[Long-time juicer asiangrrlMN has written 3 of 4 parts of the history of the PSU cover up. I think it’s important that everyone read these articles, so I decided to cross-post the first one. You can read part 2 here and part 3 here. And part 4 will be published later today. -ABLxx]
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. –Albert Einstein
Update: This post was cross-posted at Balloon Juice by ABL, and a few comments concerned with my wording as to the facts of the crimes arose, so I have edited for clarity.
I don’t use the word evil very lightly, but I will be using it in this post. My colleague, Allan, wrote a brief post about the actual rape cases at Pennsylvania State University involving Jerry Sandusky, the former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator. The facts are not much in dispute Jerry Sandusky is innocent until proven guilty, of course, but I believe the findings of the Grand Jury report – and I will be writing from that view point, and the alleged crimes are horrible. However, the focus of these series of posts is not going to be on Sandusky or on his despicable behavior – instead, I want to focus on two things: 1) the systemic cover-up of Sandusky’s crime by various people affiliated with PSU and outside of the University; and 2) the reaction to the firing of Joe Paterno, the coach who has been there forever and is a coaching icon. I will cover the first point in two posts and the second point in an upcoming post.
Rape Culture/Sports-Venerating Culture
Before I start on my first point, I want to say something up front. We* live in a rape culture and a sports-obsessed culture. As to the former, I mean that we live in a culture that tolerates sexual harassment, rape, abuse, etc., to a highly-unacceptable degree. You only have to look at the Herman Cain case to see how easily the alleged victims are denigrated, belittled, smeared, and dismissed. We don’t take rape as seriously as we should, and we find a million excuses to explain the behavior or rationalize it.
In tandem, we are a culture that glorifies sports and worships our sports heroes. I will say that I am a huge sports fan, despite my severe reservations about our sports culture in general. So, I am not speaking as someone who hates sports or who doesn’t know who Joe Paterno is and what an icon he is in college football. He’s such an icon, he’s been allowed to do whatever the hell he wants as the titular head coach of the football program. Even now, he’s being supported to a ridiculous degree – but I get ahead of myself. That is my second point, and I will get to it in due time.
We give unwavering loyalty to our team, irrationally supporting them no matter what they do. There is a reason fan is short for fanatic, and, unfortunately, we have embraced our fanaticism wholeheartedly. This is part of the reason I have soured on sports in recent years as I am uncomfortable with hero-worship of any sort. Still, I am always ready for some football as anything can happen on any given Sunday.
The reason I am bringing up these two observations is because what happened at PSU did not happen in a vacuum. It was not an aberration, and, sadly, I can easily see it being replicated in colleges across the country in which we revere men like Joe Paterno and the game that he coaches**. Here is an account from a woman who was an athlete at the U of Colorado during its own sex abuse outcry. She closed ranks back then, and she regrets it now. If you still think I’m exaggerating or that the PSU case is being blown out of proportion, that it was just one man involved in secret felonies, let me take you back in time so you can watch the progression of the Jerry Sandusky case unfold.
Call It What It Is: RAPE
Before I do that, however, I have one other thing to say – Jerry Sandusky committed rape if the allegations are true, Jerry Sandusky committed rape. I want to make that absolutely clear. I see the headlines, and they mostly say scandal, sex-abuse scandal, or, worst yet, sex scandal. The word rape is used later in some of the articles, but the headlines are what grab readers’ attention***. Even using the strictest definition of rape – anal penetration – Sandusky committed at least one rape that was witnessed – and yes, I will most definitely get to that later – and using the definition of penetration of mouth and/or rectum without consent, he committed more than one rape. What Sandusky did was rape, and we need to call it that every single fucking time we talk about him.
Finally, a warning, I will be quoting from the Grand Jury Report, and it’s very graphic and disturbing. Normally, I would not do this, but I cannot chart the historical arc of Sandusky’s case and all those who covered it up without quoting, so be forewarned. In addition, the report is not in any particular chronological order whereas I will be working chronologically from the earliest cases to the latter cases, so the victim numbers will be out of order.
Here’s the set-up. Jerry Sandusky had been a PSU assistant for 32 years and defensive coordinator for 23. He was considered Joe Paterno’s heir apparent, but was informed by Paterno in May of 1999 that he would not be appointed the next head coach. A month later, Sandusky retired from coaching, but retained emeritus status. This is important because it allowed him unlimited access to PSU facilities with absolutely no supervision whatsoever.
In addition, Sandusky founded The Second Mile in 1977, a foster group home to help at-risk boys. Over time, it grew into a charity dedicated to helping children with dysfunctional or absent families. The mission of the program was to “help children who need additional support and would benefit from positive social interaction.” Sandusky was the main fundraiser for The Second Mile, which mean he had access to hundreds of vulnerable boys. He resigned from The Second Mile in September of 2010.
The Trajectory of Jerry Sandusky’s Predatory Behavior
Now, on to the earliest-chronologically reported cases. I say cases because four of them overlap. There was a fourth boy involved, but he’s in the military serving outside the states and was not subpoenaed. Sandusky met all the boys through The Second Mile.
Victim 4, Victim 5, Victim 6, and Victim 7 overlapped timewise. They all met Sandusky in the mid – to -late 90s, and their stories follow a similar pattern. They were all a part of The Second Mile and approached by Sandusky after they had been in the program awhile. They were between the ages of 7 and 13 when the initial assaults occurred. Usually, it started with Sandusky driving the boy (or boys) somewhere and putting a hand on the boy’s thigh as he (Sandusky) drove. At some point, Sandusky would tell the boy they needed to shower. The boy would try to shower away from Sandusky, but Sandusky would either go over to the boy or call the boy over. He would wrestle with them or throw soap to initiate contact. The one constant was that the boy would be uncomfortable, but Sandusky wouldn’t stop unless he was interrupted or the boy got away. The assaults varied in terms of intensity. Victim 4 testified that:
Sandusky would wrestle with him and maneuver him into position in which Sandusky’s head was at Victim 4’s genitals and Victim 4’s head was at Sandusky’s genitals. Sandusky would kiss Victim 4’s inner thighs and genitals. Victim 4 described Sandusky rubbing his genitals on Victim 4’s face and inserting his erect penis into Victim 4’s mouth. There were occasions when this would result in Sandusky ejaculating. He testified that Sandusky also attempted to penetrate Victim 4’s anus with both a finger and his penis. There was slight penetration and Victim 4 would resist these attempts. Sandusky never asked to do these things but would simply see what Victim 4 would permit him to do.
The reason I included this excerpt from the report is to underline my point that Sandusky committed rape. Some of the other incidences have been minimized as inappropriate touching or horseplay or other such nonsense. Bullshit. It’s all on a continuum with this example being at one end of the spectrum and other examples falling at other points along said continuum. I also quoted this excerpt to show that if the investigation as I detailed below had cast its net a bit wider, the investigators could have found Victim 4, which would definitely be a reason to press charges against Sandusky.
In 1998, Victim 6 was also forced to shower with Sandusky who grabbed him around the waist and said, “I’m going to squeeze your guts out.” Sandusky soaped the boy’s back and then hugged the boy from behind. Then, he lifted the boy to rinse the soap out of the boys hair. When Victim 6 got home, his mother questioned him about his wet hair and got upset when he found out that he had showered with Sandusky. She did the right thing and called the University Police. University Police Detective Ronald Schreffler performed a lengthy investigation and then was told to close the investigation by the director of the campus police, Thomas Haron after then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar**** decided there would be no criminal charges. This investigation also included B.K., then 11, the man now in the military and serving outside the U.S – he was subjected to a nearly-identical shower experience.
During the investigation, Detective Schreffler and State College Police Department Detective Ralph Ralston eavesdropped on two different occasions on conversations between the mother of Victim 6 and Sandusky, with her permission. The mother questioned Sandusky about his behavior, and he admitted to showering with other boys. She tried to make him promise that he wouldn’t do it any more, but he refused. She asked if his ‘private parts’ touched the boy when Sandusky bear-hugged him. Sandusky responded, “I don’t think so…maybe.” At the end of the second conversation when the mother told Sandusky that he couldn’t see Victim 6 again, Sandusky said:
I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.
Detective Ralston and Victim 6’s mother confirmed these conversations.
In addition, Jerry Lauro, an investigator with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare testified at the time that he and Detective Schreffler interviewed Sandusky who admitted to showering naked with Victim 6 and hugging him while naked. Sandusky said he knew it was wrong. Detective Schreffler advised him not to do it again, and Sandusky said he wouldn’t.
Let me pause in my recitation for a minute to point out the obvious: Had Sandusky been charged at this point or at least banned from PSU and The Second Mile, it still would have been a horrifying story, but it would also show the university doing the right thing by the vulnerable boys upon whom Sandusky preyed. Plus, it would have prevented more boys from being victimized by Sandusky. The mother did the right thing by going to the University Police. They initially investigated and then were told to drop the case by the DA for whatever reason. Sandusky admitted he knew what he was doing was wrong, but he didn’t receive anything but advice. It’s so frustrating that future tragedies could have been stopped at this point, but because people weren’t willing to press harder for whatever reason, Sandusky was allowed to continue molesting boys on the campus of PSU, even after he retired in 1999. The story only gets worse from here on out, as I will detail in my next post.
*Throughout this post, I am using ‘we’ as a reference to American society in general.
**It happens in institutions everywhere, of course. The Catholic Church has been covering child rape cases for decades. It recently came to light that the Boy Scouts of America has covered up sex abuse cases as well. This is part of the rape culture of which I spoke in that it is deemed more important by these institutions to cover their asses and protect their brand name than to, oh, I don’t know, protect children from being raped. By the way, another said case happened in the Boston Red Sox organization, and the story is very similar to the PSU case.
***I have a particular bias against the use of scandal in this situation because it implies something tawdry and banal. This is a fucking outrage, not a mere scandal.
****After an investigation into Sandusky was started in 2005, Prosecuting DA Gricar disappeared. His body was never found, and foul play is suspected.
[Again, Part 2 is published here; Part 3 is published here]
Swellsman
Re: Calling it Rape.
I was making exactly this point just 20 minutes ago while speaking with a buddy of mine. On my way to get breakfast biscuits this morning I heard a story on NPR that referred to Sandusky having “molested” a child in 2002. Now “molesting” at least gets closer to the truth than ‘sex scandal’ but still we should call this for what it is: Rape. Any other words only serves to mitigate the crime that was actually committed.
fasteddie9318
The Gricar disappearance is a case in fuckedupedness all by itself. Similarities between how his car was found and how his brother’s car had been discovered years earlier when the brother killed himself by jumping into a river, recent web searches on topics like ”how to destroy a laptop” and ”how to destroy a hard drive.” Really strange stuff.
jafg
Sounds about right.
Roy G.
Thank you asiangrrl. This is a fearless examination of what so many people, for whatever their reasons, want to hide, deny and obfuscate and prevaricate against. Some people are socially conditioned to not discuss these things, while others have an interest in not having them made public, but it is in the public interest to shine a light on the situation.
It is also important to look at the societal structure that condones this type of action, and the reactions around it, and how the Establishment decides what to condemn and what to condone. To that end, here is an insightful post on The Nation about the difference between the Pro-Paterno Penn State rioters and the Occupy Berkeley protestors.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164535/penn-state-and-berkeley-tale-two-protestsa
West of the Cascades
This is powerful stuff.
I agree wholeheartedly that we need to refer to these crimes as rape to make sure the full impact of what happens is not sanitized. I don’t understand, consequently, why the Pennsylvania attorney general did not charge them as rape, and I’d be very curious to hear from someone who knows something about Pennsylvania criminal law who could explain that.
Basically what I’m talking about is that in the indictment, Sandusky is charged with “involuntary deviate sexual intercourse” rather than “rape.” Both are crimes under Pennsylvania law; as I read the sexual offense statute (available at http://www.students.haverford.edu/masar/documents/PARapeLaws.pdf), what Sandusky is alleged to have done could have been charged either as “rape” (section 3121) or “involuntary deviate sexual intercourse” (section 3123). Both crimes involve “sexual intercourse” in the definition, defined as penetration including anal or oral, and both include as elements (as relevant in this case) sexual intercourse with a person less than 13 years of age.
Note that both of these crimes are first degree felonies, so there’s no difference in the potential punishment for committing them.
So this raises two questions —
First, what’s Pennsylvania’s rationale for not charging these crimes as rape? Are there issues of proof that I’m just missing in reading the statute that make it easier to prosecute charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse? What else could account for that decision? I have no idea – I’m not a criminal lawyer and don’t understand fully the process of deciding between crimes to charge (and is there a possibility that charges of “rape” could be added later?).
Second, has the fact that Pennsylvania chose not to charge these as “rape” been a factor in allowing the press to sanitize their headlines towards “sex crimes” instead of “rape”? It surely seems in my mind that if Sandusky had been charged with “rape” in the indictment, there would be more likelihood that the press would have been talking more forthrightly about “rape.”
I really don’t understand why Pennsylvania didn’t level the charge of “rape” in the indictment. It really seems that decision has led to some of the way the seriousness of what Sandusky did has been downplayed, and opened the door for people defending Paterno/McQueary etc.
Cat Lady
The board of trustees had no control over JoePa, and apparently didn’t want any, so now they’re going to find out what the true cost of that choice is. This sordid episode is going to avalanche its way through the whole world of college sports and is going to end up costing Penn State maybe everything – maybe its very existence as the TV money goes away and the lawsuits pile up. There were probably dozens of people who knew about Sandusky, and probably a dozen or more who could have stopped him, but they got bought. Disgusting. You can be sure that other colleges with big time sports programs have similar scandals, because too much money is at stake. This is just beginning.
Mark S.
What kind of prosecutor drops a case like this? As I said in another thread, it’s going to come out that Paterno and Penn St. had a lot to do with the DA deciding not to prosecute.
As for the mysterious disappearance of the DA, well isn’t that curious?
Joel
I would agree with that. How come no one has dialed up Tom Osborne’s office?
fasteddie9318
Completely agree with respect to calling it rape. Charitably, I’d wonder if the prosecution feels like it can get a central PA jury to approach the case deviant acts more effectively than they can as rape. That’s giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Xboxershorts
@fasteddie9318:
Gricar’s laptop hard drive was found (seperated from the laptop) and it was found to be forensically wiped clean. (water won’t necessarily do this to a magnetic recording).
The Gricar mystery is key, and pieces of it may be found through a subpoena of university emails and DA office emails.
Something that really needed to happen 4 or 5 years ago.
Gex
I have to somewhat defend Penn State. They have demonstrated that they can take swift action to remove sexual deviants in their midst. For over a decade, they would revoke the scholarships of female basketball players found to be gay.
It’s just that they’re old school like the RCC and the Boy Scouts. Their moral compass says gays are terrible and child rapists aren’t all that bad.
ETA: Just making sure you all realize I’m not really defending them. Fucking monsters.
It’s like the GOP. There’s a right group of people and a wrong group of people. Wealthy white “straight” Christian men are the right kind of people. By definition they can’t be bad. And whatever they do to the wrong kind of people is no big deal.
Xboxershorts
Tom Corbett, our current Governor here in PA was the State Attorney general in 2005 and there is anecdotal evidence he was aware of the Penn St cover up.
Cacti
At the heart of Penn State’s identity you had a personality cult centered around a completely unaccountable football coach.
Why would anyone be shocked that such a scenario led to massive, ongoing, institutional corruption?
ploeg
Key sentences:
So that’s approximately a 20-year gap between the time that Sandusky founded The Second Mile and the time of the earliest-known victims, at least as of now. So did Sandusky just all-of-the-sudden decide to start raping boys in 1998, or did he establish The Second Mile precisely for the purpose of having a pool of vulnerable boys for him to tap?
And how is this supposed to start looking better for those involved?
lamh35
@Cat Lady: So true someone yesterday linked to a story about The Citadel letting it be known that there were accusations there against a coach or mentor or someone affiliated with The Citadel that was accused and The Citadel did not pursue the matter further.
I think this case has made or will make a lot of institutions like penn state and the citadel et al begin to look back at incidents like these where the basically did nothing & try to do something preemptive
ploeg
@Gex: We shall see. It seems entirely possible that the truth about Jerry Sandusky was a much less closely held secret than is being currently represented.
Aaron Baker
I taught at Penn State for two years in the late 80s. They do love their football there. But I would never have guessed that concern for the program’s reputation would trump child-rape. Fucked-up shit, indeed.
Robin G.
On the subject of why it’s not rape, maybe it’s because they haven’t found Victim 2. It might be easier to prove the lesser charge with only McQueary’s testimony.
We definitely need a lawyer in here.
Aaron Baker
Absolutely. There’s already cirumstantial evidence that Paterno knew about the 1998 incident–which makes his half-hearted response to the 2002 incident even more reprehensible.
c u n d gulag
I’m a life-long PSU fan.
No more!
Yes it is rape!
Child rape.
The only things worse, in my view, are murder and torture.
Prosecute anyone who knew anything about this, and did nothing!
Let them lose their jobs and pensions.
Serve time.
And yeah – including Pope Joe Paterno!
With all of the law suits coming, they should shut down the football program.
Maybe reopen it in 10-20 years. Maybe never.
I already told my nephew, who was thinking of going there for an undergraduate degree in Engineering, but I told him to rethink that. You don’t want to spend your 4 years of college saying, “Yeah, THAT college! But I’m going there for…”
This is the most despicable story involving sports in American history.
catpal
the Penn State Board of Trustees is horrible, and the Institutional Corruption will continue. Here is the latest example:
Frazier was defense counsel for Merck during the VIOXX-related deaths and during the Fabrication of drug approval studies, so He knows lots about how to Keep the Cover Up going.
Gex
@ploeg: ?
Dee Loralei
Minna did/is doing an excellent job breaking this down. I’m interested in part 4.
What’s #TFY over at ABLC stand for? And why didn’t I know about it?
Also in the comments over there Princs6 has been really good and she has her own blog you might want to put on the blogroll. I followed her on twitter, because of her comments and blog.
lamh34
So I reading this article and just wondering what’s gonna become of the charity that the guy created? There are other good people who work/worked there and from what I’ve read there are some real good things that happen for the kids who were at the charity, just not involved with Sandusky at all.
I suspect that the charity may not be able to survive this and man it’s a shame for those kids who really got some good from it.
Questions swirl about The Second Mile’s role in alleged cover-up
Villago Delenda Est
@ploeg:
This is a question that a whole lot of people do not want to face.
Maude
I’ve been listening to sports radio.
There is disgust at the cover up that went on.
The concern is for the children who were victims. It was good to hear.
ploeg
@Gex: If the Board did not know about Sandusky before week before last, then it would indeed be “swift action to remove sexual deviants in their midst.”
It seems at least within the realm of possibility, though, that at least some Board members might have known about Sandusky for some time before the public disclosure. We know that there was an investigation in 1998, and it’s possible that Sandusky has been raping Second Mile kids for the past 30+ years.
WereBear
Thank you, asiangrrlMN, for such a timeline approach; I think it will be a valuable resource for everyone who want and need to wade through all the deliberate confusion that has been sown.
One item weirded me out in particular; even the stuff they minimized it to, in their own minds, was pretty bad. You only lose sight of that when you are trying to hide a truth that is worse.
beergoggles
I’m filing this under: why blogs are better researched than public radio after last weeks TTP tried to link this to the fitness of gays to adopt.
SuzieC
Can’t wait for Part IV. These articles are by far the best on the internet on these horrific crimes.
ratel
#4
IDSI v. Rape in PA
Sandusky has been charged with Involuntary Devitate Sexual Intercourse rather than Rape, because in PA IDSI encompasses a broader range of behaviors and, with a male victim, Rape would actually be a lesser included offense that would merge with IDSI at the time of sentencing.
cathyx
I’d like Sandusky’s wife to take the stand. She needs to answer some questions.
JPL
@Xboxershorts: Do you know who was attorney general when charges were not brought by the DA?
Modulo Myself
According the Grand Jury report, the DA says that Schreffler did not pass on what Sandusky had said re: wanting to die, etc.
My overall take is that enough people at Penn State and State College knew something was up. Sandusky’s lawyer, for example, would have had to know.
Hypothetically, two things made it okay for this to continue–
1) The money from Penn State football.
2) The fact that Sandusky was only going after (as far we know) troubled kids from poorer homes.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Joel: What was bad about Nebraska they also had a Heisman candidate, named Lawrence Phillips who dragged a woman down the stairs by her hair and beat her. At first he was suspended yet when they began to lose they reinstated him,and on to the National Championship they went. The victim IIRC was treated like she was some tramp trying to entice Phillips instead of a victim of a crime. Kudos to the late Mrs Kraft for refusing to reward a thug.
Moonbatman
That is why the Duke Lacrosse rapists are free!!
“What does a Social Disaster Sound Like?”
Stupid wingnuts are trying to imply Sandusky and the Catholic priests and deacons were gay.
Free Social Justice warrior and Political Prisoner Steven Hayes!!!!
Nutella
@ploeg:
On the question of who knew what when:
link
Courtney knew what happened 13 years ago and Courtney worked for both Second Mile and Penn State.
Yutsano
@Moonbatman: Your lack of brain is showing. Shoo! Shoo!
Taylor
@Modulo Myself:
Bingo on #2.
Southern Beale
In today’s New York Times, Ross Douthat argues that the reason Sandusky was able to get away with these horrible crimes is BECAUSE he did so much good charitable work.
Which just smacks of so much Randian “altruism is EVUL and selfishness is GOOD” crap.
Aaron Baker
At that moment, Courtney should no longer have been representing either Second Mile or Penn State; as soon as he found out about Sandusky’s actions, he was on notice that both organizations had conflicting legal interests.
I know “legal ethics” is an oxymoron to many people–but most attorneys do take conflicts of interest seriously. I doubt this guy did.
Xboxershorts
@JPL:
This guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Michael_Fisher
Aaron Baker
About Courtney, it also does need to be said that as attorney for an interested party, he had a strict obligation not to make public anything his client didn’t wish to be made public. This is an almost exceptionless obligation that I know infuriates many non-lawyers, but it really cannot be otherwise if attorneys are to represent their clients effectively.
JPL
@Xboxershorts: The 2008 investigation involved the state attorney general’s office and I’m curious whether or not the state attorney general’s office was ever notified during the 1998 investigation. I guess there is no way to find out given the death of the DA.
bin Lurkin'
Speaking of conflict of interest, the judge who released Jerry Sandusky without him putting up a single penny does volunteer work for the Second Mile.
http://www.centrelaw.com/attorney-profiles/detail.php?id=1
sb
@Maude: Hear, hear. I did not hear any apologies, “innocent ’till proven guilty”, what was JoePa supposed to do… ESPN especially has been strong here. I thought Mark May was going to hit somebody. Jay Bilas called this “conspiracy of cowards” and that’s exactly right.
JPL
@bin Lurkin’: Sandusky has been seen out and about in his Penn State jacket. When he appears in court in December, I hope it’s in from of another judge. The judge should have recused herself.
suzanne
Brava.
Thank you for looking at this through the lens of patriarchy. As you say, this doesn’t happen without underlying conditions that allow it, and the domination element of rape culture and the tribal nature of sports culture are a potent mix. And we all bear collective responsibility for that.
Nutella
@Aaron Baker:
Yes, I know. I certainly wouldn’t have expected Courtney to go to the papers about it but as counsel to both organizations he should have been advising them to cut all ties to Sandusky to avoid future legal problems. If he did and they refused to follow his advice, why was he still counsel to both?
bin Lurkin'
@JPL: I’m starting to think there is no one of any prominence at all in that community that does not have some conflict of interest with regards to the case, it’s that sort of incestuous place.
Rather like the small town I grew up in but even more so.
bin Lurkin'
ObFYWP, triggered the filter..
burnspbesq
@Mark S.:
“Eavesdropped” creates a significant risk that everything they heard, and every bit of evidence developed as a result of what they heard, would have been found to be inadmissible. I don’t blame Gricar even a tiny bit for not going forward with a case that has those kinds of problems.
Professor
@cathyx: Is Sandusky married? It’s just like a closet homosexual getting married as a cover up protection! There are so many homosexuals who enter into sham marriages, eg Elton John, Rush Limbaugh etc, as a cover.
burnspbesq
If you are calling for the heads of Paterno, Spanier, and the Penn State AD, and you didn’t call for the heads of Dom Starsia, Craig Littlepage, and Teresa Sullivan when George Huguely was arrested, you are in effect saying that the coverup bothers you more than the crime. Is that really what you want to say?
Nutella
What makes this case fascinating is that all these people saw something that is so obviously evil going on and didn’t do anything to stop it. Pretty much everybody here agrees that molesting and/or raping children is evil so it’s interesting to look into the mind of someone who disagrees.
Have any of you read PD James’ Death in Holy Orders? One of the characters is a COE priest who is stuck in an obscure rural seminary after his career was derailed when he was reported for molesting choirboys. I can see how this would be an interesting tragic character, brought down by his own weakness, but James portrays him as a victim(!) She blames his downfall on the boys who were low-class nobodies who should have been grateful for any attention from this fine priest, and on the church that fell for bourgeois politically correctness rather than traditional righteousness.
I found the attitude horrifying, but it is very interesting to see how differently some people view something that seems very obviously wrong to me.
shortstop
@bin Lurkin’: That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that. And yes, it’s outrageous that that judge didn’t recuse herself.
Gex
@ploeg: They did, but Penn State’s athletic department didn’t. A 13 year problem allowed to fester is not in any way “swiftly dealt with”.
Back then, Penn State added sexual orientation to their non-discrimination policy. She continued on, despite the fact that the policy was directed at her. They didn’t do anything until a former student sued.
The athletic department does not take care of problems, they don’t do due diligence in reporting up.
And that provides at least some evidence that at the highest levels of the institution (whomever decides the anti-discrimination policy) did only the bare minimum to cover their asses. I would not be surprised to find the same in this case.
cathyx
@Professor: Yes, and they have 6 adopted kids.
shortstop
@burnspbesq: From a moral standpoint, the cover-up is worse than the crime. Pedophiles are monsters, but most people understand that they’re mentally ill monsters. The human dregs who line up to cover for the predators have no such mitigating factor in their conduct. This point has been consistently set out for you every time you rage against criticism of those in the Roman Catholic hierarchy who cover for pedophile priests. Apparently your own peculiar twist on moral culpability prevents you from taking it in.
Gex
@Professor: Thanks a ton for equating pedophile with homosexual. Asshole.
Joel
@Mr Stagger Lee: They also had…
and…
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
What a ridiculous comment. A coverup is a crime, and people who participate in a coverup become accomplices in any future wrongdoing by the person they cover for. Unless you have some actual evidence that UVA helped Huguely in his crime, the cases aren’t the same.
General Stuck
Excellent and thorough expose’, AsiangrrlMN!
Gex
So the AD played for Paterno. Sandusky played for Paterno. McQuery played for Paterno. The judge that released Sandusky without bail worked with Sandusky at Second Mile. What an incestuous little community they’ve got there. All the better for a good ol’ boys network to set up and take care of their own.
Gex
Ugh. Post stuck in moderation.
Emdee
Here’s where I become a BJ pariah, but I have to say this somewhere or I’ll just get more depressed.
The facts may be in dispute because Sandusky has pled innocence. We are all outraged over a grand jury indictment, and this may be proper (I can’t tell anyone what to be outraged over), but grand jury proceedings are not adversarial. There is no cross-examination and no rebuttal. None of the evidence is “tested” in any way we’d associate with due process. Targets of grand jury investigations have extremely limited rights to challenge what prosecutors present.
Everyone simply assumes that the information in the indictment is true, but that’s not necessarily the fact. Please don’t misunderstand me: the charges are extremely serious, and based solely on the indictment, a public university like Penn State should have, at least, placed all whose actions were questioned on administrative leave. If the university knows more than was made public in the indictment, it could easily support firings. It could support firings anyway, as coaches get fired every year for far less than this kind of accusation.
But progressives are supposed to be civil libertarians, and civil libertarians generally don’t assume someone’s guilty just because an elected prosecutor says so in an election year. Again, these charges could easily be true. I’m not saying they aren’t true. I’m saying it’s an indictment, not a verdict. We all got bent out of shape when the administration ordered the death of an American citizen based on nothing more than an indictment, and yet here we are blithely accepting an indictment as undisputed fact in this case.
A relative told me “there has to be something there if there are this many accusers.” Well, that’s what they said about Michael Jackson, too, and I think that after he died, all of his accusers recanted. (The father of one even committed suicide, shamefully.)
There will never, ever be any “winners” in this case. If even one of the dozens of allegations against the eight identified victims is true, it is a tragedy of such magnitude that whatever kept it from being reported at PSU must change so it never happens again. I’m just this one guy standing over here trying not to get hit with rocks while stating what should be obvious: no one’s been cross-examined. No rebuttal witnesses have been deposed. The guy is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.
Can we not go about trying to fix what the problems may be without assuming that a grand jury, which a New York state judge famously said would indict a ham sandwich, is 100% accurate and the facts are not in question?
(Probably not. But I had to vent. It may be time to donate to the ACLU if I can scrape a few bucks together. If “innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t apply to someone, it doesn’t necessarily apply to anyone.)
asiangrrlMN
Thanks, ABL for cross-posting this here. I really do think we can’t let this drop by the wayside.
@shortstop: Yes. This. I certainly do want to say the cover-up is as bad as the crime, on a moral level. As I said in my posts, I’m not qualified to quantify on a legal level, so I wrote strictly from a personal moral point of view.
Thanks, all, for the discussion.
Emma
@Gex: Snark meter broken? Mention of Elton John as being in a sham marriage should have clued you, IMO.
Lojasmo
@Professor:
No, it is not the same.
@burnspbesq:
The crime is worse, but each person who hid this is complicit, which is nearly as bad, and the complicity caused many more children to be raped, so each complicit person is culpable for each subsequent rape.
Gex
@Emma: The fact remains that we are discussing a pedophile, and as always someone brings homosexuality in it. Associated. By linking from pedophilia to homosexuality. And I don’t appreciate that.
Too many Americans are willing to buy the RCC’s charge that the rapists in their midst are homosexuals. This shit doesn’t help.
ETA: Oh, I suppose the association is on sham marriage not on non-heterosexuality. Because we all know straight people never enter sham marriages.
Raven
@Emdee: Nicely stated, thank you.
sherifffruitfly
This is a very good series- thanks @asiangirlmn .
And I got put in twitter jail immediately following my burp tweet. Sigh. What a way to go out. :(
General Stuck
@Gex:
Well stated, and begs the question whether an impartial jury can be found for a fair trial in that jurisdiction. In this case, from bias due to dynastic reverence. I think the feds are also looking into all of this, which they should be for assurance that justice is done.
I get the distinct impression, that the feeder veins for this local cultural cancer is much more than we know now, or can maybe even be comprehended, when the investigative dust settles.
General Stuck
drat the WP moderation demons.
bin Lurkin'
@Emdee: I don’t think anyone does not want to see Sandusky get as fair and impartial a trial as is possible.
What most people are repulsed by is the obvious lack of impartiality that’s been shown for a very long time now by officials towards Sandusky.
Honestly, as a molestation victim myself I find the coverup even more disgusting than the crime, it certainly looks to me like mere cupidity and self aggrandizement caused these very powerful creatures to enable child rape for an infinity too long.
Emdee
@bin Lurkin’:
Allegedly. Those accusations have not been cross-examined either, and McQueery in specific told his players “I wish I could tell you the other side, but I can’t, not right now” (or words to that effect, not a direct quote). Nothing has been proven, though I think we all fear all of it will eventually be proven.
So the task is changing a system to make sure what is alleged to have happened cannot happen again. It would be a huge relief if it turned out that it didn’t happen, but given the past week, even if all eight named victims recanted, a significant percentage of the population will never believe it didn’t happen. Again, cf. Michael Jackson.
But setting that aside, there’s every reason to proceed to make sure the actions alleged to have happened can never happen in the future.
I don’t think I’ll say more on this, I have no desire to make it a long-term crusade. I just had to vent.
General Stuck
reposted from comment in mod
Well stated, and begs the question whether an impartial jury can be found for a fair trial in that jurisdiction. In this case, from bias due to dynastic reverence. I think the feds are also looking into all of this, which they should be for assurance that justice is done.
I get the distinct impression, that the feeder veins for this local cultural cancer is much more than we know now, or can maybe even be comprehended, when the investigative dust settles.
Nutella
@bin Lurkin’:
I haven’t heard anyone suggest that Sandusky should be strung up from the nearest lamppost rather than go through a criminal trial so people saying ‘innocent until proven guilty’ are complaining about a problem that does not exist.
The outrage about the coverup is about the failure to investigate very serious allegations. I haven’t seen anyone say that Stanier or Paterno or any of the others who covered up the crime should have lynched Sandusdky, either. What everyone is upset about is that there were no investigations (or inadequate investigations in 1998).
Suffern ACE
So tell me again why supposed low level of bail set in this case is a problem for some commentators?
MazeDancer
Much gratitude for such a brave and valuable summary. Which makes it clear that most of that college’s administration needs to be removed and possibly imprisoned.
The addition of the missing DA cannot be coincidence. First, there are no coincidences, but imagine this as a TV drama episode. One cop says, nah, that wiped hard drive and no body found of the DA working the case have nothing to do with this massive child rape cover-up.
Suicide is not the only possible explanation. And if it was suicide, why wipe the hard drive? Even if the only person implicated on the hard drive was the DA, why would he not confess before he killed himself? And how do you completely get rid of a body after suicide?
There would be no surprise if it turns out that Sandusky is not the only child molester in that town. And may they all be punished to the fullest possible extent.
Three-nineteen
@Emdee: Whether or not the crime was committed by Sandusky, the grand jury reports have sworn testimony from the defendants and witnesses being discussed here that the coverup happened. McQeary, Paterno, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier all testified that they knew (or thought they knew) something happened with Sandusky and one or more young boys, and didn’t report it to the police. That’s what the linked articles are discussing.
Three-nineteen
@Suffern ACE: Isn’t the amount of bail money supposed to track with the seriousness of the crime? More bail money for an accused murderer than an accused robber? Maybe some people consider raping 10 year olds a serious crime, and therefore think the amount of bail wasn’t sufficient.
However, I seen some comments stating that Sandusky should be lynched, and I believe some of them have been on this blog. But there aren’t many.
YellowJournalism
Suffern, I think there are legitimate reasons to question the bail outside of blind outrage. A lot of people are probably questioning the low bail in the context of Sandusky’s celebrity status and his connections to the judge who set the bail. Really, if he wasn’t who he is and the judge had no relation to him whatsoever, would bail be set so low in so serious an alleged crime? I know possibility of reoffending (if guilty), potential harm to the public, and/or skipping town are taken into consideration, but still seems kind of low.
General Stuck
@shortstop:
The only way that would place Sandusky on a moral, or legal level above that of those that didn’t report his alleged crimes, and seemingly pro actively covered it up, would be if Sandusky did not know right from wrong. A compulsion is not that, deserving of consideration as mitigating a lesser legal and moral charge, and like other compulsions, there is help to be sought out to control them, before they are acted on. As far back as 1998, Sandusky made statements that indicate full well he knew what he was doing was wrong.
Your comment sounds a little apologetic for this alleged perpetrator, of heinous crimes against children. Kind of what you been running around accusing others of, for having an opinion you don’t agree with. You might want to check that out. Everyone involved with this sordid shit, has reckoning coming to them, in one form or another, but only one has been accused of raping children.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Nutella:
That isn’t true. asiangrrlMN doesn’t treat the charges against Sandusky as allegations; for example, she asserts:
In the comments on this thread and others, there have been numerous people taking these allegations as proven facts. This isn’t just a problem here; Nancy Grace and her ilk have made a cottage industry out of treating allegations as fact, damning the accused before trial, and decrying the failed justice system if the accused isn’t convicted. It gets tiring after a while.
How can we as a society pretend to conduct fair and impartial trials when popular culture and “common sense” equate accusation with guilt, and indictment as proof?
Joel
@Emdee: This is fair. I’m unsure about the veracity of the Michael Jackson charges, but I think a more recent and better example would be Dominique Strauss-Khan.
shortstop
You’re trying too hard, Stuck, and for the wrong reasons. Recognizing that pedophilia is a mental illness isn’t the same as assuming that someone who has it should be punished less severely as a result, and you’ll look for years before you’ll find I’ve ever said any such thing. But let’s call it a compulsion rather than a mental illness if you like. Is it then your assertion that all the people covering up for Sandusky share the same compulsion? If not, yours is a distinction without a difference.
Roger Moore
@Nutella:
And it’s worth pointing out that if Sandusky is genuinely innocent, he’s the one who has the most right to complain about the lack of a proper investigation. A good initial investigation could have exonerated him so his good name wouldn’t be getting dragged through the mud today.
Gex
Maybe we can take as a given that we don’t know the results of a trial yet to come. What we have seen so far, including an eyewitness account of a rape (by a witness deemed credible) ought to allows us to speak as though this is likely to be the case without having to put a paragraph disclaimer at the start of each post about due process.
Gex
@Emdee: My worry is this. Everyone above McQuery has claimed they heard less specific information than what he testified to. Which very nicely helps Sandusky dispute McQuery’s testimony. They’re putting him on an island. This might allow Sandusky to escape the worst of the charges, even if the sheer volume of potential vicitms makes it impossible for him to escape them all.
SectarianSofa
Thanks, asiangrrlMN and ABL. Well done.
shortstop
Put another way, Stuck, let’s say you have a compulsion to start fires and I don’t. You know firebugging is wrong, you hate yourself after you do it, but still you keep coming back and torching buildings and maiming people for life as a result. Let’s say I know this and I know that you are extremely likely to keep hurting people. I have the power to turn you in and to follow up to ensure that you’re stopped. But I don’t. Next time a bunch of people end up with third-degree burns at your hands, am I more morally culpable than you because I don’t share your bad wiring and I could have saved those people but didn’t? I think so.
General Stuck
@shortstop:
You see, I see the same coming from you, as some kind of arbiter of morality, handing out judgments to those who don’t share your target, frequency and degree of outrage, and where that outrage should be most directed.
Don’t get what you are saying here. But no, they are very different. One is the person who committed the crimes, or allegedly so, and the other falls into the category of covering it up, which may or may not be a lesser crime.
I can’t explain it better than I did in my original comment to you. That it looks a lot like you doing the same thing you have been accusing others of, apologia, in your case, in favor of the actual monster who raped children. allegedly.
Far as I know, all concerned has the capability to know right from wrong, and again, only one has been accused of raping children. There is no moral or legal comparisons to be made from that, imo, between both the witnesses and alleged perpetrator. I think Angela spelled it out, the complexities of reporting child sexual abuse, in a general way.
General Stuck
@shortstop:
I don’t see a comparison you state as viable between arson and sex abuse
AxelFoley
@General Stuck:
Hear, hear!
Or is that “Here, here!”?
I always got confused by that.
Mike E
Late to the thread but wanted to say kudos to asiangrrlMN for doing a fine job with such a horrible tragedy. Lifelong PSU fan (TempleU grad) who grew up in John Cappelletti’s neck o’ th’ woods, and some major mind adjustments are occurring as I write this…ugh. Though I have to say I’m glad this wasn’t in LA County, the home of the worst DAs evah, but I have to wonder how well Tom Corbett comes outa all this. Again, thanks for your work.
General Stuck
@AxelFoley:
I use em both, just to be on the safe side
Lyrebird
@AxelFoley:
It’s “hear, hear!”
(Kinda like, “Now everyone hear this!”)
Easy to get confused, bc you’ll see it misspelled allatime.
more here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hear,_hear
:)
Kathy in St. Louis
I don’t know what’s the worst, the rapes of these children, the coverup to keep the program looking good, or the behavior of the students last week in defending old Joe Paterno. Really? If tha was a kid brother of one of the students who made death threats against the guy who blew the whistle, I wonder how he’d feel….as it destroyed his family’s peace and his brother’s childhood. The entire incident is digusting, but the behavior of the idiots on campus, until someone told them to cut the crap, was deplorable.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
It was common knowledge at UVa that (a) Huguely had a drinking problem and (b) he had a tendency to get violent when he got drunk. Heck, he was arrested in Lexington for public drunkenness and resisting arrest, and had to be tased in order to be subdued. Starsia was apparently the only person in Charlottesville who didn’t know this.
Tell me again how the situations are different.
And then go tell Yeardley Love’s family that the crimes of which Sandusky is accused are more heinous than the crime of which Huguley is accused.
eemom
Here’s an actual expert who backs up what Mnemosyne, supported by Angela, took so much unjustified shit for saying — most notably from the eminently insufferable shortstop, self-proclaimed Expert In Everything.
TuiMel
@Emdee:
I admit I stopped reading Asiangrrl’s narrative at that point. I have been part of the chorus of those who have been wondering how Mike McQueary could live with himself all these years (in response to narrative of the indictment). But, I don’t think one can write a chronology and state that the facts are not in dispute as the opening. All may turn out to be as the indictment describes. But, I think more is going to come out. My bias expects it to be more testimony against Sandusky, but we all will have to wait and see.
Count me in as wondering – if events are as described in the indictment – as wondering what tales Mrs. Sandusky might have to tell.
Samara Morgan
Moral poutrage, the BJ speciality du jour.
:)
G
@Suffern ACE:
as to bail, why should his bail be set lower than anyone else with the same charges?
why does he get to have a co-worker employee set his bail? Can anyone who is charged with a crime get that?
Just thinking that maybe maybe that might be part of why makes people unhappy about it
Samara Morgan
@TuiMel:
ditto.
Moral Poutrage! always a favorite on the Balloon Juice menu.
Rathskeller
Thanks for posting this, ABL & asiangrrlMN
MacKenna
Absolutely kick ass blog post, asiangirl.
Yes, there is no such thing as consent between any child and any adult so even if that fucking evil pedophile asked or claims he did, he never received consent AT ALL.
PEDOPHILIA IS A POWER TRIP, period. It is always rape, it is always assault. These acts severely damage and traumatize children FOR LIFE.
As a former victim of two molesters, I can attest to this and what was done to me is tame compared to what Sandusky did to these children.
Millions of children around the globe are sexually abused every day, mostly by males and often by males who are enabled by other males and adult females. (Like Sandusky’s wife.) Pedophilia is an epidemic and all pedophiles have enablers, supporters, admirers, fans, deniers, and supporters. Hell, they even have tourist agencies.
MacKenna
Just want to add, what really pisses me off about the judge granting Sanduksy nearly unconditional bail i.e. he can see his grandkids for Christ sake – is it is very likely he might attempt suicide, which is what these sick cowardly fucks always do out of self-pity and their need to avoid facing consequences.
Death is too good for Sandusky. He needs to face the music as do all of his enablers. Once the trial is over and he’s found guilty – which he very clearly is – if he wants to kill himself, I’ll personally mail him the rope.
NDY
The hypothesis that Penn State covered up the crimes of Jerry Sandusky does not fit the facts as they are known today. Contacting the police at the first opportunity and severing the relationship with Sandusky would have preserved the reputation of Joe Paterno and the University. A cover up could only have mitigated the transient problem of having associated, unknowingly, with a criminal. A cover up would, as we have seen, have harmed their reputations unless it was completely successful forever. This would not have been likely with the large array of people, including coaches, janitors, and police, who had direct or indirect knowledge of the crimes. In addition, it was Sandusky’s habit to attack boys in semi-public places, increasing the likelihood of discovery.
A better hypothesis is that rape is OK; and perhaps that boys are not believed to be raped. A combat veteran was traumatized by seeing Sandusky raping a boy. Perhaps others could not imagine that this could happen. Although at various times society does say rape is wrong, in the U.S. hundreds of thousands of people are sexually assaulted each year. One out of six women has been, or will be, raped in her lifetime. Do you know six women ? What are the odds ? Although rape is officially wrong, this society accepts it.
At a football game, powerful men are on the field while scantily clothed, attractive young women jump up and down cheering on the sidelines. This theatre does not in any way cause rape. The theatre is a reflection of a society that does not view women as full participants. Women do not have all rights; they are objects to be looked at. The sexist roles on display should be embarrassing to anyone who cares about what this society is.
Society needs continual improvement. It is always necessary to consider whether a tradition reflects who we want to be today. It is not enough to identify criminals or their closest enablers. Improvement requires examining, and changing, the society where the criminals have grown. Ending cheerleading as it is done today would be a valuable improvement. A step toward respecting women as fully human. If you would like to do more than cry in response to the tragedy that is seen today at Penn State, and will likely be seen somewhere else tomorrow, I propose boycotting football until the spectacle of cheerleading is ended.
Samara Morgan
One wonders why the Sandusky case evokes such moral fury in the juicitariat. I can only guess its because juicers are inflamed by the perception of betrayal by their beloved football culture.
In truth, ALL of American god-country-and-apple-pie exceptionalism is pretty much just a glossy cover story intended to hide the exploitation of the poor, the powerless, the darkskinned, and children and women, from the Trail of Tears to OIF to Yearning for Zion to NCLB to PSU and the Second Mile.
Samara Morgan
Or maybe its just garden variety moral panic.
Can it be that ALL of american football culture is built on exploitation of humans?
hahahahaha
THE
@MacKenna:
In a really civilized honor culture, he would be shown into a small room, with a small table and a chair in it, and a loaded revolver on the table. And he would be told:
“The team expects you to do the honorable thing, friend.”
Then they would each solemnly shake his hand, and file out of the room quietly, closing the door behind them.
After the shot was heard, and a decent interval passed, his aide would enter the room and administer the final mercy shot if he was still alive.
CarolDuhart2
@THE: After a full accounting and confession, so that they can contact the affected and do whatever is possible to compensate them. Don’t allow him to take the names of those he harmed to his grave and leave it for those left behind to wonder.
Peter Bink
Bring Mcquery to justice. After he claimed witnessing rape of a 10 years old child by Sandusky, he was a fund raiser for the Sandusky charity. Either he made the rape up in his 2008 testimony, to oust both Sandusky and possibly the aging legend Paterno, or he is a career driven criminal. Why did he withhold information about the rape to both Paterno and higher-ups while reporting only inappropriate behavior? This sounds very suspicious indeed.
MoZeu
@Emdee: The accused claims innocence. OK, I’ll grant you that. However, there is a lot of first hand, corroborative evidence in the Grand Jury report, against which there is not a mound of contrary evidence, but only the accused’s denial. So the facts are in dispute, but at this point they are not much in dispute.
Nutella
@Nutella:
About Courtney’s obligations as a lawyer to both Penn State and Second Mile, here’s some more info:
If this is correct, he knew about the 1998 incident from his position at Penn State and then later accepted the position of counsel to Second Mile. He couldn’t disclose confidential information to Second Mile but he knew he had a HUGE conflict of interest knowing that about Sandusky and going to work for Sandusky’s charity. Wow.
THE
@CarolDuhart2:
Of course he could be innocent. But honor has little to do with guilt or innocence. It is about perception and avoiding public shaming — dishonor — at all costs.
MacKenna
@THE: You haven’t read the Grand Jury testimony obviously. Sandusky is GUILTY.