http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/joe_pas_shame_20120713 ---------------------------snip Outside the Penn State football stadium stands a statue of legendary coach Joe Paterno, his arm raised in victory. Right next to it, university officials should erect another figure in bronze: a young boy crying out in anguish and being coldly ignored.
Penn State’s Board of Trustees commissioned former FBI Director Louis Freeh to investigate how child molester Jerry Sandusky—for years one of Paterno’s most trusted and loyal assistants—could have committed his awful crimes under the noses of university officials. The answer is simple and shocking: Those officials simply looked the other way. “The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims,” the report states. “Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University ... failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.” Those four powerful officials include Paterno, who died earlier this year of lung cancer. Almost literally a sainted figure in the world of big-time, big-money college sports, Paterno became aware of seriously inappropriate behavior by Sandusky with young boys at least 14 years ago, according to Freeh’s report. Paterno’s inaction was shameful. Most damning is Freeh’s finding that in 2001, after an assistant coach saw Sandusky raping a young boy in the showers of a Penn State locker room, an intervention by Paterno was apparently instrumental in convincing university officials to sweep the incident under the rug. The other three men allegedly involved in the cover-up—former Athletic Director Tim Curley and former Vice President Gary Schultz, both of whom face perjury charges, and former university President Graham Spanier—had decided to notify state child-welfare officials, according to Freeh, who had access to private emails and notes. But before any action was taken, Curley wrote to Schultz and Spanier that “after giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe,” he had decided he would be more “comfortable” meeting with Sandusky, counseling him to get professional help and telling him “his guests are not permitted to use our facilities.” Note the word “guests,” which may be one of the most chilling euphemisms I’ve ever heard. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
