On November 10 Joe Paterno, the 83-year-old coach of Penn State who holds the record for the most wins in major college football-a man who had lived an exemplary life-was fired by the Penn State Board of Trustees.
The firing came on the heels of a six-day media blitz which demanded again and again, in strident tones, that Paterno be fired because he had allegedly not done enough. His former Assistant Coach, Jerry Sandusky, was accused of molesting a boy in the Penn State locker room-as well as several other boys. Paterno reportedly was told of the molestation in the locker room by then Graduate Assistant Mike McQueary, and Paterno reported it to his boss, Athletic Director Tim Curley. But Paterno, did not go to the police nor contact the victim of the incident to offer support. By not doing these things, Paterno, according to the media, was guilty of a cover-up.
This media blitz was begun by the Harrisburg Patriot-News and its publisher, John A. Kirkpatrick. For six days the Patriot-News published front-page stories and even a front-page editorial that were of a most sensational variety. In an editorial on November 8th, the Patriot-News called for Penn State President, Graham Spanier, and Coach Joe Paterno to step aside. It noted, “The allegations are horrifying in nature, stupefying in quantity, nauseating in detail.”
The upshot was that Paterno was tried, convicted and punished not by a jury and judge, but by the media. The media, and the public opinion the media stoked, conducted the trial, made the judgment, and demanded the punishment on the basis of here say and gossip, not on the basis of facts that had withstood the test of formal investigation, formal legal procedures, and the due process of the law. This was a six-day lynching.
The question is, why did Paterno have to be lynched? There are certain men who arouse feelings of jealousy and resentment. I have seen such cases in my practice. A younger brother will win honors at school, and the two older brothers will be so consumed with jealousy that they begin a campaign to bring him down. Think of the story of “Cinderella.” Paterno was loved and admired by millions of people, and this arouses the jealousy of those individuals who feel envy at not having what Paterno has.
Before Paterno’s firing he was idealized. People could say nothing wrong about him. After his firing, he was degraded. Now reporters seemingly bent over backwards looking for facts that would show how evil he was. He was seen as suspect because he had hired a lawyer and sold his house to his wife for one dollar. He was viewed as a mercenary man who was going to collect a six-figure pension from Penn State. He was compared with Pete Rose and other great sports figures that had been brought down by scandal.
As the scandal spread, nobody was even allowed to defend Paterno. Franco Harris, who played for Paterno at Penn State and went on to become a Hall of Fame player in the National Football league, came to Paterno’s defense and criticized the Board of Trustees for firing him. “If I had to choose today between the moral integrity and character of Joe Paterno and the politicians and commentators criticizing him,” Harris was quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “I would pick Joe Paterno, hands down, no contest every time.” Harris was summarily fired by the Meadowlands Racetrack and Casino, where he had just been hired.
Hysteria is a powerful thing, and most often it is quite destructive. Hysteria does not care about the truth. Hysteria is a human phenomenon that, like a hurricane, once it gets going destroys everything in its path. Reason is not allowed during a storm of hysteria. Reason is seen as weak, as some kind of cop out.
As a psychotherapist I have witnessed the destruction hysteria can do in families. A wife can find out some fact about her husband. She will jump to conclusions and accuse him of cheating and of a history of past crimes in in front of her children, and everybody will become convinced their father is the most evil man who ever lived. The tone of voice of the mother in such cases is strident and terrifying. You must either fall in line or the voice will become aimed at you.
Hysteria arises out of the unconscious fears and anger of human beings. Often it seems to be connected with a sexual assault; human sexuality has always been and will always be fraught hysteria because of the unconscious fears and conflicts connected with it. The present incident brings to mind a couple of others where hysteria led people astray.
In 1987, at the age of 15,Tawana Brawley accused six white men some of whom were police officers and one a District Attorney, of having raped her and dumped her on the road in a sack of manure. The accusation was inflamed by Brawley’s advisers (including the Reverend Al Sharpton). For weeks media hysteria called for instant firings of the police officers and the attorney general; all were suspended. After hearing evidence, a grand jury concluded in October 1988 that Brawley had not been the victim of a forcible sexual assault and that she herself had created the appearance of an attack. The New York prosecutor whom Brawley had accused as one of her alleged assailants successfully sued Brawley and her three advisers for defamation.
In 2006 Crystal Gail Mangum, an African American stripper accused three white members of the Duke Blue Devils men’s lacrosse team, of raping her at a party held at the house of two of the team’s captains. Many people involved in, or commenting on, the case, including prosecutor Mike Nifong called the alleged assault a hate crime. Again, this case hit the media, which whipped up the usual hysteria, and soon the Duke President suspended the lacrosse team and cancelled the season, all without due process. Later the accusations by Mangum proved false.
In the Brawley and Duke cases, the facts didn’t come out until later, after a thorough investigation had been done. And the facts of the Penn State case will also not come out until a thorough investigation is completed. Only now has the Board of Trustees of Penn State begun such an investigation. They should have held out on firing people until their investigation was complete. But they, like everybody else, were affected by the storm of hysteria.
More facts have begun to trickle out. On November 18, Joe Amendola, the Jerry Sandusky’s lawyer, announced, claims one of more of the victims have been found and claim nothing happened. And Sandusky is claiming innocence, saying he only “horsed around” with boys in the shower.
Make no mistake, sexual molestation of boys-or girls-is a harmful thing. If and when all the facts are out and all the witnesses and evidence has been clearly examined; after Joe Paterno is given a chance to speak (which hasn’t happened up to now), if it turns out that sexual molestation occurred and was covered up, then and only then appropriate actions should be taken.
Due process-the philosophy that a person is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law-is the bedrock of our culture. Its intent is to insure that what happened to Joe Paterno should not happen.
If we no longer have due process in America, all of us are in danger.
Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D., is a licensed psychoanalyst and author of 20 books we well as an avid sports fan. He is also an adjunct professor of psychology and has made 3 feature films.