[Vision2020] Football is more important than sexual abuse

[Scott Dredge]

Greed is sometimes terrible. 

From: thansen at moscow.com
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2012 12:43:22 -0700
To: art.deco.studios at gmail.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Football is more important than sexual abuse

I have lost any, and ALL, respect I have ever had for Joe Paterno.  For anybody, especially a well respected person as Joe Paterno, to actively participate in the cover-up of activities that permanently maim innocent lives for the sake of a few dollars is ignorance beyond imagination.
The civil lawsuits against Penn State University that are sure to follow could never restore what has been forever lost.

Seeya round town, Moscow.
Tom HansenMoscow, Idaho
"If not us, who?If not now, when?"
- Unknown


On Jul 12, 2012, at 10:02, Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com> wrote:




   
   


   
   





   


July 12, 2012

Abuse Inquiry Faults Paterno and Others at Penn State

By 

KEN BELSON

 


 

    
The most senior officials at Penn State University failed for more than a
 decade to take any steps to protect the children victimized by Jerry Sandusky, the longtime lieutenant to head football coach Joe Paterno, according to an independent investigation of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the university last fall.        


“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the 
safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims,” said Louis J. Freeh, 
the former federal judge and director of the F.B.I. who oversaw the 
investigation. “The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any 
steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized.”    
    

Freeh’s investigation —
 which took seven months and involved more than 400 interviews and the 
review of more than 3.5 million documents — accuses Paterno, the 
university’s former president and others of deliberately hiding facts 
about Sandusky's sexually predatory behavior over the years.        

"The facts are the facts," Freeh said of Paterno. "He was an integral part of the act to conceal."        

One new and central finding of the Freeh investigation is that Paterno, who died in January,
 knew as far back as 1998 that there were concerns Sandusky might be 
behaving inappropriately with children. It was then that the campus 
police investigated a claim by a mother that her son had been molested 
by Sandusky in a shower at Penn State.        

Paterno, through his family, insisted after Sandusky’s arrest that he 
never knew anything about the 1998 case. But Freeh’s report asserts that
 Paterno not only knew of the investigation, but followed it closely. 
Local prosecutors ultimately decided not to charge Sandusky, and Paterno
 did nothing.        

Paterno failed to take any action, the investigation found, “even though
 Sandusky had been a key member of his coaching staff for almost 30 
years and had an office just steps away from Mr. Paterno’s.”        

The investigation also presented evidence that in the wake of the 1998 
case, top university officials contemplated the possibility that 
Sandusky could be a serial pedophile. A second boy, according to notes 
taken by a university vice president, Gary Schultz, described actions 
similar to what had happened to the first boy, including Sandusky 
hugging him from behind in the shower. Schultz wrote in his notes: “Is 
this opening of Pandora’s box? Other children?”        

“In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity,” the most powerful
 leaders of Penn State University, Freeh’s group said, “repeatedly 
concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the 
authorities, the board of trustees, the Penn State community and the 
public at large.”        

The investigation’s findings doubtless will have significant 
ramifications — for Paterno’s legacy, for the university’s legal 
liability as it seeks to compensate Sandusky’s victims, and perhaps for 
the wider world of major college athletics.        

Already, though, the fallout from the Sandusky scandal has been 
extraordinary, its effects felt in everything from the shake-up in the 
most senior ranks of the university to the football program’s ability to
 recruit the country’s most talented high school prospects to a growing 
wariness among parents about the relationships their children have with 
their sports coaches.        

Sandusky last month was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse,
 including rape and sodomy, by a jury in Bellefonte, Pa. The jury found 
he had assaulted young boys at his home, on the Penn State campus and at
 other locations over many years.        

“I can’t say that anything astonishes us anymore, but it’s pretty 
astonishing,” Michael J. Boni, a lawyer for one of Sandusky’s victims, 
said of the investigation’s findings. “I wouldn’t be surprised if these 
leaders face new criminal charges for failure to report what they knew 
to the authorities.”        

For Paterno, one of the most damning implications of the Freeh 
investigation involves the university’s handling of a 2001 report of 
Sandusky sexually attacking a 10-year-old boy in the football building’s
 shower.        

A graduate assistant had witnessed the assault, and reported in person 
to Paterno the next day. Paterno said he would figure out how to handle 
the alarming report, and inform his superiors. The Freeh investigation 
suggests that the university’s senior administrators were prepared to 
formally report Sandusky to state authorities, but that Paterno 
persuaded them to do otherwise.        

After the university’s president, Graham B. Spanier, and athletic 
director, Tim Curley, decided to report Sandusky, the investigation 
asserted, “the only “known, intervening factor” was a conversation 
between Curley and Paterno.        

It was then decided the “humane” thing to do would be to speak to 
Sandusky and warn him not to bring children on campus any longer.       
 

“No such sentiments,” the investigation said of Paterno, Spanier, 
Schultz and Curley, “were ever expressed by them for Sandusky’s 
victims.”        

Freeh, appearing at a news conference in Philadelphia, singled out the 
reaction in 2000 of a group of janitors after one of them said he 
witnessed Sandusky abusing a boy in the locker room showers at the 
football building as indicative of the culture of the university. The 
janitors discussed what to do and the witness ultimately decided not to 
go to university officials, later saying he was afraid he would lose his
 job if he did so.        

"They were afraid to take on the football program," Freeh said. "They 
said the university would circle around it. It was like going against 
the president of the United States. If that's the culture on the bottom,
 then God help the culture at the top."        

Paterno's family released a statement Thursday saying that it accepted 
criticism that Paterno should have done more, but argued that he was 
being judged with the benefit of hindsight.        

"If Joe Paterno had understood what Sandusky was, a fear of bad 
publicity would not have factored into his actions," the statement said.
        

The family added: "The idea that any sane, responsible adult would 
knowingly cover up for a child predator is impossible to accept. The far
 more realistic conclusion is that many people didn't fully understand 
what was happening and underestimated or misinterpreted events."        

On the Penn State campus in State College, Freeh's news conference was 
watched by some on televisions at the student union. The investigation's
 conclusions, especially about Paterno's involvement, were jarring for 
some.        

"The conclusions could not be any more harsh," said Russell Frank, a 
journalism professor. "It's a very powerful indictment of the people in 
charge."        

Freeh was named to head the investigation by the university’s board of 
trustees shortly after Sandusky was arrested and Schultz and Curley were
 criminally charged for perjury in November 2011.        

“No one is above scrutiny,” Kenneth Frazier, a trustee, said at the time
 Freeh’s probe was announced. “He has complete rein to follow any lead, 
to look into every corner of the university to get to the bottom of what
 happened.”        

The Paterno family, in an attempt to blunt the force of any critical 
findings by Freeh, issued a statement Tuesday that sought to undermine 
the fairness of the investigation. The statement said Paterno, before 
his death, had been eager to tell all he knew about the university’s 
dealings with Sandusky and had admitted to having failed to do more to 
stop Sandusky. But it lamented what it called the improper and 
misleading disclosure in recent weeks of aspects of Freeh’s findings.   
     

On Thursday morning, before Freeh's findings were released, Paterno's 
son Jay appeared on the "Today" show. "This investigation is still one 
opinion, one piece of the puzzle," he said. "We’ve never been afraid of 
the truth."        

Joe Paterno, in a letter that he had prepared but that was not published
 before his death, asserted that whatever the failings in the Sandusky 
affair — his or the university’s — it did not constitute a “football 
scandal.”        

“Regardless of anyone’s opinion of my actions or the actions of the 
handful of administration officials in this matter, the fact is nothing 
alleged is an indictment of football or evidence that the spectacular 
collections of accomplishments by dedicated student athletes should be 
in anyway tarnished,” Paterno said in the letter.        


	
Tim Rohan, from State College, Pa.; Zach Berman, from Philadelphia; and Richard Pérez-Peña contributed reporting.	


	







-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com




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