For the most part today I have spent a great portion of the morning listening to a national online sports radio show which has been reporting the goings on with the Penn St. molestation case. If you haven't heard here's the skinny on the story everyone else is taking about. Once considered a likely replacement for legendary football coach Joe Paterno, former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky has been charged with sexually assaulting at least eight young boys over the course of fifteen years, but reports indicate the abuse may have involved more youths, gone on longer, and may have been covered up by high-ranking members of Penn State football and general faculty. The Jerry Sandusky Penn State probe, involving years of alleged child abuse by the retired defensive coordinator, keeps getting dirtier, casting a long shadow over the grimy world of college football scandals and forever putting a blot on Penn State football and charity The Second Mile. Investigation into ongoing child sex abuse at Sandusky charity foundation The Second Mile began in 2009, when a first official report was filed, and it seemed as though the charges caught the athletic and scholarly community completely by surprise.
Now however, two Penn State officials, Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, have been charged with failing to report suspected child abuse. Notes from the grand jury report, the Pennsylvania attorney general's office, and reporting by news outlets like CNN and USA Today show that allegations of abuse, and eyewitness accounts, date back as far as 1994. The abuse was known to Joe Paterno as early as 2002 when a graduate associate reported having seen Sandusky sexually violating a child of 9 or 10 years of age in the athletic showers. So my question to you is what would you do in such a situation? A young man tells you he just witnessed an older man molesting a boy in a shower. The boy appears to be 10 years old.
What action would you take?
While there are many different aspects to this unfolding story, we can’t forget the fact that underage, defenseless children are the victims here without doubt. The many good works of Joe Paterno, his legend on and off the football field should not cloud your vision here. There was a crime committed at a public institution and even more, there was an eyewitness to an unspeakable crime. Penn State knew it. And Penn State didn't do nearly enough about it, repeatedly. I leave the answers to you.
Here’s my rant on this issue of How Education has been corrupted in the US. Now you would think that the evolving case at this prestigious university would be one where the powers that be would have acted appropriately simply from the stand point that they too have children. You would hope that in that period of time when the graduate associate told Joe Paterno that he saw a grown man sexually attacking a defenseless child that Joe Paterno would have thought of his own son. That Joe Paterno would have felt a great sense of outrage, anger and a need to do the right thing. That Joe would have simply taken the time to consider how that child needed protecting, reassurance that there would be no further attacks, that he would be safe. You see, the graduate associate told the grand jury that both Sandusky and the child victim saw him. When Joe Paterno found out what had happened earlier that night, he had a responsibility to call the police right then and there and report the crime. It is no different than if he had been driving along the road and witnessed a pedestrian being run over by a car. You do something, you just don’t walk away and rationalize that nothing happened.
The reason Joe Paterno did nothing is very simple. Paterno happens to be the head football coach for one of the most successful football programs in the country. The millions of dollars his football program generate for the university total in the hundreds. So when Joe Paterno found out that a child was being violated in the athletic showers he decided that he needed to protect the sacred cow and not the child. When the university’s Athletic Director Tim Curley was told of the crime by Joe Paterno and corroborated by the graduate assistant, he too looked to protect the sacred cow. Tim Curley along with university Senior Vice President Gary Schultz knowing full well what the ramifications of the unfolding crime, decided to change the story and forever be intertwined in a lie of a magnitude they surely could not escape. Joe Paterno has sternly denied knowing the full extent of what took place in the shower, but the testimony of the graduate associate to the grand jury is that he went to speak with Joe Paterno early the next morning and along with his father told Paterno what had happened the night before. The grand jury has found the story provided by the graduate associate to be highly believable, while discounting the events as told by the two university executives. But what of Joe Paterno? What of the University Athletic Director and other administrators who have a responsibility to the students and the children that trust them and the university. How is it that an institution for higher learning will so willfully turn its face to a blatant crime?
The simple answer is money. I’m sure that many will come to a more complicated conclusion that will make excuses for the individuals caught in the moral dilemma. But I urge you to keep it simple and remember what Joe Paterno himself said when one of his players was arrested for driving under the influence. When Penn State receiver Tony Johnson was arrested for driving under the influence a few years ago, Paterno said he would discipline him "just because I have to send a message to the squad that it is inappropriate to be out in the middle of the week having a couple of drinks." That is the same moral attitude that the university and Joe Paterno should have employed when faced with the knowledge that one of their brethren was raping little boys. What would have happened at Penn St. if instead of burying their heads in the sand, if Paterno and the University administration had decided to protect the children in their community by reporting this crime to the proper authorities? Would there have been negative press and publicity about this respected coach (Jerry Sandusky)? Could there have been some repercussion due to the negative publicity?
Such as students and their parents choosing to go to another university for the secondary education? The one thing that is not in question is that the university administration did not think too much about how putting a stop to this individual could eventually protect other children from the wrath of Sandusky’s apparent illness. In the end, it was a lot more profitable to manage the problem by putting a prettier face on the truth and hoping that the truth although now with a new spin would never get out. Yes, often time when in the face of extreme circumstances is funny how the adults in the room seem to make all the wrong choices. Choosing lies instead of truth, money instead of morals while substituting secrets for openness and transparency.
There needs to be a new outrage, a sense of anger and a call for revolution in education in our country today. It can no longer be acceptable for politicians to make grandiose boast during campaigns about how teachers don’t care to teach our children. They cannot simply justify that the degradation of our schools is due to the unions having too much bargaining power. The argument that there isn’t enough money to get the job done right just won’t cut it any longer. We need to look for leaders who look at our present system and are not afraid to make changes. We need politicians who truly believe that we are the greatest nation on the face of the earth and that our supremacy is in the hands of those who teach the next generation. We need a nation of Americans who are vested in the knowledge that in a democracy, if you feel the sense of outrage, anger and revulsion, that then you have to have the courage to do something about what’s wrong.
As I write this blog, Coach Joe Paterno is fighting for his job amid "eroding" support from Penn State's board of trustees and a widening sex-abuse scandal and possible cover up centered on former assistant and one-time heir apparent Jerry Sandusky. The two PSU administrators, Tim Curley and Jim Schultz have since resigned as a consequence of their failure to notify authorities of a 2002 incident reported by an eyewitness. Hundreds of fans staged a raucous rally outside Paterno's home Tuesday evening. He appeared briefly, along with some family members, and thanked the crowd for coming. "I've lived for this place. I've lived for people like you guys and girls," Paterno said."It's hard for me to say how much this means," the 84-year-old coach said. I wonder what Paterno would say to the mothers and fathers of the boys that were raped before and after he found out about Sandusky’s crimes?
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