And Penn State took a page out of the Catholic Church pedophile priest playbook and tried to bury those sins. Maybe he just didn’t want to know.īut through it all, unspeakable sins were committed on children. Maybe Paterno was naive, as some suggest, and brushed it off as “horseplay.” Maybe he got caught up in how this would destroy his legacy, as well as the stain it would leave on Penn State. But all the stories, all the documents, all the testimony, and all the pain says otherwise. Joe was a solid role model and father-figure to them and so many others, and therefore he was incapable of being complicit in Sandusky’s sex scandal. Good men like Michael Timpson and Mike McBath. To this day, almost to a man, his former players support him unequivocally. He donated millions to help build an on-campus library and at least $1 million for a campus interfaith spiritual center. He was not only a great football coach but a great molder of young men. Paterno was the most powerful force in all the land because of all the other things he did, many of them deserving of praise and platitudes. The phone call would have come from the most powerful man in Pennsylvania. Paterno, the legendary football coach, could have made that phone call without so much as getting his hands dirty.” Sandusky was allowed to continue to use the Penn State facilities is beyond me. “Why no one made a phone call to police is beyond me,” Boccabella said during the sentencing. Judge John Boccabella certainly isn’t buying any of it, either. “Unfortunately he died and I didn’t get to.” “I’d be willing to sit on a witness stand and confront Joe Paterno,” the victim told CNN. Then last year, a day after CNN broke that story, Penn State acknowledged that it had paid a settlement to a victim. He said he reported the attack to Paterno and another Penn State official. They maintained their innocence while their lawyers found cracks in the case.īut now we have arrived here to see three men who will deal with public scorn and their own remorse forever.Is that what they’re calling child rapists these days?īut Sandusky’s sexual abuse goes as far back as 1971 when a 15-year-old boy was raped. That’s the system, especially for people who can afford to employ powerful lawyers year after year. Spanier went to trial while the others pleaded guilty, but only after working to have the most serious charges dropped or mitigated. Or do they sound like smart, powerful men who ignored obvious signs and tried to handle a serious allegation internally because taking the proper course of action would have been more cumbersome and damaging? I’m sorry that I didn’t do more, and I apologize to the victims.”ĭo these people sound like they’ve been swept up by a grave injustice orchestrated by an unfair system bending to a society that seeks salacious stories to take down the successful and pious, irregardless of truth? Former university vice president Gary Schultz: “It really sickens me to think I might have played a part in children being hurt.I sincerely apologize to the victims and to all who were impacted because of my mistake.” Former athletics director Tim Curley: “I am very remorseful I did not comprehend the severity of the situation.Former university president Graham Spanier: “I deeply regret I didn’t intervene more forcefully.”.Our system of justice is not without its flaws, of course.īut at this point we have three very successful men saying things like this: There’s a not insignificant part of that community that believes Sandusky is innocent, and his guilty sentence was the result of a drastic overreaction to a negative media campaign driven by political correctness. There are details you could pick apart in there - McQueary misremembered the year he saw this, and has giving varying testimony on what he saw and how he described - and some Penn State/Paterno defenders will continue to do that. ![]() ![]() Sandusky continued spending hours upon hours each week with vulnerable boys, grooming and assaulting them while staying close to the football program. These three Penn State administrators decided not to go to police. He was disturbed enough by what he saw to report it to Paterno the next day. An assistant coach, Mike McQueary, had witnessed Sandusky with a boy in the shower of a football locker room in 2001.
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