It is a scandal nearly 20 years in the making, hiding furtively in the shadows of one of America’s most legendary college football programs, at one of the nation’s greatest educational institutions…
It is a scandal involving sex, lies, and a cover-up of major proportions. So far, it has seen one of the university’s most respected former assistant football coaches charged with unspeakable crimes against children. It has claimed the careers of a university president, two senior college administrators, and one of the longest serving and most successful coaches in the history of college football.
On Saturday, November 5, 2011, this long-suppressed scandal burst into public view when Jerry Sandusky, a retired assistant football coach at Penn State University, was arrested and arraigned on 40 counts of sexual abuse against children.
Sandusky’s alleged crimes are described in a highly detailed and graphic report of Pennsylvania’s 33rd Statewide Investigating Grand Jury. That report, released on November 5, 2011, is the culmination of over 18 months of investigative work into accusations that Sandusky had repeatedly engaged in unlawful sexual activity with at least eight young boys over a period dating back to 1994.
Based on the testimony of eight unnamed victims and several key members of Penn State’s staff, including university President Graham Spanier; Athletic Director Tim Curley; Vice President of Finance Gary Schultz; an unnamed graduate assistant who witnessed first-hand one of Sandusky’s criminal acts; and head football coach Joe Paterno, the grand jury report explains how Sandusky used The Second Mile, a non-profit organization he had formed in 1977, as a means of finding young boys he could sexually exploit. The report graphically describes how Sandusky engaged in unlawful sex acts with his victims at various places, including Sandusky’s home and Penn State’s athletic facilities.
A key part of the report states that on March 1, 2002, an unnamed graduate assistant walked into the showers of the Lasch Football Building, located on Penn State’s central campus, where he caught Sandusky engaged in sex with a young boy. The graduate assistant immediately called his father and told him what he had seen. The next morning, he and his father went to head football coach Joe Paterno’s home and reported the incident. Paterno, in turn, quickly relayed the information to his immediate superior, Athletic Director Tim Curley…
…And the buck apparently stopped there. According to the grand jury report, Curley and Schultz met with the graduate assistant and discussed what happened, but ultimately failed to report the suspected incident to the police, as they were required to do by Pennsylvania state law. Instead, they advised university President Spanier about an “uncomfortable feeling” they had concerning an incident involving Sandusky, without telling their boss that it was a suspected sex crime against a child.
After he reported the incident to Curley, Joe Paterno apparently did nothing further. Neither, it seems, did the university, which simply banned Sandusky from its athletic facilities by taking away his keys. There is no evidence to suggest Paterno or anyone else followed up to see if the accusations against Sandusky were under investigation. Police never questioned the graduate assistant; the matter seemed dead.
According to the grand jury report, between 2002 and 2007, Jerry Sandusky continued sexually exploiting young boys through his Second Mile charity. In 2008, one of Sandusky’s early victims, by then a teen-ager, reported Sandusky to officials in his school district, who in turn reported the matter to the police, as required by law. In 2009, the Pennsylvania attorney general began investigating Sandusky, and soon afterward, the 33rd Statewide Investigating Grand Jury began calling witnesses in the case.
Eighteen months later, the grand jury completed its investigation. The grand jury’s report is clear, concise, and pulls absolutely no punches. The testimony of Sandusky’s eight unnamed victims, the graduate assistant, and Paterno, is found credible; the testimony of Curley, Schultz, and Spanier is not.
On November 5, 2011, the grand jury indicted Jerry Sandusky on 40 criminal counts, including “involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a minor less than 16 years of age, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault of a minor less than 13 years old, and endangering the welfare of a child.” That same day, Sandusky was arrested, arraigned, and released on $100,000 bail.
Curley and Schultz resigned from the university and surrendered to police on criminal charges of failing to report accusations against Sandusky to proper law enforcement authorities.
No criminal charges against Paterno, Spanier, or any other Penn State official were filed, or are currently being contemplated.
In the aftermath of the grand jury report and Sandusky’s arrest, all hell broke loose at Penn State and across the nation. Joe Paterno, Penn State’s legendary head football coach since 1966, announced his retirement “after the end of the season.” Perhaps he thought he was “off the hook,” and that he could still end his storied career without a blemish and with his legacy intact.
If that was indeed his thinking, he was gravely mistaken. Acting swiftly, Penn State University’s board of trustees met on the night of November 9, 2011, and summarily fired both Paterno and Spanier, “effective immediately.”
University officials had recognized the obvious: Paterno and Spanier, although probably not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing themselves, had committed intolerable sins of omission in not reporting Sandusky’s alleged crimes to the police. And so they were immediately dismissed, their careers at a sudden, ignominious, and well-deserved end.
Only Joe Paterno knows why he failed to follow up in reporting the despicable acts of his long-time, trusted colleague. Perhaps he wanted to make sure the football program he helped build would not be tainted by scandal; maybe he simply wanted to preserve his legacy. Or, maybe “JoePa” just wasn’t sure in his 85-year old mind what was the best thing to do in this situation…
…None of these rationalizations matter in the least. Paterno failed to act when he should have, and rightfully deserves to pay for his “sins of omission.”
This sordid mess reminds me a lot of another sex scandal involving crimes against children, and of how people in positions of authority failed to stop those crimes and bring the offenders to justice. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, the Catholic Church confronted its own sex scandals involving pedophilic priests. When the affair exploded onto the worldwide stage, the public was rightfully outraged to learn that the Church’s hierarchy had spent decades covering up the crimes of renegade priests who had molested countless numbers of innocent children. To this day, only a handful of the worst offenders have been held to account for their misdeeds. The rest remain hidden in the shadows of the organization that still protects them…
In a like manner, the criminal acts of one individual were tolerated for many years by university officials who failed to report crimes committed against the innocent. Unlike the Catholic Church, however, Penn State University finally acted quickly and appropriately – although belatedly – to hold people accountable for its own squalid case of “sex, lies, and cover-up.” Joe Paterno is rightfully gone, his legacy forever tarnished by his “sins of omission.” And Jerry Sandusky will answer for his crimes in a court of law.
Now what remains is to pick up the pieces and rebuild – for Paterno, for Penn State University, but most especially, for Jerry Sandusky’s innocent victims…
SOURCES: Embedded in article.