Dear everyone involved in this whole sordid affair;

The longer you keep bringing this up, the worse you look.  There is absolutely no chance that public opinion will change and people will suddenly start thinking "hey, covering up child rape isn't so bad."  It is not going to happen.  The sooner you stop calling attention to yourselves, the sooner people will move on to the next scandal and you can begin shifting attention back to football.

Joe ran cover for a pedo. No amount of reports attacking the people who investigated it will change that fact

justtray: If you read the ESPN article, you would know why your comment is so farking stupid.

Only one person involved had any connection to the Paterno family, and that one person's relationship was described as "not close." They were also directed to investigate and find the truth, regardless of positive or negative. Can the Freeh report say that? Based on this reports findings, and the obvious, glaring bias, non-factual conclusions the Freeh report makes, I would say "probably not."

I have no affiliation to Penn State or anyone who ever went there. I just hate public media witch burnings that are entirely devoid and ignorant of facts. Because as someone above said, they don't want or care about the facts. Everyone just wants to feel morally superior and blame anyone and everyone involved.

Frankly, I hope this reports help the Paterno family sue Penn State back to the stone age. They deserve it.

I stand corrected.  The connection is overstated.  But you still seem to be making a mistake about what a lot of people's complaint about Joe is.  Generally, I think people are taking some license to exaggerate when they say Joe covered-up the rapes.  What we DO know, and is undeniable, is that Joe knew Sandusky was doing something INCREDIBLY inappropriate.  Joe did not choose to do the DECENT thing I (or, I imagine, you) would have done, which is follow-up and find out, because if kids were getting raped on MY watch in MY locker rooms, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night not knowing if the problem had been dealt with.  Since Sandusky was still wandering around, that's pretty strong evidence something was amiss.

There's a long tradition in collegiate sports to ignore or willfully self-delude or even cover-up in order to protect student athletes.  Rape, especially, is a reprehensible problem at universities.

ESPN did a whole "Outside the Lines" on JoePa covering for assaults among his players.  Joe adamantly defended that it hadn't happened and he hadn't heard, and ESPN kept telling him it happened, but he was uninterested in investigating himself.

Ignorance was plausible deniability.   It wasn't until he was forced to see what happened that he kicked two players off the team.

So when we know for a fact that Joe reported up the chain the rape, and didn't follow-up, most of us aren't saying he did something illegal.  But he sure as hell did something reprehensible and morally indefensible.  Joe gets attacked for that reason, and because he is defended so adamantly by people who say he did nothing wrong.  He might not have done anything illegal, but you sure as shiat know that if it was HIS kid or grandkid in that locker room with Sandusky, Joe wouldn't have just gone with a "fire and forget" report and hope he wasn't confronted with it again.

THAT is why I find him detestable.  There were kids, hoping that somehow, somewhere, someone, God, anyone, would save them.  The pain, humiliation, and fear were dominating their lives, desperate for salvation.  Joe heard at least one cry for help, and did the absofarkinglutely minimum to satisfy the legal requirements to cover his own ass and that's it.

We need fewer of those guys in this world, and we sure as hell don't need to be worshipping their likenesses.

js34603: I'll stick with the Freeh report that Penn State paid someone to write on their behalf. You can trust them, they'd never cover anything up.

Wouldn't it be in PSU's best interests to release a report that absolved Paterno (and others) from blame and tried to ignore the idea that high-level administrators knew what was going on?

If anything, I would think PSU would love to have a report similar to this one that said Paterno did nothing wrong and he's still a great guy.

Champion of the Sun: Seems like JoePa is the one getting all the heat.  And the governor who was AG while this was going down isn't getting too much attention.  The board of trustees are somehow forever blameless too. The police investigating the 1998 incident are given a pass.  The prosecutor is given a pass.  The coach who witnessed a child rape and didn't intervene is give a pass.  The janitor who witnessed a different rape is getting a pass.  No one has accountability here except JoePa and the kids playing football there a decade after the fact

We (fark) had that conversation and came to the uncontroversial unanimous conclusion that everyone else involved is a scumbag. What, you want MORE preaching to the choir about how they're all douches? There is only ONE person involved in ALL of this who consistently attracts defenders, and that's why he "seems" to get all the heat. He's not. They all get heat. He's the only one with people rushing forward to provide ceramic tiling.

DaintySavage: McQueary is a large man who saw Sandusky sodomizing a boy. He didn't say a word or attempt to intervene. He went to his dads house and talked to him about it. Neither contacted the police.

I doubt anyone here who is attacking Joe is defending McQueary.  McQ did as much as Joe did, followed the same laws and procedures.  If one attacks McQ, it is on a moral basis.  While it is fully deserved, it also ruins the defense that Joe followed procedure and should therefore be left alone.

There is a qualitative difference, of course, between witnessing the rape and merely being informed of it.  But so, too, is there a qualitative difference between being an assistant coach and being one of the most powerful men in the state.  They were not equally vulnerable in their jobs and they were not equally credible when it comes to any accusation that the institution engaged in retaliation and cover-up.

And there's certainly a difference between who is getting all the defending.

Champion of the Sun: LesserEvil: Amazed some people still defend Paterno

The only defense I'm making of him is that there's no proof he affirmatively covered up child rape.  Read all the comments here, people just throw that out there like it's gospel.  There's tons of doubt as to that.

I don't see why he would think the college would be hurt by Sandusky getting arrested at the time.  There's nothing but risk in covering up the abuse.  He doesn't want to hurt the college, so he does something that can only hurt the college?  There's no personal threat to him in Sandusky getting arrested.  I don't see much threat to the university or football program either.  He cares so much about the football program, that he takes the only course of action that could cause it danger?

Dude, if Paterno had run directly from his meeting with McQueary to the first TV camera he could find, shouting SANDUSKY IS A CHILD RAPIST AND MUST BE STOPPED!  GO ARREST HIM NOW!, then we would all have been calling him a hero.

Instead, he's a child rape facilitator who helped to cover up serial child rape for at least a decade.

SkittlesAreYum: puffy999: Champion of the Sun: And McCreary was young and of a sound mind, why isn't he some huge pariah?

To me, he's the one person who had the greatest chance to put a stop to all of this, and he didn't do it.

I mean, AFTER that event, and other events that eventually became more publicized, the administrators and AD and Paterno really, really blew it to a much grander degree. But all of it could have ended in that shower/locker room.

No, the administration had the greatest chance to stop it all, for two reasons.

1. It was going on long before McCreary witnessed anything. If it had stopped there, Sandusky would still have had access to victims from 1977 to 2001.

2. It can very intimidating being told by your boss not to involve yourself anymore. It doesn't excuse him, but it's more understandable. To Godwin this, it's like blaming those who were "just following orders" more than the Nazi leadership because they could have refused. It's true, and they should have, but the greater blame always lies with those in authority.

That fear and intimidation makes sense for McCreary.  But Paterno was the single most powerful man at Penn State.  He's not going to be intimidated by administrators who have more to fear from him than he has from them.  You may as well say that Kobe Bryant was intimidated by Michael Brown.

Champion of the Sun: something weird happening in the shower

Seriously, nobody in their right mind would hear that and not have warning bells going off.

Let's take an unassailable person... Mr. Rogers... you have heard he was in the shower with a young boy, something weird was happening in the shower... and you still think, perfectly innocent, it's Mr. Rogers.

Hell no. You think, WTF? Then you confront a person you've known since they PLAYED for PSU, the guy who was meant to be your replacement, until something "weird happened" in the shower with another boy 14 years earlier... if you've been deaf to all the rumors hovering around your buddy Jerry for the previous 20 years, you probably get a light flickering on...

One thing you do not do is play it down when you pass it on to your superiors, and henceforth ignore it, if you do not condone that sort of thing.

On the other hand, if you were aware your buddy had some "bad habits" that might affect your beloved football program and your legacy, should they ever see the light, you might rely on the same administration guys who covered it up before and hope it all blows over once more. Hell, that assessment is being generous, because there are a lot of worse possibilities that come to mind.

/Amazed some people still defend Paterno

Champion of the Sun: gimmegimme: JoePa didn't call the police and tell them that Sandusky raped at least one boy in the shower. He had several years to do so. That's called a cover-up.

He also didn't tell the police how long Sandusky's cock was either, because he didn't know any of those facts.  He told his bosses, they covered it up.  There's a chance he was in on the cover up, but there's no evidence of that.  A tiny shred of proof should be offered to back up the claim that he was involved in actively covering it up.  What they've shown is that two people did cover it up, and they referenced talking to him about the incident, and not the cover up.  They had two emails regarding the incident as proof of a cover up.  Every other piece of correspondence was lost due to a computer system error.

It's a huge jump in culpability from hearing about suspicious horseplay in the shower to being involved in a conspiracy to cover up child rape.

You're absolutely right.  If someone I trust tells me they saw my buddy raping a child, I'm immediately going to tell my boss and then completely forget about it after that.

//Come now; McQueary made it clear he saw rape, not just horseplay.

I'm shocked that a report commissioned by the family to clear the family's name was released and it turns out that it tries to clear the family's name.

Next up, George Lucas will be hiring someone to release a report on how episode one is actually awesome.

Yes, nothing like getting people who are heavily invested in a more favorable outcome for Penn State or Paterno to do a supposed 'independent investivation' which is nothing of the sort.

I'm completely surprised to hear the former governor open his statements by saying he "insists on an particular outcome" from his investigators... WTF? I bet he has absolutely no ties to Second Mile, too, right? ::crickets:: right?

If there's anyone that would be an authority on assholes, it would be the Paternos.

Yanks_RSJ: The best thing the Paterno family can do is disappear into State College where they are still revered and stop trying to convince the world outside of that insular cult-like bubble of anything.  We're not having it.  Go away.

This.  They could have actual video evidence of JooooeeeeeeePaaaaaaaaa doing a piss-poor job of pleading ignorance of child rape ("A man with a boy...I for to did not understand this, for who forsooth has heard of such"), and these shiatstains would still worship the ground he walked on for eternity. Oh, wait, that video exists, and JoooeeeePaaaa is a shiatstain on the ass of humanity.

If a coworker was sodomizing boys, do you tell your boss and then wash your hands of it? Or do you make sure that the SOB goes to jail?

DancingElkCondor: Anyone in the media who claims that Paterno will not win is a freaking idiot

justtray: This is Fark, so facts have no meaning here (see George ZImmerman/Trayvon Martin), but let me just post the only thing that matters;

From the report: "No evidence exists that Paterno concealed critical information about Sandusky."

Please proceed with your regularly scheduled indignant, ignorant outrage, witch hunt.

Now, hold on there a minute.  You're accepting as prima facie accurate a document put out by the family of the person whose name they're trying to clear?  You seem to normally have better judgment than that.  Would you take at face value an NRA document that stated, "No evidence exists that Assault Rifles exacerbate mass shootings"?  Of course not.  So why take this as being definitive?

Somacandra: Peter von Nostrand: Joe ran cover for a pedo. No amount of reports attacking the people who investigated it will change that fact

That's the long and short of it. No amount of dressing up is going to polish that turd.

but but but Paterno was an incompetent moron who spoke to no one and sat in a darkened office when he wasn't on the sidelines for a game.  He had no influence at Penn State whatsoever and spent the last fifteen years of his coaching career doddling along like a geriatric Alzheimer's patient, just trying not to drool on himself.

Stop trying to rewrite history!

Peter von Nostrand: Joe ran cover for a pedo. No amount of reports attacking the people who investigated it will change that fact

That's the long and short of it. No amount of dressing up is going to polish that turd.

Champion of the Sun: I don't see why he would think the college would be hurt by Sandusky getting arrested at the time.

Well, the obvious is that mud spatters. Reporters are vultures, and sports pundits are worse... but we could think the worse... that Sandusky had leverage on Paterno that might have been exposed if he'd been put in front of a jury because Joe reported him; or we could simply assume that Paterno feared his light-handed tactics in dealing with his buddy might come to light, and it was too late to really do much more than try and remove access to school property (which they didn't do very well, at any rate).

I think it's silly to think Paterno had no motivation NOT to turn in a guy he knew for 35+ years, particularly when you are a high profile, "legendary" football coach that is idolized everywhere you go.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that Paterno had no clues about Sandusky's true nature, at any rate. Penn State students involved in athletics seemed to be somewhat aware that Jerry Sandusky was a weirdo to be avoided. It's very possible his crimes go back to his playing days, though he might have had an easier time hiding it back then (indeed, it probably emboldened him to expand his "play time" to PSU facilities and found Second Mile). It certainly IS possible that, as an assistant coach, Paterno might have been involved in some informal discipline of player Jerry Sandusky for some strange behavior with a young boy in 1964. Too many coaches in every sport, at every level, often are willing to overlook troubling behavior (including drug and alcohol abuse, PEDs, domestic abuse, fake girlfriends, etc...) because of their value to a program. We've already been made aware by former Penn State officials that Paterno insisted on handling all disciplinary actions 'internally' - which pretty much insures that we will never know the extent Paterno covered up crimes by other coaches and players in the program, and why his program looked so "clean" for decades.

Champion of the Sun: gimmegimme: It doesn't bother you that Sandusky was still hanging out in the luxury boxes until the day the scandal came out? You don't see that Paterno was part of the reason that Sandusky was still allowed to use the rape showers until the day the scandal came out? Sure, they had already asked Sandusky to go rape children somewhere else, but still.

Paterno knew that Sandusky had, as you admitted, engaged in at least some kind of sexual act with a child on campus and Paterno knew about the previous allegations. But Paterno did nothing other than tell his boss.

Someone alleged to Paterno that Sandusky did that.  If he was told the actual details of it, then yes.  But he was told something weird happened.  He told his bosses.  He always maintained that he didn't know what really happened.  It would be a safe assumption on his part to assume it was a misunderstanding after trusting the word of his bosses that they'd investigate it.  The fact that Sandusky was still around probably made Paterno think there was a simple misunderstanding.  If his bosses investigated it, with the university police, and let the guy hang around, safe to assume there was nothing to it.  Mcqueary is the one who actually saw the rape, and he didn't do anything about Sandusky hanging around the program for another decade.  Perhaps his silence reassured Paterno every time he looked crooked at Sandusky?

I just don't understand how you can look at the timeline and make a zillion excuse that allow you to believe that Joe Paterno, the mastermind of Penn State, had absolutely no idea about the serial child rapist on campus until the scandal came out.

The timeline.

Was Paterno willfully blind or stupid?  These are really the only options if you reject "a facilitator of child rape who covered it up for over a decade."

I was going to sub this earlier today, but I decided against it. Glad to see someone someone picked up where my lack of troll work left off.

This family and their "grandfather of morals" is about 25% as disturbing as the child-rape that took place. I certainly hope that the family of this coke-bottled lens wearing POS kid-farking enabler would get raped, dry, balls deep in the ass by the big black cack of justice.

These PSU and Paterno defenders are the sickest brand of human-being.

Champion of the Sun: ha-ha-guy: Lets see, the motive behind ordering the Freeh report was so the PSU Board of Trustees could get an idea on how bad of a situation they were in and react accordingly.

The trustees accepted it as gospel immediately upon being given it.  They wanted someone to blame besides the institution.  Once they had it in hand and it made the President, AD, and JoePa look bad they had what they wanted.  That's why the PA governor is suing over it.  The trustees wanted the issue over with as quick as possible instead of finding out the faults of the school and the administration.  Once they were given even a semblance of justification, they canned the people named and acted like perfectly innocent parties.  So they had much more reason to lie.

There's no benefit to the Paterno family outside of the restoration of his name.  They didn't stand to lose any money no matter how this turned out.  They're not liable for any civil suits and his pension and contract were ironclad.  I don't think there's any lasting sponsorship money the family would've been interested.  They spent their money to clear his name for no pecuniary gain.

It doesn't bother you that Sandusky was still hanging out in the luxury boxes until the day the scandal came out?  You don't see that Paterno was part of the reason that Sandusky was still allowed to use the rape showers until the day the scandal came out?  Sure, they had already asked Sandusky to go rape children somewhere else, but still.

Paterno knew that Sandusky had, as you admitted, engaged in at least some kind of sexual act with a child on campus and Paterno knew about the previous allegations.  But Paterno did nothing other than tell his boss.

And aren't you sickened that Paterno was able to make all of those millions even though he was facilitating child rape all those years?  It's not "blood money," but it's something close.

Champion of the Sun: gimmegimme: Come now; McQueary made it clear he saw rape, not just horseplay.

He made it clear to the grand jury, but not Paterno.  He didn't want to upset Paterno so he told him something of a sexual nature was happening.

He said he did not give Paterno explicit details of what he believed he'd seen, saying he wouldn't have used terms like sodomy or anal intercourse out of respect for the longtime coach.

I don't want to defend JoePa, but labeling him as a conspirator in the cover up of child rape is a big allegation to make when there's no proof he did that.

I guess you're right.  If someone told me that my buddy was doing "something of a sexual nature" to a young boy, I would tell my boss and then completely forget about it without asking another question ever.

Lets see, the motive behind ordering the Freeh report was so the PSU Board of Trustees could get an idea on how bad of a situation they were in and react accordingly.

This report was tailor made at the request of the Paterno clan to clear Joe's name.

I'm sure that this one is much more accurate and trustworthy.

Champion of the Sun: jj325: I will not buy the idea that Joe Paterno was a "confused old man" in 2001.

He was 75 and there was a bunch of pressure on the university to fire him for being out of it.  They had a few bad seasons in a row there, most people attributed it to his old age.

Dude deserved to lose his legacy and all, but I don't see enough evidence to say the guy was part of a conspiracy to cover up the allegations.  His bosses, yeah without a doubt.  And McCreary was young and of a sound mind, why isn't he some huge pariah?  Cause he told his boss about it.  And his boss told his boss.  The main bosses covered it up, which the evidence clearly shows.

JoePa didn't call the police and tell them that Sandusky raped at least one boy in the shower.  He had several years to do so.  That's called a cover-up.

Champion of the Sun:
There's a world of difference between confused old man who didn't do enough to report allegations and a conspirator covering up and aiding child rape.

I will not buy the idea that Joe Paterno was a "confused old man" in 2001.

Tommy Moo: gimmegimme: Wait...so are we no longer mad at Joe Paterno for facilitating child rape for over a decade?

No, I still want to blow up the stadium. The anger I felt over this was so intense I had to let it go. It was getting to my health. This is starting to boil it back up again.

I wish Anonymous would have gotten involved. It seems like something they'd take up. Deface the PSU football website at a minimum. Cause disorder by threatening more serious consequences unless the season was cancelled. I can't believe those assholes got to make their football money after all of this. For the rest of my life I will discriminate against everything related to that school. I will not hire anyone who went there. I will not be friends with anyone who went there. It might not be fair to everyone, but something has to come in and level some consequences. The student body rioted in support of child molestation. This story came out and the only thing they cared about was "Will this damage our ability to recruit, resulting in us winning fewer football games?" I know a few students went against that, but all of the alumni will try to pretend they were in that small group, so I'm not going to buy it. Brand them.

Calm down, friend.  I don't want to put words in the mouths of other farkers, but some seem to be saying that the overwhelming evidence proves that Paterno facilitated child rape for over a decade.  Therefore, Joe Paterno didn't facilitate child rape.

Wait...so are we no longer mad at Joe Paterno for facilitating child rape for over a decade?

ScreamingHangover: davidphogan: Peter von Nostrand: Joe ran cover for a pedo. No amount of reports attacking the people who investigated it will change that fact

I was thinking something similar.  If they're paid to clear Joe's name, I'm sure they can find questions to ask just like Alex Jones finds questions about 9/11 and Sandy Hook.  It doesn't mean they're the right questions to ask.

From the Paterno site's bio of their lead investigator Wick Sollers:


Wick Sollers is Managing Partner of the Washington, D.C., office and former Chair of King & Spalding's Special Matters & Governmental Investigations Practice Group. He has extensive experience defending accounting and government contract fraud cases, grand jury practice, criminal environmental, health care and FDA matters, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act cases, internal corporate investigations, representation before congressional committees, federal criminal trials and appeals, and general civil litigation.
Yeah, this guy looks legit. I trust him implicitly.

Sounds like just the guy to defend the LAPD for shooting up those pickups.

This guy Wick is a close family friend and represented Paterno form the start of this mess...

http://deadspin.com/wick-sollers/



Nope, no conflict of interest there... completely independent!!

In other news, the oil industry releases report that rips investigator Michael Mann a new asshole.