June 22, 2012; Bellefonte, PA USA: Jerry Sandusky leaves the Centre County Courthouse after being found guilty in 45 of 48 counts in his child sex abuse trial. Mandatory Credit: Mara Ticcino/The Daily Collegian-US PRESSWIRE
For a long time, Penn State alum and members of society were defending Penn State authorities and giving all of their top figures the benefit of the doubt in the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Now, after today’s release of the Freeh Report, you can no longer defend any of those men.
The Freeh Report details a fourteen-year cover up by some of the universities top officials that allowed Sandusky to keep coaching and remain on campus property. In essence, Penn State was harboring a child molester and no one was doing anything about it.
One of the most chilling parts of the report was the opening which read:
“Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s child victims by the most senior leaders at Penn State. The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized. Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky’s victims until after Sandusky’s arrest.”
The report reveals that Joe Paterno was previously aware of the 1998 accusations and investigation before being told about Sandusky’s 2001 incident with a young boy in the Penn State locker room shower. Paterno still did nothing.
In fact, Paterno went above and beyond all measures to prevent Penn State officials from handing his good buddy Sandusky over to authorities. He convinced them to do nothing. It is a despicable act.
We all had suspected a cover up in this story and believed that it went much deeper. We know have the facts and there isn’t a person out there that can defend Paterno or any of the Penn State officials at this point in time.
Penn State needs to start doing the right things to put this scandal behind them and head in a new direction and they can start by removing the Paterno statue on campus. A man who led a cover up which resulted in many children being harmed and scarred for life should not be honored.
As for NCAA sanctions, they should hand down the death penalty. Anything less would be doing exactly what the top level guys at Penn State did when presented with this information — nothing.
You can read the full Freeh Report here:
