Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
As you no doubt noticed, Jerry Sandusky, once a renowned defensive line coach at Penn State University under Joe Paterno, was convicted on 22 June on forty-four counts for the sexual abuse of young boys. The next incident in this unfolding drama will be the trial of Gary Shultz, formerly vice-president at Penn State, and Tim Curley, the former athletic director, for perjury in their testimony to the grand jury and for failing, as required by law, to report an incident of sexual predation on Sandusky’s part to the Pennsylvania child welfare department.
I would not be surprised if Graham Spanier, the former president of the university, were added to the list of those charged with the latter crime. If Joe Paterno were alive, alas, he, too, might be in the prosecutors’ line of fire. Let me explain.
As you may remember, everything turns on an incident that allegedly took place in the gymnasium showers at Penn State on 8 February 2001 – when assistant coach Mike McQueary, who had played football under Paterno and Sandusky, spied Sandusky in the showers with a boy, buggering the child. The next morning, a Saturday, at the urging of his father, McQueary went to Paterno to report what he had witnessed. According to his testimony, he stopped short of being graphic. But it is clear that Paterno knew precisely what he meant. He later testified that the incident was of a sexual nature. He called Curley and sent McQueary to report to him, and about a week later McQueary met with Curley and Spanier.
McQueary claims to have been more explicit in his report to these two men than in what he had said to Paterno. As CNN puts it in an article that you should read and then re-read a second time, the assistant coach
has repeatedly testified he told Penn State officials he saw a boy with his hands up against a wall with Sandusky behind him and heard slapping, rhythmic sounds. He added that someone wouldn't have to be "a rocket scientist" to figure out what was going on.
Curley and Schultz, in their grand jury testimony, denied that McQueary had told them anything more than that Sandusky was horsing around with the boy in an inappropriate manner. It is this, they claimed and still claim, that justified their failure to report the incident to the Pennsylvania authorities. At the time the scandal broke, Spanier claimed, albeit not under oath, that he had no knowledge of the incident. “I was stunned and outraged to learn that any predatory act might have occurred in a university facility or by someone associated with the university, “ he said. “I would never hesitate to report a crime if I had any suspicion that one had been committed.”
It has long seemed likely that Curley, Schultz, and Spanier were lying. At Penn State, Joe Paterno was a demigod, and everyone knew that he was old school. For that reason, McQueary was reticent in his report to Paterno. He could not bring himself to speak in graphic terms to the old man he so revered. But he was not so reticent that Paterno missed the point. As he told the grand jury, the incident was of a sexual nature, and he knew it. If McQueary got the point across to Paterno, he can hardly have failed to have done the same in his conversation with Curley and Schultz. Indeed, they knew what to expect. Paterno had told them the incident was of a sexual nature. Moreover, as you may remember, this was not the first such incident they had looked into. There is, in fact, every reason to think that Sandusky’s sudden retirement in the late 1990s was a consequence of this earlier incident. Nor is it credible that they failed to consult Spanier. All three men had been in place at the time of the earlier incident. This was not a minor matter, and they surely knew it.
This is what I thought when the scandal first broke, and it is now clear that my instincts were correct – for Louis Freeh, the former FBI director hired by Penn State to get to the bottom of things, appears to have found a smoking gun. If the article posted by CNN mentioned above can be trusted, he has discovered a series of e-mails exchanged between Curley, Schultz, and Spanier in the period stretching from 26-28 February 2001 in which the Sandusky affair was discussed in a coded but transparent fashion. The issue being debated was whether Penn State should report an incident of misconduct by someone associated with the university to the child welfare department. Initially, the three men resolved to do so; then, they decided to take “a more humane” course and deal with the matter privately – after Curley met face-to-face with Joe Paterno. This would explain the cryptic confession made by Paterno on the eve of his death. “I should have done more,” he said. Indeed, if my analysis is correct, he should have done a great deal more.
On the face of it, it would seem that Paterno had nothing much to do with this. He was, after all, an employee of the university – an underling well down the chain of command -- and he had done what was right. He had sent McQuery to the athletic director. Paterno reported to Curley, Curley to Schultz, and Schultz to Spanier. Moreover, as I said, Paterno was old school. We do not find him communicating directly with the university’s President. He met with his immediate boss, the athletic director. He was a minor figure in the drama, and he acted the part.
But to think in this way would be to miss what actually went on. Technically, Paterno worked for his superiors. In practice, however, they were beholden to him. At Penn State, as I said, Joe Paterno was a demigod. He had coached there for decades, and he had a record of wins that beggars the imagination. Moreover, he was a moral force in the lives of his players. He took care of them, and he saw to it that they conducted themselves in a proper fashion. When a football player got into trouble, he would intervene, fend off the authorities intent on imposing a punishment, and handle it himself – and, on the whole, he handled it effectively, using collective punishment to get the members of the football team to keep one another in line. Playing under JoePa was not just an education in football; it was a moral education, and everyone knew it.
Here is an illustrative anecdote that ought to give you a sense of the man’s stature, influence, and judgment. Some years back, Penn State set out to cut its budget, and the authorities there decided to eliminate the classics department. When word reached Paterno, who had studied Latin assiduously in his youth at a Catholic high school, he made one public comment – that he did not want to coach at a university that had no classics department. Penn State backed off on its plans immediately; donors magically appeared eager to endow faculty lines in the classics department; and it is still there.
Pause and think about this. Where else in the United States would a coach be the defender of a university’s academic integrity? Where else would the administration and the faculty accede to a coach’s wishes in curricular matters? At Penn State, Paterno had authority – moral authority. He rarely asserted himself. But when he did and when he made a recommendation, the men to whom he reported did his bidding. The email exchange is clear. Tim Curley met with Joe Paterno, and everyone fell in line. They would take “a more humane” course, speak with Sandusky, and not report the incident.
Of course, the policy that had worked well in Paterno’s management of his team worked abysmally in this case. But it was obvious that it would. Sandusky had been involved in an earlier comparable incident. It had been handled in a similar fashion, and his predatory activity had continued. All four men involved -- Paterno, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier --knew this.
If this sad story does not remind you of what persistently happened within the Catholic Church in the second half of the twentieth century – especially, in the 1970s and the 1980s – it should. Joe Paterno came from the same paternalistic Catholic culture as the bishops who sent priestly sexual predators off for psychological counseling and then shuffled them from parish to parish as they persisted in their ways. The procedures commonly followed within that old Catholic culture may have been for the most part sound. But when it came to sexual predation, they were anything but. The bishops wanted to avoid scandal. So did Joe Paterno. The programs they managed depended on their sustaining a reputation for moral integrity – and to sustain that reputation they lied to themselves about the efficacy of the measures they took and they sacrificed their integrity in the process.
It is a sad business. Joe Paterno was a good man, perhaps a great man. Many a wayward boy grew up to become a fine man thanks to the standards he set and the methods he used. But, in the end, he fell short. He should have done more. He really should have done more.
- Comment (22)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (0)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments:
Sep '11
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
This wasn't just Joe Paterno.
Penn State isn't just a football team with its own library--it is the dominant economic force in central Pennsylvania. It doesn't just contribute to the local economy--it is the local economy.
And Penn State, for many years, has been a paragon of opacity. They could give the Obama White House lessons in stonewalling, slow-walking, and just plain refusing to answer the phone.
Example: the contract details for most major college coaches are well-known, even publicized. The New York Times was able to break the story about the Stuxnet virus--but nobody ever found out JoePa's contract terms.
With that kind of muscle, and that kind of opacity, the university thought they could just make the problem go away. And they had history--Jerry Sandusky had been caught raping a little boy in 1999, and the boy's mother went to the police. They made the problem "go away." So when Mike McQueary finds Jerry in the showers with another ten-year-old, they figured they could do the same thing.
Did JoePa do enough? No. Will the university ever reap the consequences of their actions? No.
Edited on June 30, 2012 at 11:33pmSep '10
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Exactly. I hope the Penn State higher ups will do time. Not enough Catholic priests have done a perp walk.
May '12
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Dr. Rahe, I don't disagree with anything you've written. However, I think there's another actor in all of this that hasn't been taken to task; the NCAA. I apologize if I'm derailing your post, but the NCAA has played a role in all of this. Not directly of course, but for a governing body of college athletics that seeks to promote the integrity of college athletics they've done a horrible job. IMO, they've enabled much of the terrible behavior we've seen happen again and again at universities.
You see for the past 20 or so years we kept on hearing that Joe Paterno and Penn State were 'winning the right' way from lots of people like the NCAA. Even discounting the Sandusky abomination, if one looks at the number of football players arrested, it's kind of hard to believe JoePa was winning the right way;
Penn State isn't alone in this.
Edited on July 1, 2012 at 1:28amMay '12
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
(continued)
For the past decade or so we heard over and over again from lots of people including the NCAA that Ohio State was the gold standard of athletic compliance departments. When Maurice Clarett flamed out of tOSU by taking benefits from boosters, the heads at tOSU assured everyone that it was just a rogue player acting out. Then we found out that it was far more than just one player, in fact it turned out to be a substantial number of football players, the basketball team(in 2006), and a lying coach(who had a history of violating NCAA rules);
May '12
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
(continued, also apologies for the long series of posts)
The complete disconnect between what the NCAA states and the corruption within college athletics doesn't end with PSU or tOSU. Even though the late Paul Dee was athletics director at Miami when 80+ athletes scammed $220K in Pell Grant money, received over $400K in other benefits, and dodged drug-testing, guess what the NCAA did? They put him in charge of the NCAA's own internal judicial committee, the Committee on Infractions(COI).
Seriously. That's like letting Bernie Madoff run the SEC.
At the same time Dee was doling out punishments and lecturing other schools that "high-profile athletes demand high-profile compliance", Dee somehow missed what Nevin Shapiro (now a convicted ponzi scheme conman) was doing at the 'U'. In Shapiro's case that meant giving Cane athletes cash(from the ponzi scheme), entertainment, jewelry, travel money, prostitutes, bounties to injure other players, and even paying for an abortion. They missed Shapiro because they didn't really have to worry about the NCAA and they knew it.
People can blame PSU, tOSU, Miami, and Paul Dee all they want. The real enabler of this behavior is the NCAA.
Edited on July 1, 2012 at 1:33amRe: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Jim Ixtian, you should turn your remarks into a post.
Aug '10
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
The question I can't get anybody to answer is this - Why is Penn St still allowed to play football? When schools have gotten their program suspended because alumni payed players and recruits, why shouldn't Penn St's program be given the "death penalty" for about 5 years? Is paying players worse than raping young boys? Is what happened at Miami or USC or SMU worse than what happened at Penn St? I think not.
The Big 10 and the NCAA should be ashamed of themselves. What a joke those institutions are!
Edited on July 1, 2012 at 5:18amRe: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Frozen Chosen: The question I can't get anybody to answer is this - Why is Penn St still allowed to play football? When schools have gotten their program suspended because alumni payed players and recruits, why shouldn't Penn St's program be given the "death penalty" for about 5 years? Is paying players worse than raping young boys? Is what happened at Miami or USC or SMU worse than what happened at Penn St? I think not.
The Big 10 and the NCAA should be ashamed of themselves. What a joke those institution are! · 33 minutes ago
Edited 33 minutes ago
A joke, indeed.
Nov '11
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
I don't follow college sports, but I have no doubt that the posts about the NCAA are correct, and why should we be surprised that where there are money and power at stake, and almost no bottom line outside of producing winning teams, there would be corruption?
May '10
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
That's the most disturbing aspect of the case: they covered this up out of greed. Who is worse, Sandusky or those who enabled him to continue abusing boys? At least you can assign an obvious sickness to Sandusky, but only greed and a lack of humanity to the enablers. I suspect the NCAA will have to reconsider actions taken when senior faculty are found guilty.
May '10
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
One word: Television.
Before 1987, the NCAA penalized 54 programs by banning them from having their games televised. Only 9 have received such bans since and none in the last 20 years. (Source: CBS Sports)
Penn State is one-twelfth, not of an amateur sports league, but of a multibillion dollar enterprise. Can you say "Big Ten Network?" (Note: NewsCorp owns 49%) PSU has four conference home games each season. That's four of your business partners that won't have road games televised. They and their alumni won't stand for being penalized, too. The NCAA would rather do nothing than be forced to back down.
And the NCAA can't deny them television money because the NCAA doesn't control football on TV.
But if you're looking to the NCAA to impose the same sanctions on Penn State that they did on SMU, forget it. That 2-year shut down took the school 20 years to recover from.
Mar '12
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
I'm less interested in the institutions (Penn State, the NCAA, the Catholic Church) than I am in the personal aspect of this that Paul brought up, and in particular with the "old school" mentality. At some point, both Joe Paterno and the Catholic priests and bishops (mostly of his generation) knew that a friend and colleague was sodomizing young boys. And yet they did nothing about it, until some third party (McQueary or an angry parent) threatened to make it public; and even then they acted only in a way that managed the immediate PR problem, i.e., Sandusky retirement or transferring a priest.
What does this say about the "old school" attitude toward sodomy of young boys by men in a mentor role? There seems to be an acceptance of it, does there not? It's sinful, something to be ashamed of, not talked about (like sexual sins in general), a matter for confession. But at the same time, it seems as if the old school viewed it more like masturbation, a victimless sin, if you will. The boys are not considered as victims, for some reason. Is it somehow viewed as a rite of passage? "Old School."
May '10
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Beyond the money, there's the attitude that the institution is bigger and more important than the individual. The child must suffer to save the bigger aspect of a societal asset like the church or the university.
It is a microcosm of what allows men to go to war and die for something like an idea or their country instead of just the defense of their families.
Nov '11
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
EJHill
Beyond the money, there's the attitude that the institution is bigger and more important than the individual. The child must suffer to save the bigger aspect of a societal asset like the church or the university.
It is a microcosm of what allows men to go to war and die for something like an idea or their country instead of just the defense of their families. · 24 minutes ago
As Robert Mitchell points out, however, the child may not be thought to be suffering so much, or at all.
I would argue that the attitude that Mitchell describes is the typical attitude of the criminal toward his victim, and one will certainly find it among pedophiles, i.e., the sodomy does no harm and the victim deserves it. Criminals believe they are doing the right and just thing, and I am told that pedophiles often go to some length to make their victims believe that they, the pedophiles, were seduced.
But however you look at it, it's an ugly business.
Edited on July 1, 2012 at 11:20amSep '10
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Big time sports especially college football which I played and happen to love, are an enormous, tax exempt, branch of the entertainment industry hiding inside of the university systems. This fact is glossed over by everyone who opines on the subject but it is a corrupting element in all of the other dramas. Jerry Sandusky might have been a pedophile under any circumstances but we wouldn't be talking about it. The system is corrupt. Sad to say.
Mar '12
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Sandy and Aubrey: Yes, I get that the pedophile, like most criminals, is incapable of seeing any harm to the victim. The strange thing to me is that the "old school" types like Paterno and the Catholic priests and bishops who presumably were not pedophiles themselves shared that view. Aubrey mentions the entertainment industry: we have had glimpses into the world of Hollywood, from former child stars, which suggest that pedophilia there is more common. In fact, the players there--rumored to include a studio head-- wield so much power that everyone keeps quiet. (Remember that Polanksi's molestation occurred in Nicholson's house under the gaze of Angelica Huston.) I keep wondering if there is some kind of undercurrent in these strongly male cultures that accepts pedophilia, almost as some kind of droit de signeur, even by men who are not pedophiles themselves.
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Robert Mitchell:
What does this say about the "old school" attitude toward sodomy of young boys by men in a mentor role? There seems to be an acceptance of it, does there not? It's sinful, something to be ashamed of, not talked about (like sexual sins in general), a matter for confession. But at the same time, it seems as if the old school viewed it more like masturbation, a victimless sin, if you will. The boys are not considered as victims, for some reason. Is it somehow viewed as a rite of passage? "Old School." · 8 hours ago
I fear that you are right -- which is why I wrote the piece.
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Let me say that every comment thus far made has been thoughtful in the extreme.
Nov '11
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Excellent questions. Surely part of the reason is the perceived need to defend the institution in question and the fear that exposure will bring down the institution--and therefore oneself. If one can also rationalize that the victims were not really harmed, so much the easier.
Mar '12
Re: Jerry Sandusky & Penn State: Joe Paterno’s Role
Paul: I suppose what is most striking about Paterno and the Catholic priest abuse is the extreme dichotomy between the actions and the official culture. It is hard to imagine two cultures more hostile to sodomy than football and Catholicism (at least "old school" Catholicism). Yet in fact, at the personal level, it was shrugged off.
I suppose this shows how thin our layer of civilization really is. For 10s of thousands of years, our genetic forebearers endured abuse or witnessed their own childrens' abuse at the hands of stronger alpha males (protected by beta males looking on). Part of most human beings' survival kit is the ability to look away, to just go on. Our narratives praise the man of courage who stands up against all odds, but survival may have left most of us a less noble legacy, a heart of darkness. Sad but true.