cover up a heinous crime” and “having political disagreements with a pseudonymous blog commenter known as ‘Uncle Clarence Thomas'”. People disagreeing with you about politics is not morally equivalent to what Curley and Schultz are accused of doing.
WaterGirl
Your reply sent me running to google so I could figure out some of the acronyms! What did we ever do before google?
Sorry to hear that you’re not transitioning well, I thought it was just the finances. Though I do wonder if people who do transition well might be a rarity.
I am shaking my head at paragraph 2, wondering how we can let our military return from service without a job already waiting for them.
Having the recruiter fall out of contact would be maddening, though I will say that even though it leaves you in a bind, you seemed to not feel very good about that option, so I will hope something else comes through. Keep the faith. I know that’s hard to do, but I have high hopes that something great will come through for you and that things will get easier for you and your family. I think there’s something good ahead for you, I really do.
Ohsuzanna
Once you read the report, you’ll see that the Grand Jury went to the trouble of specifically noting that it believed the testimony of the Graduate Assistant was truthful and that it thought Curley’s and Schultz’s testimony was not credible.
This is America, though, so on with the trial and let the prosecution prove its case….against all of them.
4jkb4ia
Here is scribe’s comment at EW’s because it was important:
I was very satisfied because scribe was the first commenter I have seen to bring the foundation into it. Using the foundation was a whole other level of wrong. This also brings up the constant EW theme of unethical lawyers.
That this is supposed to be a university, and that sports are supposed to stand for something beyond themselves in that context, isn’t something that should be that easy to get over.
HalfEmpty
@Linnaeus: Nike may have to rename its Paterno building at headquarters. When that happens, I’ll believe these people care about people.
Cassidy
@WaterGirl: I didn’t feel good about going back and definitely didn’t want to. OTOH, 160-190K for a year doing what I know how to do would’ve taken care of my family. I’ll dig ditches or work a mine or whatever. All I ask is you pay me enough to make my family comfortable.
As for the unemployment thing, it’s about to get worse. My era of vet already has 11% unemployment. With all these people coming back and downsizing happening, I’d think the 1% would have enough foresight to not be so glib in their responses to us lowly people.
Honestly, it’s the loss of comfort and, in many ways, pride. In the Army, I was somebody. Soldiers looked up to me every day. My Chain of Command respected me and valued my input. I had a reputation. People knew me by name, if not by face. Now, I’m on public assistance, selling things I haven’t used in a long time, and working as much OT as I can to get caught up on bills. The other things, and this hurts a lot, I miss being part of something meaningful. I’m not that guy who’s gonna cure diseases or write prize winning poetry. My contribution to society is me. I’ve enjoyed the benefits of our society from public education to WIC and all that in between. Doing my part to make things better was giving my body. Now, I focus on profit and loss goals and percentages and deposits. I hate it.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Interesting bit in the Grand Jury report. Sandusky, Sandusky’s wife, and a Sandusky family friend all left urgent messages on Victim 7’s answering machine in the weeks before his appearance before the Grand Jury.
John Weiss
John, this is disgusting. The coach should find mishap behind the police station and wind up in the local dump.
Dr. Omed
The Penn State Ag College Creamery makes “Banana Flavored Ice Cream with Chocolate Covered Peanuts and Caramel Swirl” named after Sandusky:
http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2011/11/05/penn-state-makes-a-banana-flavored-jerry-sandusky-ice-cream/
http://creamery.psu.edu/products/food/sandusky-blitz
Suffern ACE
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Reading the report, I wonder how many of the victims were uncovered because Sandusky started making phone calls. Based on his role in that foundation, and the way he was able to use it to contact kids and take them around with him, I would expect that there are going to be many more coming forward.
xian
@Dr. Squid: I didn’t post in that thread, but thanks for playing!
xian
@Ailuridae: why do you post everything twice?
xian
@Dr. Squid: not to mention a practitioner of typographical atrocities
Dr. Squid
@xian:
So you came here to start a fight over comments somewhere else for no reason other than you don’t like his touch-typing abilities.
It’s amazing that you can breathe without someone to remind you.
Joel
Lawrence Phillips was emblematic of Tom Osborne’s girlfriend-beatin’ football program, yet Nebraska voters put him in the House three times.
HumboldtBlue
Funny how all those implicated are good Catholics. Not funny, horrifying and if this doesn’t end JoePa and the others time to take to the barricades. The only two coaches my mother ever mentioned were Paseghian and Paterno, men of ethics, morals, quality men, teachers to respect.
One of them, the non-catholic, was never implicated in covering up child rape.
xian
@Dr. Squid: follow the links back, Einstein. My second reply/comment was about Clarence of the annoying leading and trailing ellipses.
Not sure what “fight” I started but you seem to have some “issues” you may want to take a look at.
G
geez, if the grad student had just found a fire-ax…@Amanda in the South Bay:
with regard to the grad student reporting to a “real police dept.” and not the campus cops – who do have full police powers, and have the campus as their jurisdiction.
I’m inclined to think the “real cops” would’ve been inclined to re-refer to the campus cops. It’s outside their terriroty most of the time.
It’s sort of like living in a city inside a county. the city has police, the county has a sheriff’s office. crime happens in the city, and you call the sheriff, the sheriff will refer you to the city.
but if the crime or potential crime involves a city cop – the sheriff should take over.
on the other hand, if he took a fire extinguiher, being a heavy lump of metal that it is, and clubbed the child rapist over the head, I think you have a hard time finding a jury of 12 who wouldn’t find that action a valid “defense of others” and walk him even if he happed to kill the rapist with it.
If you could find a prosecutor crazy enough to take that kind of case to a jury.
Nutella
NY Times article says this:
Ugh. NYT does not mention Courtney was also general counsel of Second Mile.
NYT does spend the majority of the article talking about the responsibility of the most famous person involved, Paterno, which makes it sound like a People Magazine story. Surely responsibility for reporting crimes is not proportional to celebrity.
mere mortal
@Richard
“With the huge money being made off football by universities, the incentive to look the other way when it comes to horror stories like this is just too strong.”
There are no horror stories like this. There’s 20 year old men getting punished for sleeping on their friend’s couch, taking a few thousand or hundred dollars in high school, scoring fewer points than their talent allows, or whatever.
And then there is this.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Great. On my local late news, they had a third-hand statement from Paterno that he is “shocked” by the allegations against Sandusky. Uh huh. Sure.
Mac G
@ChrisB:
The grad assistant is former Penn State QB & current assistant coach. Their testimony of what happened in 2002 — when now-assistant coach Mike McQueary said he witnessed Sandusky in a sex act with a boy in a shower — contradicts that of Paterno and McQueary.
In the presentment, jurors wrote that McQueary — identified in the presentment only as a 28-year-old graduate assistant — was credible but Schultz and Curley were not.
Several sources have identified that witness as McQueary.
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2011/11/report_former_coach_jerry_sand.html
Mnemosyne
@Cassidy:
Here’s the thing, though: you were trained to deal with that kind of situation, and you had real-life experience under your belt before you got to that specific incident. You were constantly primed to react, so you did. (That “constantly primed to react” training, not incidentally, is one of the reasons people end up coming home with PTSD.)
This was a guy walking through a locker room with a clipboard in his hand who suddenly stumbled across the school’s respected emeritus coach anally raping a 10-year-old.
Or, to put it another way — if it had been your CO who had jumped into the scene and started beating that little girl, would you have reacted the exact same way that you did when it was a civilian kid who did it?
Comrade Baron Elmo
@Cassidy: Good luck getting back on your feet, man. Seriously. Men and women like you who served in wartime deserve a way better deal than you’re getting from your country…
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
And a coach he would have known from his own time as a player.
Who twice won Assistant Coach of the Year.
I don’t blame McQueary for his immediate reaction. A football team is an authoritarian system. He stumbled across a situation that would trigger revulsion in just about anyone, being done by someone high up in the hierarchy. The ability to immediately act in that situation is pretty rare without a considerable amount of highly focused training, because it’s not something you can reason your way to. It’s a reflex.
I do salute him for making the report. It would have been very easy to make the same decision that the janitors did. (For anyone who hasn’t read the report, the janitors believed they would be fired if they reported it. The one who actually saw Sandusky was a temp.)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
I’ve been making an effort to not speculate/convict in advance of available information. Paterno has added more information.
He’s throwing McQueary under the bus.
According to the report, Paterno testified that he told Curley that McQueary had reported seeing Sandusky “fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy.” The statement he released last night falls into line with Curley and Schultz. “[H]e at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report.”
I can still come up with a scenario or two that would resolve the contradiction, especially as carefully as that statement is worded, but that very care makes me feel they are unlikely.
kay
Well, I can’t let the GA off. Here’s why. The assault is the most violent part in this story, if you’re standing in the shoes of the ten year old. So, the first (natural) question is why didn’t the adult intervene? Okay, so he’s rattled or whatever, and he didn’t.
But it doesn’t end with the assault, for the ten year old. There’s a part that comes after. When I interview children who were assaulted, we walk through that step by step, because I want the reader (a judge, in my case) to go through that day with him.
Forget the assailant and the GA. Just focus on the ten year old. He’s ten years old and he’s been brutally assaulted. He has to get himself together and leave the shower, and he’s scared and (physically) hurt. He has to continue in that program, perhaps for days. He has to talk to the other boys. He has to eat, and sleep. He has to return to his parents, and to school, having been assaulted, and he’s all alone with it.
Everyone else here went on with their lives. They talked to people. They processed this. The ten year old was all by himself, scared and hurt, for days or weeks or years. How could they abandon him like that? Would the GA abandon someone crawling from a car wreck? Because that’s what it’s like for the ten year old, except it’s worse, because he can’t tell.
I know why the prosecutor doesn’t tell the step by step details of the time after the assault, because the prosecutor is focusing on the actions of the assailant, and she wants an indictment. But the victim didn’t disappear after the rape. He had to keep going.
You know, that GA wouldn’t leave a dog alone in all that pain. But he left a ten year old alone with it, and that’s the part of the “in shock and unable to act” that doesn’t hold up. Did he not give the little boy one second of thought AFTER? Does that little boy not deserve medical attention, and other care from adults? Why not? Because he was raped? What if the assailant had broken his leg? Would we leave him alone then?
“I was in shock after witnessing the leg break, so I went to my boss”. WTF?
Where is he? How is he? Is anyone taking care of him? No one asked that. He crawled away from that wreck all alone. They left him there.
They didn’t even bother to find out HIS NAME. That’s how unimportant he was.
kay
“Approximately one and a half weeks later”
They left a ten year who was physically injured and absolutely terrified in the course of a brutal assault that one of them witnessed all alone for a week and a half post-assault, bets case. The facts are worse, they abandoned him completely, but best case, that’s what they did.
I wonder what that was like for him, taking care of himself, when everyone went on their lives. What was the next day like, when he had to interact with his assailant? That must have been the longest and hardest day for him.
WaterGirl
@Cassidy: The first thing I did this morning was check to see if you had replied. I would have checked last night except that for the first time in the 4 weeks that I’ve had my new pup, my kitty came up and sat on my lap, while the puppy was next to me on the couch. Peace at last, and nobody stayed for hours. I think we were all grateful for the peace.
The 1% have had their way for so long, i think they think they have a lock on this inequality for life. I hope we prove them wrong.
Your last paragraph had me in tears, not because I feel sorry for you but because it’s so wrong, and it’s not just happening to you, but to thousands of others. It’s just that you are very good at describing what it feel like that it’s impossible not to care about what’s happening.
This may be a dumb idea, but have you hooked up with any of the vet organizations that are trying to help other vets? You are so good at expressing yourself that I think you could really help other vets. And from what you described about respect, and helping people, and chain of command, and feeling like you were making a difference, I really think you were on a good track when you were looking at police, fire, EMT kinds of jobs.
I would be glad to try to organize other BJ folks to help look for those kinds of jobs for you all over the country. I don’t think it would take anybody more than 15 minutes or half an hour to do find out the information for their area. Let me know what you think? If you don’t think that’s a good idea, what can we do to help?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@kay: A leg break is something the GA would have trained for. He’d know exactly what to do, who to call, etc.
What I’m saying is that I don’t have enough information to condemn him. Of what I do know, McCreary’s reported behavior is mostly consistent with his environment and training. To be completely consistent, he would have said nothing. Sandusky saw him there. McCreary knew that Sandusky had seen him. If an investigation had followed, there would have been no chance of staying anonymous. I would find it tragic but understandable had he said nothing, just like the janitors.
The time from McCreary witnessing the assault to his visit to Paterno is unaccounted for. We don’t know if he went back to look for the boy after he calmed down. Once he had talked to Paterno, though, he had every reason to believe that it was on its way to the hands of the police. He would have left it to the professionals. It’s normal for the witness reporting a crime to be out of the loop after he fills out the report.
Suffern ACE
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Had he done that, there would be a name in the grand jury report.
ETA: It is very clear in the report that no one knows who this boy is and unlike the other boys, the grand jury did not have his testimony.
kay
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
The boy saw him too.
I understand why the information reported to the grand jury focuses on the facts of the crime.
What I don’t understand is why so many adults completely ignored the boy.
We’re going to have to disagree. They’re all fucked up in that place if they think raping a ten year old is a sex act, and they’re going to discuss how to handle it, and we’re all going to discuss the GA’s mental state and angst.
Raping a ten year old isn’t sex. It’s an assault. I don’t honestly care if the GA is uncomfortable with the nature of this assault.
What people do when they witness an assault is call an ambulance, because the victim might be hurt. People who have just been assaulted need care, not an analysis of the GA’s feelings.
I don’t think meeting at someone’s HOUSE is an appropriate response to the aftermath of what was probably physical injury to a ten year old.
First question: where is the victim? What does he need? That boy should have had medical attention after the assault, because that’s how we treat people who are injured.
What about the culture of that place makes the FIRST QUESTION “who do I tell?”
I’m not condemning him, because I don’t care what he was thinking. I’m saying not ONE adult cared for an injured kid. Not ONE. They left him there.
Trinity
@kay: A thousand times this.
Nutella
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Reading the grand jury’s document tells us a lot about how upset McCreary and the janitor were to see children being raped. Both of these poor, put-upon, upset people then reported what they saw to two people which is a little better than not reporting it at all, but neither of them made any effort at all, even an anonymous call to 911, to stop the violent crimes they witnessed.
McCreary’s career is toast anyway, because some people are going to blame him for testifying now and damaging the football program and everyone else is going to blame him for doing nothing to stop the rape.
Surly Duff
@Roger Moore:
I agree that it is not Paterno’s job or his expertise to investigate the charges against his colleague. However, I do have some difficulty letting him off the hook. Plausible deniability may be a legal defense for Paterno, but it is not a moral one.
Even assuming that Paterno was unaware of the previous claims of abuse by Sandusky, after the assualt reported by the graduate assistant to Paterno, Sandusky continued to keep his office at PSU. Sorry, sometime Paterno should have been asking the questions, “Why is he still in an office here?”, “What is going on?”, “What did you find?”, “Why hasn’t this been reported?”, of the administrators. Passing the buck to a higher pay grade may be the way to clear you of legal culpability, but is not a moral response to the abuse of children. And while the GA may not have wielded the influence to object to a cover-up when he kept seeing Sandusky around the offices, Joe-Pa certainly has that pull in the town.
The responsibility for all the people with knowledge of the incidents, from the GA up to the top officials, should have been vigorous follow-up with the authorities. Joe-Pa may have done everything that was legally required of him by informing his superiors, but he failed at doing everything he should have done to ensure that the abuse ended and his former assistant was unable to continue his abuse of children. I find it hard to absolve Paterno of responsibility because his inaction allowed the crimes to continue.
kay
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
The prosecutor (whoever it was) has problems too. He/she didn’t pursue the 1990’s incidents. I assume Penn State doesn’t have a prosecutor. Police don’t bring charges. Prosecutors do.
Groping little kids is against the law, yet no one brought charges. That’s odd. They didn’t even try to indict/charge on the substantiated groping incidents? They had detectives listening in.
Do you see my problem with this? How in the HELL did the kids get lost in this? No one gave them a second thought. Something trumped that ordinary care, and it was football.
Suffern ACE
@kay: I think I wrote about that a bit above. In 1998 it appears that police detectives witnessed a confession of improper contact. Had that been prosecuted, wouldn’t that have effectively barred him for working with children again? Makes no sense, since because of not prosecuting, he could continue to find children through the charity and schools would invite him to be a volunteer coach in their football programs. So he went from using the facilities at Penn State to using facilities at local schools. My guess is that no one would have done a background check on him because of who he was, but this went on for another eleven years when it should have stopped in 1998.
kay
@Suffern ACE:
Exactly, and so I think they have to look at corruption on the state’s role in this.
I don’t know how they don’t bring charges after he confessed. The state’s role is the most important to me, because whatever insane behavior is going on at that university, the state had an opportunity to step in, and didn’t. That’s corruption.
They had an absolute duty to act on behalf of the people of Pennsylvania, and they didn’t. I would like an explanation of what process led to no charges being filed after a confession. Who made that call? Seems like an easy case. Incident, victim, adult reports, confession. Weird that he wasn’t charged.
Nutella
@kay:
Even weirder that he was permitted to continue running his ‘charitable’ foundation to procure more boys to rape. Even if they felt they didn’t have enough for a criminal conviction in 1998 they had more than enough to initiate an investigation of the foundation.
Mnemosyne
@kay:
But I can’t put the primary blame on McCreary. McCreary is not the criminal here. He’s not the one who covered up the crime.
That’s what bothers me — some people seem to think that McCreary is primarily to blame because he didn’t do “the right thing,” whether they think the right thing was to go to the police (even though the police probably don’t have any jurisdiction) or physically intervene in the assault.
It’s very, very easy for all of us to sit comfortably behind our computers at home and say that McCreary is a horrible person because he didn’t do what we totally would have done if we were in the same situation.
I’m not giving McCreary a free pass because there absolutely is more he could have done, but he didn’t assault anyone. He didn’t cover it up using the power of the university. But he’s the one who’s probably going to pay for those crimes by losing his career, not Paterno, who actually is the person who’s primarily to blame for the cover up. And that’s just fucked up.
It just worries me that people are so willing to blame the bystander who didn’t do enough and not the criminals who actually killed the investigation.
kay
@Nutella:
We need to talk more about corruption re: the state in these cases. I saw it in the priest abuse cases, in Ohio and Wisconsin. I saw an odd passivity and kid-glove approach on the part of prosecutors, particularly in Wisconsin.
We need to talk more about why the state appears to be protecting powerful people and institutions, to the detriment of ordinary people. We don’t seem to reach those issues, because we’re all about the conviction, but something else is going on here. I’m not hanging w/out a trial, but I think that angle deserves exploration. It’s forming a bit of a pattern. You know, the state usually goes full-bore, balls to the wall, no stone unturned when kids are involved, because there’s a recognition that they’re particularly vulnerable.
Odd that they don’t when we’re talking about powerful (and politically connected) institutions.
Mnemosyne
After wandering away to brush my teeth, I think I can answer my own question, kind of: it’s a lot easier for us to project ourselves into the role of the innocent bystander and decide that we totally would have done beter than he did than it is to put ourselves in the role of the lawyer who didn’t want his gig at Sandusky’s foundation to go kaput and covered it all up.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not focusing on him at all, and I’m not “blaming” him. I’m simply wondering why he didn’t focus on the kid. I think I know why he didn’t. Because the assault is “sexual” in nature.
Let me ask you something. If he had seen the coach punching that kid in the face would he have walked away? That is a shocking thing to come upon, a coach beating a child, yet this was different to the adults at the university. Why is that?
Had anyone given a shit, and had that kid actually gotten immediate care, it would have been treated as an assault (initially). That’s because it is one. Why all this analysis on the part of the adults? Meetings? They’re having meetings while a ten year old is walking around shattered? I mean, Jesus. Someone skipped a step. Victim first. Care for him. He’s a little kid.
Mnemosyne
@kay:
But none of them focused on the kid. Not one. I guess I’m not getting why it’s so much more horrifying that McCreary didn’t do it than all of those guys who had meetings about it (except that, as I said above, I think he’s the guy in the story that’s the easiest one for us to project ourselves onto).
McCreary deserves his share of the blame, but he shouldn’t be blamed for everyone else’s even worse actions because he didn’t react the way we think we’re convinced we would have in the same circumstances. The bystander who doesn’t react perfectly to a situation is not equally to blame as the criminals.
ETA: Sad to say, given what college athletics are like, I actually wouldn’t be surprised if McCreary had had the same reaction to a “mere” physical assault like punching the kid (ie reporting it to the campus authorities rather than going outside the university).
I do think that the fact that it was sexual made it even harder to report, though — if nothing else, you’d be questioning yourself, asking if you actually did see it or if it was all a hallucination or something. You would question what you’d seen far more than if it had been a straightforward punch in the face.
pat
“If he had seen the coach punching that kid in the face would he have walked away? That is a shocking thing to come upon, a coach beating a child, yet this was different to the adults at the university. Why is that?”
The crucial question. Thanks, kay.
Nutella
@kay:
Yep.
Important, connected people commit a crime: Let’s not rush to judgement. It could all be a misunderstanding. He promised not to do it again. He said he was really, really sorry. Hasn’t he been punished enough by losing his job? Hasn’t he been punished enough by the bad publicity?
Poor and/or unknown people commit exactly the same crime: Drag them off in handcuffs right now. Lock them up and throw away the key.
Ron Paul once said that a black criminal should be punished more for committing the same crime that a white criminal committed. A lot of people believe that both class and race make a big difference in determining guilt and punishment but don’t go on the record like Paul did.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Mnemosyne:
Why? Here’s my question: If the GA had witnessed a sexual assault taking place of a female (of any age) would his reaction have been different? Would people’s reactions here be any different? I think there’s something people are overlooking here.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
Because it doesn’t matter if we portion out blame evenly. I’ll do it, but it doesn’t matter.
A ten year old has just been assaulted. We’ll say “punched repeatedly in the face”. What happens next?
Is his nose broken? Is he puking and shaking and crying, once the fear-adrenaline wears off? Has he lost a tooth? Did he bite his tongue? Is he bleeding? Does he need someone to sit with him while we call his family? Does he need help getting dried off and dressed so we can take him to the emergency room, because of course he needs to see a physician. He’s ten years old, and he’s just been assaulted by a giant adult.
This is how normal adults care for children who have been hurt, unless something gets in the way of what is essentially a response to an emergency. It shouldn’t take weeks of analysis and meetings and moral angst.
Suffern ACE
@Nutella: I think the class issue that is probably as important in this case is the class of the children when it comes to looking the other way at some of the behavior that should have rung alarm bells. The coach could basically go into the schools and take these kids out of classes whenever he wanted, even when they said they didn’t want to see him any more.
What class do these “at risk troubled boys” come from? This is similar to that case we discussed a few months back of the judge who basically was sending kids to the private prison for very minor offenses, but if you look at who he was sending, he was sending the kids of parents who would have a difficult time pushing back.
terry
The prosecutor who could have stopped this in 1998 was Ray Gricar, who’s been missing since 2005. How convienent.
JJ
Apparently we have to remind the public that if they see (or are told about) a grown man anally raping a kid that they should CALL 911 (preferably after they’ve beaten the shit out of the child rapist). What John said: What is WRONG WITH PEOPLE?
Mnemosyne
@kay:
There are people at LGM saying that McCreary should be fired because he didn’t follow up on whether any action was taken when he reported the assault. Do you agree with that?
That’s the way that normal adults should care for a child who has been hurt, but unfortunately we have many, many cases showing that it often doesn’t happen, especially if it’s school-related and the administration could be to blame somehow. Just sticking with sports, how many kids had to die from heat exhaustion and concussions or be permanently paralyzed before administrators could be arsed to do anything about it?
I think the problem is much bigger than one guy not reacting to an emergency.
Mnemosyne
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Again, given college athletics’ record on sexual assault, the reaction would probably be the same, with a heaping helping of “bitch deserved it” added in for good measure.
I wouldn’t be surprised if homophobia entered into this case, but more along the lines of “but he couldn’t be one of those perverted gay dudes, I’ve known him for years!” Weirdly, homophobia probably helped with the cover up since all of the higher-ups involved would be so sure that Sandusky isn’t one of “them” that they would be comfortable covering up his crimes.
MCA
@Kay – I get the general line of your thoughts, but I think something critical is missing from the picture. Sandusky probably didn’t flee the scene or leave the kid alone after his act. It’s not like a kid getting hit in the face by a malicious adult who runs off, and the only and obvious thing to do is to get them medical attention immediately. If McQuery’s initial reaction was not “go confront the important guy way up the hierarchy from me” then it’s not likely he was going to wait 10 minutes, cool off, and then go confront Sandusky. Perhaps, if his thoughts eventually settled on “my god, I need to help that child” he could have lurked around and surreptitiously followed Sandusky to see where he dropped the kid and gone to help from there, but that’s a risky proposition and he likely wasn’t thinking clearly enough to think of it, anyway. So, consequently, and unfortunately, once that immediate reaction happened and McQuery’s calculus of the situation did not instantly lead him to go beat the shit out of Sandusky, he probably lost track of the actual child. He and Paterno had no name, no address, etc. Now, I guess if you’re McQuery you could also go start poking around Sandusky’s charity and searching the local elementary schools for the kid, but after you’ve gone to what you think are the proper authorities, I don’t think it’s inexcusable to think that that’s part of what they’re doing (and are in fact trained to do much better than you).
I don’t disagree that one of the most horrifying aspects to this or pretty much any similar assault on a child is their having to live with it alone, and I don’t disagree that it’s sad if the tone of the adults left to deal with this wasn’t skewed towards “we need to do something about the crime but have to focus on the victim, too.” But I’m sort of in agreement with mnemosyne here, that the crime itself should be getting more focus. And a sadness that institutions and societies unintentionally change the moral behavior of people in ways that are consistently regrettable.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Suffern ACE:
Not if Sandusky took the boy with him.
Paul in KY
@Cassidy: Go USAF, we’re the ‘civilized’ service ;-)
Paul in KY
Joe Paterno should have retired 7 or 8 years ago. IMO, he is a very selfish man.
He might end up leaving like Woody did (being fired). I would say: Ha, ha!
Hope the molested kids get lots of PSU money.
Grateful Dad
How proud the students of PERV STATE (once known as Penn State) must feel!
Grateful Dad
How proud the students of PERV STATE (once known as Penn State) must feel!