What do mean what MORE could have Paterno done? You keep bringing this up and implying that he would've gotten himself in trouble by doing more. What are you talking about??? The investigation into the 2002 incident didn't happen because Paterno didn't report this to the police, who, according to you, he didn't have any access to. Funny stuff. Yes, he fulfilled his legal obligation by reporting it to his superiors (I'll pretend, for arguments sake, that Paterno actually had superiors in State College). Is that all you would do? And then never bother to follow up?
He directly contacted the local police (not University Park police but State College) and the DA. They in turn contacted child protection services. That's why this is so perplexing, because it wasn't handled like the 1998 shower incident (which also took place in the football locker room).
Only in America (er...State College) are people's hands helplessly tied against doing more to prevent child rape.
How does it go down? Does an alarm go off in your house and you slide down a pole to a laptop to defend PSU? Do you get a text from Franco Harris? Do you look to the sky and see the glow of a Nittany Lion? Do you and Icebear touch rings and turn into a mop and a bucket of water? Allow me to take some liberties with the ol' bold. “I should have said ‘Hey where are we with this thing?’ ” Paterno said. He described himself as paralyzed by the unthinkable subject matter. He had “backed away,” he said, and trusted his bosses to handle it.
My final comment because i'm getting repetitive and it's clear we won't agree, but you can only interfere with an investigation if there is one. Clearly there wasn't and any complainant with a clue would know it when months/years pass without being contacted by investigators. Furthermore, here's a question for the lawyers - can anyone with knowledge of a potential criminal act be charged with interfering with an investigation if they chose to make their own report directly to the police (the real police and not some appointed general administrator to whom they report for organizational purposes)? I think we all have that right. Has anyone seen an example of a good Samaritan being charged under such circumstances? Could anyone imagine JoePa being charged with such a thing just because he chose to take his complaint to law enforcement instead of the administration? His supporters would be fitting him with angel wings and talking about how he put truth and the safety of children above all else. Any official advocating charges would be committing career suicide. It just wouldn't happen.
If there are to be arguments about this, at the very least people should agree on the facts. I'm always caught by the media spin that diverges far from the facts. There is one reporter who broke this story and has been on it from the beginning, and that's Sara Ganim. She has been writing articles on it daily. But it seems the rest of the world has moved on. I understand. The story is full of horrors. But then the knee-jerk reactions in the diaries show a need to respond to Paterno's death with little curiosity about the actual details. 1. The media used the grand jury presentment to make its decisions about what Paterno did or knew. There seemed to be little care as to what type of document a presentment actually is. Quite apart from the presentment is actual grand jury testimony. 2. Both the pretrial and the actual grand jury testimony conflicted with what the prosecutor presented. 3. McQueary, the witness to the molestation, stated that while he did not witness child rape, he saw Sandusky behind a child whose arms were on the wall. Prior to that he heard slapping sounds (the prior hearing was before the visual). This is what McQueary said in his testimony. Certainly, that image is consistent with anal rape. But McQueary's own testimony states that he never told Paterno this. He was distraught, he said, and never revealed what he saw to Paterno. 4. McQueary's testimony has actually been countered by multiple people, including a doctor who spoke to him on the night of the molestation. McQueary told others that he saw a nude boy in a shower stall with Sandusky but that there was no sexual contact. He reported that he saw a boy stick his head out of a shower stall, while an arm reached over and pulled him back in. The doctor for some reason said this did not rise to the level where he thought fit to report it. I don't know why, sound fishy to me. I think the witness dropped the ball back in 2002 by not conveying what he saw. 5. Now, what he did see was certainly enough to report to child services and the police, and Paterno should have done so. I think that was a big mistake by Paterno. But a cover-up?? No. People say this was done to protect football BUT that doesn't explain two things. A. If they were so interested in protecting the football program, then why did they report the 1998 shower incident to the police and the local DA. In fact, they even reported it to child protection services for the State of Pa. So, someone needs to explain to me why, given the report in investigation in 1998, it was deemed a cover-up in 2002? It makes no sense. They wanted to protect the program in 2002? But not 1998? What's the difference? The only differences I can think of are that Sandusky was a coach in 1998, but not 2002. But that means they should have been more concerned about reputation in 1998. Yet, the incident was first reported to PSU sports and PSU head of police Schultz and was subsequently reported to police and the DA, who conducted a sting on Sandusky before dropping the charges. Both the DA and child protection services deemed the incident a case of a man showering with a young boy and scrubbing him down. They let it go. Now, there's a lot to say here about the DA and the protection of children. The Schultz fellow is the same head of campus police that Paterno reported the 2002 molestation to, and Schultz is also the guy who did not report 2002 to other police forces. His investigation consists of confronting Sandusky and getting the name of the child (nothing is known yet if he did more than that). B. About PSU's rep, realize that the Sandusky story had been out for years and was being reported by Ganim without many taking an interest in it. It was out there since 2008. If Sandusky's association with PSU was a blight on the school, no one seemed to notice. I believe two things caused the media conflagration. One, a possible cover-up. Two, the horrific details of child anal rape. If you compare the case to what happened at Syracuse, you notice that Boeheim's reaction to events was very similar to Paterno's (i.e. not having a clear picture of the gravity of the situation) and so were the Presidents' reactions at either school. The difference: the sordid details about the actual molestation that occurred. The audiotape of the molester at Syracuse did not delve into actual details of the molestation. At PSU it did. Furthermore, there were multiple victims in the PSU case, while at Cuse we only have a couple guys and the wives of a few men who are now dead. 6. Paterno screwed up, and deserved to be fired, IMO. But it was a mistake, and not a cover-up. I don't know if any of you are in the position to hear complaints about abuse. I have heard them in the past. In all cases, I reported to my superior, had discussions about the nature of the complaints. In a few cases, my superior suggested that the claims not be pressed through official channels. In one case, I felt uneasy about the recommendation. In another case, I agreed with the decision not to push the allegations officially, which turned out to be the proper decision. Honestly, as a subordinate, I was glad that my superior made the decision for me. I may have CYA'd by reporting it officially with all the ramifications involved. Now, I'm even more glad that my place of employment issued a memo shortly after PSU/Syracuse stating that all allegations of abuse and/or violence are to be reported directly to police, not superiors. That clarifies things. Paterno says he felt these tensions, and since it was reported to him that Sandusky was in the shower nude (again) with a boy, he was inadequate to deal with it, was uncertain of the protocols, so he reported to the head of campus police, assuming it was within his expertise. I think that was the wrong decision, but people are making it out that they'd know what to do with 99% certainty. Having been in that position myself, I think people who state that are little too confident. If someone reported anal rape to me, then yes of course, you report a rape without a doubt. Even a boy in a shower with a man is enough, but as you saw in 1998, apparently the authorities are not that keen to prosecute. I might deserve to lose my job even by making the wrong decision, but to go so far as to say Paterno was complicit or involved somehow, that's too much for me. I encourage people to read Sara Ganim and to realize why the presentment was crafted in the manner it was. There's a political element involved here too, hatred between state leadership and theformer leadership at PSU, and Ganim is on top of this in terms of how the partisan political forces issued a presentment that ended in charges on two people (Curley and Schultz) who--however you feel about their failure to act--will almost certainly not be found guilty of perjury. Why? Because the witness did not reveal the extent of what he saw (assuming he saw child rape).
The question is who has the authority to investigate. The fact is, and I'm sure Joe is well aware of this, the UP Police are official police with law enforcement duties. If anything, they may actually be more professionalized than the locals. Paterno has had plenty of run-ins with campus police over open beer container arrests of players. In other words, why would Paterno report to State College police an incident that occurred out of their jurisdiction? If he were suspicious of a cover-up, he'd go to the state level prosecutors, not to local police. I tend to think he was not suspicious, but then again there has been no revelation of any testimony yet which addressed one way or the other if Paterno pressed Schultz on the investigation.
The earlier quote was quite different than that. What he said was, "With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more." Yours is a total distortion, and there weren't multiple kids in the shower in 2oo2. I'll also note this: your initial response is bizarre since this thread had 60 odd posts with multiples from you before I even noticed it. How does it work? Are you frothing at the mouth looking for Paterno threads?
It's weird how people have jobs and catch up in their free time. Even he said he should have done more - I guess that isn't enough for his defenders.
Minor correction: I didn't say the town police. I was talking about a report to the campus police because I am well aware that they have full police powers over campus facilities. The comment about "real police" was to distinguish them from a non-police administrator to whom they happen to report for financial and organizational structure purposes.
You keep saying they report to him for financial/organizational and yet this is the guy who ran the previous investigations and to whom Paterno reported possible criminal acts in the past. Take the Chris Bell incident, for example. That went to Schultz too.
Huh? Yeah, I broke in tonight. I have a job. It's pointedly obvious he should have done more since Sandusky went on molesting kids. That's not what's under discussion.
Since you questioned it.....I said it because a simple review of his background shows him to be a general administrator with no qualifications to run a criminal investigation. The police have to report somewhere, as do the head of facilities, HR, finance, etc., and he is the guy for all of them. That doesn't make him a law enforcement official or criminal scientist just as it doesn't make him an HVAC engineer or facilities manager. When I asked earlier about what you meant when you said that he oversaw the 1998 investigation you replied: "He directly contacted the local police (not University Park police but State College) and the DA. They in turn contacted child protection services. That's why this is so perplexing, because it wasn't handled like the 1998 shower incident (which also took place in the football locker room)." In other words his "oversight" consisted of passing the case on to others to investigate (as one would expect from someone with no background in criminal justice). As you seemingly implied, it would have been better for everyone other than Sandusky if he had done the same here. So, what did you mean when you said he "ran" other investigations?
