By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
One of the most enduring questions of the child rape scandal at Penn State is what role did head football coach Joe Paterno play in the decision to grant his ex-right-hand man, Jerry Sandusky, carte blanche to prey on children. In a statement immediately after the scandal broke last November, Joe Paterno claimed that he reported what little he knew, did what he could, and that he wasn’t fully aware of the gruesome particulars:
“As my grand jury testimony stated, I was informed in 2002 by an assistant coach that he had witnessed an incident in the shower of our locker room facility,” Paterno’s statement read. “It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report. Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As Coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.”
And that’s where he left it — with the intended impression that a good (but not fully informed) man did what the university’s protocol dictated and hesitated to do more because he didn’t want to jeopardize the process. Law enforcement was quick to say that Coach Joe was not being charged for failure to report the crime and this seemingly official exoneration gave PSU fans reason to breath after the heinous allegations caused them to hold their breath. St. Joe may not be the smartest 80-year-old coach around but he was clean!
In an article in the Washington Post, Paterno again demurred saying, “I didn’t know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was, so I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn’t work out that way.”
For good measure, Paterno even gave us the doddering, old coach routine telling us that … dadgummit …:
“… I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man. So I just did what I thought was best. I talked to people that I thought would be, if there was a problem, that would be following up on it.”
Me get involved to protect my program? Nope, just following the protocol. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. He’s just doodling “X”s and “O”s. Nothing to see, here.
JoPa’s family was quick to his side saying the old coach was a character guy with little familiarity in the ways of the modern world — like emails which he never used — nor of sexual perversions that never plague the pristine sidelines that are his kingdom. Joe was everything good about college football — integrity, victory with honor, and players graduating on-time. Old players came from every direction to talk about the man and the smear campaign against his ideals and of those who would topple his station as America’s college coach for their own undisclosed but obviously jealous purposes.
ESPN football analyst and former NFL player and executive,Matt Millen, spoke for the Penn State alums:
Penn State’s program has always been above everything else, largely because that is what Joe espoused and lived. Was he perfect? No. Corrected them and owned up to them. That is what set him apart.
All of that might have sold gladly to the Nittany Lion faithful had not a damning series of emails recently come to light uncovered by former FBI chief, Louie Freeh’s ex-G-men, whom the university hired to investigate the tragedy. Seems Vice-President Gary Shultz, whose responsibilities included overseeing the university police, kept a secret file with emails about the dilemma of “What to do about Jerry?” after the grad student’s report of child rape in the Penn State locker rooms. As discussed in my previous post, university administrators were in unanimous agreement to turn Sandusky over to authorities until AD Tim Curley ( A Paterno protege’ and former Penn State QB) had a heart-to-heart with old, feeble, above-the-fray, Joe. Miraculously, the plan changed from following the law to following your heart and giving Sandusky a chance to reform. It’s all about redemption and “humanizing the university” as former PSU President Graham Spanier might say. Though, even “Erasmus” Spanier was enough of a realist to recognize the danger of the plot. “The only downside for us is if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon, and we become vulnerable for not having reported it,” he softly protested.
But an article today in the Chronicle of Higher Education shows that JoPa could wield an rusty, iron fist when he needed to, and could use emails when it suited him. The emails, leaked by someone investigating the fiasco, show that Paterno considered himself the final arbiter of justice when it came to the Penn State football program. Paterno deftly used an associate’s email account to establish the boundaries of his power with PSU officials with just enough ambiguity to make his supervisors blink.
The story begins in 2007 when as many as two dozen PSU football players launched a melee against other students in the off-campus Meridan Apartment complex resulting in six players facing nine felonies and 18 lesser charges for battery and assault. Penn State’s Office of Judicial Affairs (OJA), who investigated the fight, called it “brutal in nature. ” The brawl was about retribution. “We went there for revenge,” one player said. “We had a reputation to uphold,” another player said, according to the documents at the OJA. (Obviously, these two missed the Matt Millen lecture).
Paterno wanted it gone and renewed his demand that PSU’s rule penalizing students for off-campus transgressions be repealed. It wasn’t. However, even as President Spanier was perplexed about what to do, Coach Paterno had a clear vision about the crisis. In an April 7, 2007, email sent via his assistant, Sandi Segursky’s account, to the Prez, Paterno decreed:
“I want to make sure everyone understands that the discipline of the players involved will be handled by me as soon as I am comfortable that I know all the facts.” It was signed “Joe.”
Spanier dutifully sent a copy of the email to Vicky Triponey, then vice president of student affairs, whose department was investigating the alleged attack by players and who had weathered Paterno’s demand two years earlier to drop the off-campus conduct rule. Triponey, who has now come out publicly about the undue influence Paterno wielded in Happy Valley, was stunned.
Triponey wrote back to the president, saying, “Thanks for sharing. I assume he is talking about discipline relative to TEAM rules (note: he does not say that). Obviously discipline relative to the law is up to the police and the courts, and discipline relative to violations of the student code of conduct is the responsibility of Judicial Affairs.”
“This has not always been clear with Coach Paterno so we might want to clarify that and encourage him to work with us to find the truth and handle this collaboratively with the police and the university,” she went on. “The challenge here is that the letter suggests that football should handle this and now Coach Paterno is also saying THEY will handle this and makes it look like the normal channels will be ignored for football players.”
“Can you remind them of police and University responsibility?”
Ouch? Old doddering, unsophisticated in the ways of the world, Joe, not knowing where his authority stopped and the police’s begins. The same guy who follows university protocol and then puts his head down and goes back to work molding young minds, fully confident that a crisis that threatens everything he’s worked for for fifty years will all be handled without him? That, Joe? THAT Joe! Say it ain’t so, Joe!
So what happened to the alleged miscreant players? Well, the county criminal blotter reports that the courts dismissed all counts against four players and allowed the remaining two to plead guilty to misdemeanor offenses. Some received short suspensions from the team. Paterno refused to let players attend the university’s disciplinary hearing as witnesses, threatening in a perfectly modern blast text message to throw them off the team if they attended. Instead, he made the affected players perform 10 whole hours of community service. He also forced the entire team had to spend two hours on Saturday afternoons cleaning the stadium after home games.
Thereafter, some commentators hailed Joe as a hero — and Vicky Triponey was fired.
Sources: Chicago Tribune; Penn Live; Daily Beast; Chronicle of Higher Education; ESPN and Collegian On-Line
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Correction: The previous version of this blog post listed the secret file containing lost emails as being possessed by AD Tim Curley. Actually, it was Gary Shultz, university VP, who maintained the file and turned it over to Louis Freeh as part of the university investigation into the matter.
UPDATE: ESPN reports the Freeh Report on Penn State will be released next week and that it “will be tough on Joe.” The Penn State Board meets Thursday. Read ESPN here.
BettyKath, thanks for the info. I was too lazy to do the RS, just wanted to blab on about another issue, but you’re right; Triponey was doing her job and doing it well and people who DO try to do their jobs and not allow corruption to take over the system are most often just marginalized, fired, destroyed — and SOME OF THEM ALSO BECOME DISGRUNTLED.
It is amazing to me how the pedophiles get lots more loyalty, assistance and help than other sorts of criminals. They really do. Of course, there may be plenty of help for ANY CRIMINAL who gets caught in the net if he’s from the group, say, George Zimmerman came from, but of all of them, the ones who have the most efficient system of absolute help and pretty damn near canonization are always the child molesters.
mespo,
One of my colleagues did a study back in the early 1970s, using convicted incestuous fathers. He never published the study, but I still have a copy around here somewhere in the storage shed. He told me he had trouble finding a journal that would publish it. It was radioactive because of the content. He is deceased now, so trying to find a publisher is out of the question, but I think journals would be more receptive these days than they were in 1973.
There were 69 men in the study sample. What was found was that the wives in the marriages either knew or suspected what their husbands were up to, but were glad they turned to the kids instead of “bothering” them. The men were found to be needy, selfish and grossly immature emotionally. In many ways they came closer to being the emotional age of their victims than an adult male. The wives were not assessed formally, but our impression of them generally were that they were dependent, and rather like the battered wife who is afraid to leave the husband because she is more afraid of being alone with no one to support her. It is a heck of a lot harder to get consent to do a psychological profile on an enabler than a convicted felon. If that were possible, I would be first in line to get a chance at Cardinal Law or Pope Ratzy.
However, many pedophiles do not have institutional support. We might call them “lone wolves.” The late unlamented Jimmie Lee Gray of Mississippi (Google his name) fit that category. We have no way of knowing how many pedophiles are lone wolves, and how many there are who are being enabled by their institutions, such as Penn State or the Catholic hierarchy.
Otteray Scribe, Darren S, There are cases where a mother who IS married to the father of her children also “knows” about sexual abuse of her kids and remains silent. There are cases where the mother (whether the molester was a step-father or a legal and biological father) believes the kid and then is herself DISBELIEVED and even punished. It is obvious that some false allegations will arise in any situation, involving any crime, even if you have evidence the crime has been committed, charges against any one person may amount to false allegations if the perp was someone else. But if you consider several factors that aren’t actually common knowledge, more can become clearre.
1. A molester will often marry or get together with a woman who has low self-esteem simply because it is easier to manipulate such a woman. So whether he’s her husband of many years and father of her children, or a boyfriend she moves in with after a divorce, a guy who does not really enjoy sex with grown women is more likely to choose, as a mate, a woman who has some psychological “predisposition” to be with an abusive man. (Darren, the woman with low self-esteem will also not be as likely to really be assertive on behalf of her child if she suspects abuse or even if her child reveals abuse — after all, she would be accusing a powerful AUTHORITY FIGURE (HER MAN) of wrongdoing if she did so.)
2. A man who is more likely to molest children than others is also LIKELY to be a man who is more likely than others to do other things that are not great for preserving a marriage. HELLO HELLO, a molester is more likely to end up in a divorce than a normal man might be! Is that a difficult thesis to think up? I have never seen it in the literature, though. What kind of a woman is more likely to make false allegations? Do we know? But what kind of a man is more likely to both molest children AND end up in a divorce? Are any of these things really known?
3. So whereas the common wisdom is that FALSE allegations are more to be expected in divorce, it may be that TRUE ones are.
But what to do about the woman who shacks up with a boyfriend, while her child (whose father is or was some other man) is forced to deal with this guy, and the guy molests this child. He could be a step-father (statistics show that step-fathers are more likely to molest children than biological fathers) or a mother’s boyfriend. What about it when this mother KNOWS her child is being abused but doesn’t protect her child? How do you deal with that seemingly intractable problem?
Perhaps some law could be passed that would recognize that there are cover-ups of child sexual abuse, and that would make those cover-ups misdemeanors if they were perpetrated by heads of universities or corporate officials of some kind, but felonies if they were perpetrated by mothers. Oh, and CAPITAL OFFENSES if they were perpetrated by mothers whose victimized children were molested by their own biological fathers during the process of a divorce. I’m just casting about, don’t really know anything about legislation or criminal law.
Malisha, Google Vicky Triponey. Her story is out now. She was in charge of the university disciplinary department. She tried to do her job. She insisted she be allowed to do her job. Paterno thwarted her where the football players were involved. It was Vicky’s disciplinary hearings that Paterno’s players weren’t allowed to attend. With everything being equal, and University procedures being followed, Paterno should have been fired. But everything wasn’t equal. Paterno had the power and he used it His players didn’t show up and Triponey was fired.
Darren Smith:
All good insights in your comment. Not sure what OS would say about my observation, but it appears to me that most every pedophile has an enabler to cover up or facilitate the crime. Here the enabler looks to be an entire institution.
Malisha:
I corrected the post to clarify that Paterno dissuaded players from attending the university’s discplinary hearing. Thanks for the needed editing!
“So what happened to the alleged miscreant players? Well, the county criminal blotter reports that the courts dismissed all counts against four players and allowed the remaining two to plead guilty to misdemeanor offenses. Some received short suspensions from the team. Paterno refused to let players attend the disciplinary hearing as witnesses, threatening in a perfectly modern blast text message to throw them off the team if they attended. Instead, he made the affected players perform 10 whole hours of community service. He also forced the entire team had to spend two hours on Saturday afternoons cleaning the stadium after home games.
“Thereafter, some commentators hailed Joe as a hero — and Vicky Triponey was fired.”
My comments: (a) Only four of the players remained “alleged miscreants.” Two of them were miscreants. But more important, Paterno committed a crime by “refus[ing] to let players attend the disciplinary hearing as witnesses, threatening in a perfectly modern blast text message to throw them off the team if they intended.”
OK, that would be witness tampering if in fact it applied to the conduct of the criminal cases in court. It is probable, from the way this story played out, in my mind, that Paterno was doing as much “witness control” in the criminal cases as possible, which is probably why this ended up with two petty misdemeanors instead of six felonies. ANY players who were inside Paterno’s control were probably strong-armed. Furthermore, I wonder what the original problem was that resulted in these six wanting their “revenge.” Perhaps that was never even investigated — right? But in threatening to deprive certain individuals of their constitutional rights unless they voluntarily relinquished OTHER constitutional rights, Joe Paterna would have violated federal law, as well as committed malfeasance and misfeasance in office, IMHO. Also, he would have been guilty of deliberately interfering with the proper administration of the University’s own procedures, which should have been an offense punishable within the school by firing.
Think of all the people who get off for all the crimes and acts of immoral antisocial cover-up and misconduct. Why? Because of this factor, people who might risk behaving properly become intimidated. Vicky Triponey was fired! Yet she would quite likely end up impotent to do anything about it because there would be all kinds of crap written in her last performance review that would justify her firing, and if she tried to fight it, she’d get advice from everyone saying not to turn into a lunatic runnung around suing people — and besides, where would she find a lawyer, blah blah blah blah —
College Football…..winning teams…. More alumni donations……. It’s the university’s version of wall street……
Mark, excellent post…… I had to yet again refrain from those 3 of the 4 words that would send this to WordPress moderation……
The dogalogue machine here censored my last sentence so I will try it again to beat the moderator. This is in pig latin. Joe Paterno is a promoter of ut ruker fee.
The comment of Gene H above is very articulate.
I would bark that the taxpayer is also a creator. A citizen of Pennsylvania is responsible to the people of the state and of the US to provide money and direction for the betterment of society through the use of money, facilities and people through the modus operandi of what is loosely called Higher Education. We have to compete with China in math and science not with Ohio in some dumb game called football. Our mathmeticians and scientists must come out of our universities with brains fulfilled with knowledge and their butts intact.
I think that this barks it out succinctly.
Darren, been there, done that–got the cap and t-shirt. Hold your nose and be the consummate professional so there will be no chance the case will go south. I love it when I can hand a defense lawyer his or her butt on those cases.
At the same time, one has to keep in mind there are a lot of false allegations of child molestation out there. When the claim comes up in the context of civil litigation, such as a divorce or child custody case, my bullshit detector antenna goes on high alert.
I apologize in advance for my lack of decorum but I have to vent on this.
In my previous career, I arrested an untold number of child abusers and child molesters. I had absolute and total contempt for all of them. I loathed them so much I treated them as friendly and with as much courtesy as I could, writing the most solid case possible against them, and respecting every aspect of their condition. Why? Because I wanted a photon tight case against those creeps so the judge would later hand them their arse. I put one molester away for Ten Years for having it with a mentally handicapped 12 year old girl who he got pregnant. (the max unfortunately)
So for me them being nearly the lowest forms of scum of humanity, there was one group peer to them who I almost had more contempt for, and that was the knowing other person who allowed all of this to happen.
The most common manifestation was a young woman who had a daughter from a previous relationship. Feeling lonely and somewhat having a dejected view of herself, she would shack up with some lowlife guy. Later, the guy would began having let’s just say inappropriate relations with the daughter. At some point the daughter would inform the woman of the incidents and the woman would convince or in some cases threaten or coerce the daughter to clam up or else The woman usually fears the boyfriend going to jail and / or breaking up with her and she doesn’t want to be lonely again.
Eventually it would come out either by the daughter bringing it up in school or being traumatized she resorts to bad behavior and in her subsequent contact with police the incidents come out to the forefront.
Reiterating, I sometimes debated how close to being the actual molester the girlfriend in this example was, having known all too well what was going on and sacrificing her own child to this depraved scab because of her own contemptably misplaced loyalties.
So if this Coach Joe guy gets into any kind of trouble over this, he gets what he deserves in my book especially after that (no disrespect to you all intended) lawyer written statement was about as insincere as his care for anyone other than himself.
I came out here some time ago against all college entertainment sports. I still am against them.
I would prefer to see that sports never leaves the back lot or at best a roughly chalkdrawn green at the nearest park for the inter-backlot league.
Sports like our orientation games where the whole family can compete in age groups and the ladies in their groups too. That is true sport. It is competitive between peers, great for activation and lifelong exercise for the whole family together.
The only thing you contact is with your strength of character, endurance, the branches of trees, and comradeship.
Down with idolizing gladiators. And definitely down with perverts like Sandusky and the perverts who protected the system, etc.
There never has been, and never will be, a Nobel Prize for sports.
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true, but don’t tell the alumni.
Whenever one bestows the security of a god on any man the frailty of that man will eventually be revealed.
Joe Paterno’s famous strength of character was all an illusion for if it were otherwise, he would have acted differently.
What Gene said. There never has been, and never will be, a Nobel Prize for sports. There is a substantial difference between being an entertainer who distracts for a few minutes or a few hours, and someone who contributes to the betterment of the human race.
Entertainment is fun and has its place, whether it be music, athletics, fine art, or drama. It may even make life more interesting, but those qualities are ephemeral. Every October, I watch the Nobel announcements in physics. One of my best friends from high school ought to win the award for his creative work in high energy physics, and although he will not admit it, I suspect he has been nominated more than once (nominations are secret). I would rather know someone like him than a famous athlete.
I’m not very good at rants so I’ll let Gene’s stand for me too.
My only interaction with Paterno didn’t leave me with a good impression of him. His ego was way too big.
Sports, be they collegiate or professional, would be much better served if not only the management but the fans simply stopped feeding into the culture of entitlement surrounding what is in fact a child’s game. Being athletically gifted at a game is nice and all that, but let’s be realistic for a minute. Not one on field action by any player of any sport has ever bettered civilization or done anything substantively meaningful or important. Being a “star player” or a “legendary coach” is about as useful to society as perfecting your “Dutch oven” skills. These people are not heroes simply because they can “fight” in our modern gladiatorial games. They are people who can run fast, are strong and have good coordination who use those skills for entertainment and to make money as entertainers. Admiring their skills and enjoying their work should not take dominance over holding them responsible for civilized behavior. Being athletic is no more the proper way to judge the value of a person than the color of their skin. The only appropriate measure of others is the content of their character: are they decent people and when they make mistakes, do they learn from them to do differently in the future? Am I mad that management and administration encourage the sense of entitlement that underlies this horrid series of crimes being swept under the rug? You bet I am. Am I mad that people who add comparatively little of value to society are put on pedestals when people like nurses, teachers, and firemen are often underpaid and largely ignored by the very society they serve? You bet I am. But I’m even madder at the fans who feed into the black hole of ego worship that allows the culture of entitlement in sports to continue. If that culture didn’t exist? Many children would have been spared the sexual abuse of twisted old pedophile protected by the ego maniacs around him because the first time this POS was caught abusing a kid, he’d have been thrown to the less than tender mercies of the legal system and everyone who knew about it and/or aided in the cover up fired on the spot, no excuses, no exceptions.
You don’t protect those who prey upon children.
“It was to protect the program!”
“It was to protect the institution!”
“It was to protect me!”
“It was to protect them!”
Bullshit.
There is no excuse.
Joe Paterno wouldn’t have been able to weasel out of seeing Jerry Sandusky brought to justice in a timely manner without that culture of entitlement.
Yeah, the perp proper and JoPa and the administration all have a lot to answer for here, but so do the fans who gave them the idea they were special in the first place.
If I had a child of sports playing age, and if he or she had world class talent, there is no way on earth I would allow them to attend Penn State. Now, or ever. I only hope that thousands of conscientious parents across the country, and the world, feel the same way.
Some have suggested the NCAA impose the so-called “death penalty” on Penn State, as they did to SMU. From a practical standpoint, I don’t think this is an NCAA issue, but a university and law enforcement issue; therefore, the “death penalty” is rather unlikely. Another kind of death penalty could result if Penn State were unable to recruit athletes. If that happens, they might turn their attention to what a university should be doing in the first place: education.
Great job Mark! JoPa was dirty and his legacy has been forever diminished.