They are mad.. OK...but this is not over! They are jumping to conclusions without all the evidence and facts.
The truth? Read the Grand Jury report. They found enough evidence in the proper way for the prosecutor to file charges.
What happened in the past is over and done with. More heads are going to roll because they protected the school and not the children. That is most likely what happened in 1998 and 2002. But no more.
This is not just one child. This is not just "horsing around" as Sandusky claims, in total denial. This is not just about "jocks" taking showers together. 50 year old men do not take showers with young boys, period and not on a college campus. The Grand Jury report made that clear.
This is not just one child, it's eight and possibly 10 more.
He said it was with a high school football coach who kept him after practice to work with him 1 on 1. Afterwards, the coach joined my friend in the shower and proceeded to initiate oral intercourse. My friend said he was too mortified to say anything or walk away.
Even though my friend was gay, he said it wasn't welcome but wondered if the coach knew he was gay and wouldn't get in trouble.
I think it's pretty clear that molesters target children who feel marginalized and vulnerable. Que.er kids fit that desecription more often than not. Until there is no longer any social stigma associated with being a gay kid (or adult), the gay kids will continue to account for what many believe is a disproportionately high percentage of experiences with abuse. (I could swear I've seen stats on this in the gay press, but can't track them down now).
Every day since this Penn State scandal broke I think about the fact that the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the university where I got my BS degree is living a life of respect/glory despite the fact that his reputation deserves to now be like that of former Penn State president Graham Spanier for his own sins of omission. As long as none of the people who were directly hushed in this scandal directly by this Mr. Chairman don't come forward then he will continue to live a life of respect/glory. I personally don't blame any of the hushing victims for not wanting to come forward as I'm pretty sure that Mr. Chairman would most likely be successful at destroying their reputations. Fortunately in this situation at least one of his underlings disobeyed his direct order to obstruct justice and as a result a child molester can no longer roam free in society. However as long as this man has any influence in human society I fear there may be others out there being shielded from facing justice and as a result more children will be victims.
I agree with the person writing the article. The big name is Joe Paterno - he is the scapegoat. I can not wait till all the facts come out. Many will be ashamed of the way they speak about him without having facts. He is a coach, reported it, and is not a policeman. Did Joe have the authority to keep Sandusky off campus??? I don't know. But so many think they do. Do tehy really know? Who has that authority? I will never blame Joe for the lack of action by others.
The victims are in our thoughts and prayers and the Penn STATE students are doing so much now and the alumni too since they heard about all this. I am proud of the students. Anyone who knocks them is just plain stupid.
Let the facts come out and then we will see WHO to blame. It is looking more and more like the police or the top honcho at Penn State. But I don't know for sure....I want facts and won't listen to the garbage of all these commentators who don't know anything about what Paterno did or said or to whom. Latest I heard the GA did talk to police himself. So much to learn. Until then hold your fire is my opinion.
I don't get how all of a sudden Joe Paterno is "just" a coach at Penn State since this happened. It's just a side-swipe to protect the guy who decades of Penn Staters have essentially worshipped as a football god.
In all but name, Joe Paterno HAD no boss. He was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Running a $50 Million football program gave him an insane amount of power. If he said jump, that entire community would have jumped. Had he called the cops - or a child abuse hotline - he'd have virtually every official in the commonwealth on that campus.
The destruction of Penn State and the knowledge of the facts of the case - by the current governor who was an investigator - were the only way he was going to be taken out of his position.
"If you clearly read the Grand Jury report, you would know a Penn State GA (Mike McQueary…) witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulting victim 2. Instead of calling the police, he reported it to his supervisor Joe Paterno the next day."
"Nowhere in the report does it say anything about Joe Paterno knowing about the crimes and not doing anything."
1 + 1 = 1?
Clearly nothing was done. This is institutionalized child abuse, just like within the Catholic Church. It's because these institutions are so big that they are seemingly infallible to public scrutiny and legal consequence.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2011 10:12PM by Strykary.
Joe Paterno may have done his "legal" duty but FAILED his moral duty.
He had god-like powers on campus, and could have easily banned Sandusky from using the campus as his "playroom". Instead, by his actions we see that Sandusky openly abused these children, CONFIDENT that fellow jocks would never turn him over to the police for his crimes.
We would have never known about this abuser, but one of the Mothers of a child did "an end run" around both Penn State and Second Mile by going directly to the police.
There is some speculation that the abuse was so widespread that Sandusky will have some fatal "accident" before he can roll over and implicate others. Time will tell.
He's in the same boat as Graham Spanier (the Penn State prez who was fired last week) on covering up a child sex abuse scandal from the law enforcement community for years. In his case Monson tried to retaliate (but unsuccessfully) against the person who facilitated the whistleblowing. I wrote about it earlier in this thread. I just failed to mention that my college was BYU.
I'm sure I've written enough here on RfM the past few days to get myself in legal hot water with LDS, inc.'s lawyers if they wanted to pursue me for slander. The problem for them is that what I've written is obviously true and I'm not scared of them. They'd only succeed at being able to legally harass me by filing a lawsuit. That would mean discovery and shining more light on the inner workings of their organization plus dredging up an incident that gave them enough negative publicity by keeping the story at the Bishop level. And they got this negative publicity without the world even knowing what was going on behind closed doors in their highest councils in trying to cover this story up and attempting to punish those who allowed it to leak. They'd probably rather keep this buried and I highly doubt they'll ever come clean anytime soon. If any of their Apostles who were Apostles at the time of this incident ever decide to plan to testify in some Congressional hearing or have an interview with some non-Utah media person then it could be important for such media person to have the info they need to do a thorough journalistic job. However as I was not an individual directly targeted by them it couldn't be me who decides to go after this. I also don't worry about them finding out specifically who I'm speaking about as I'm pretty sure that just as when you find one cockroach there are others to find too so any attempt by LDS, inc. to get to the bottom of my claim here would mean they'd almost certainly be researching many stories of this type that they've buried.