The Glade 4.0

Looks like Paterno is going to go down.

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootbal ... ley-110811

It just blows my mind that people actually witnessed it happening and did nothing. I would happily go to jail for murder if I caught someone molesting a child. How he could not have followed up or how the others ignored it just escapes me.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

Catholic Church.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Sports.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I am shocked and appalled that there are assholes out there holding rallies in support of this guy. **** college sports fans that let their blind fanaticism override their common decency.

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Why don't you wait for the facts? For all the hullabaloo about "guilty until proven innocent" on these forums, why are you so quick to demand Joe Paterno's head?

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If you mean Joe Paterno what the heck did he have to do with it? I think his name got drug in because more people will pay attention than some noname ex coach on a satalite campus.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

I don't care one way or another about this case, but for once, I completely agree with Khross here.

There is a lot of talk going on now about how he is involved. What he knew or was told. How detailed was the explanation of what was witnessed. How much did Joe Pa follow up?

Let the facts come out and we'll see who needs to hang for this.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Not sure what possible excuse he'd have so I'll presume he's guilty. Let's hear what he has to say but he's had the opportunity to speak up and I havent heard much.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

His name got "dragged" into it because the student who caught the guy diddling a 10 year old in the shower stated before the grand jury that he reported it to Paterno directly who said he forwarded it on to the Athletic Director. Not law enforcement, not child protective services, not even the kid's parents, but to the AD of the school.

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A) While the athletic director is hardly the best choice, reporting it to your boss is not the same thing as covering it up, especially when you're hearing it second-hand in the first place.

B) These are initial reports. I have to agree with Khross. There is not enough information yet to convict anyone, especially PAterno who was not the molestor, or the one who witnessed the molesting; he had second-hand knowledge of it at best.

If you're going to cricticize Paterno for reporting it to the ahtletic director, why in the **** did anyone report it to Paterno in the first place?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So the Catholic Church gets a pass too I assume?

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If it happened on U Penn property, it's the province of University Police (who are generally State Police or State Troopers legally speaking) and not local law enforcement. As such, reporting it to the Athletic Director is precisely the right course of action, because the Athletic Director would be responsible for notifying campus police and involving any other legal authorities necessary. Likewise, the Athletic Director is the one responsible for who can and cannot hold camp in U Penn's facilities.

So, let's wait for the facts.

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How did anything I said imply that the Catholic Church gets "a pass"? Are we in the initial stages of discovering a new incident of child molestation involving priests?

More importantly, comparing Joe Paterno, or any other individual to the entire Catholic Church is just silly. If you want to compare Penn State to the RCC, that would be good, but if you're going to suggest that because of this allegation there's been some sort of systemic effort to cover up large numbers of incidents of child abuse by Penn State employees, I'd say you've got a damn steep hill to climb.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Just heard some semi-breaking news that Joe Pa will be retiring at the end of this season.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

As an employee of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State, it's likely his ONLY choice.

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We knew that anyway. The man is 84 and physically unable to attend every Penn State game.

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I doubt this very much. It's very, very hard to justify a rule telling someone "you're not allowed to contact law enforcement if you witness/become aware of a crime". If he'd observed a female student being attacked on his way home from work and called the campus police, I doubt very much anyone would say "Well, you should have called the athletic director." There are serious whistleblower protection issues involved, especially with matters like child abuse, which often require reporting directly to law enforcement for educators, medical personnel, etc.

On the other hand, since he didn't become aware of it through any direct observation of evidence, you might be correct, since there may be a specification that you cannot, as a State employee, contact law enforcement directly over a hearsay accusation, or a specification that if you contact law enforcement (regardless if it's hearsay or not) that you MUST also inform your supervisor.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

From everything I've read and heard about this, Joe Pa did the legal right thing by taking it to his boss. Where the crap hits the fan is did he do enough in a moral sense. Should he have followed up on the accusation. Should he have gone to the police himself.

If what Sandusky did winds up being the truth, then the people in power at Penn State that knew about this need to go. Paterno, who I admire, as well.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

The Grand Jury indictment is available online, though its long enough I haven't read it all, and quite frankly, its disturbing enough that I feel myself getting pissed off and stop.

However, the problem for JoePa is that he is book ended on either side by people either having seen the incident, or those being charged with covering up/not reporting, and its hard to fathom a manner in which the information flows past him with such little detail that he is out of the loop to not take more serious action with his staff.

What is known is that the GA saw the event and was so upset about what he saw with one of his coaches, he called his dad for advice, who told him to talk to Paterno. He did so, and based upon that conversation, they went and spoke with the AD and a VP.

That AD and VP have now been charged with perjury in front of the Grand Jury and failure to report child abuse.

How the information from those meetings skipped Paterno for something that directly involves his office leaves a lot of questions.

The fact that Paterno had a direct conversation with Sandusky shortly after the reports to the AD and VP and those discussion, and as part of that talk, Sandusky was informed he wouldn't be the next head coach at Penn, but he was allowed to retire with emeritus status and continue using his football office on campus. This points to Paterno being in the loop, unless you can argue that the most powerful man on campus, outside of the Presidents office, was kept completely without information and told how to manage his staff with no reasons. I don't buy it.

Of course, this situation only gets worse when you have Paterno's son (a lawyer) essentially saying Joe isn't guilty of anything because his mental faculties at the time were not capable of processing the implications, and he has only deteriorated since then... which begs the question why he was still running the football program for the past 9 years.

There's a great deal of truth to all of that - except for the fact that Paterno, by all accounts, is a very elderly man with limited physical energy. It's quite possible that, after he passed the information up, he was not involved further because A) he didn't actually witness anything and B) there may have been a feeling of "Let's not concern the great (and elderly) man with such filthy issues".

Not that it's OK to wrap allegations of child abuse up in concerns for Paterno's elderly state, but if people did keep information from him it wouldn't be surprising, and an old man is simply going to have a harder time pressing issues, especially if he thinks they're being handled.

I have no particular affection for Paterno, and no real care for Penn State or its football program, and there's certainly an argument for him not having fulfilled a moral duty as fully as he should have (based on the information we have available) but I do think that his age and revered status mean we have to consider things that might not have plausibly occured if he were a younger man.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah DE, I can see some of that as well, except that this was from 9 years ago, and if the administration was calling the shots to protect Paterno's reputation, they why was it Paterno that held the meetings with Sandusky to discuss his "retirement" and continued status with the school?

I can't imagine a head football coach blindly telling one of his main employees they are done with the program just because the AD said so.

Wait, what? The sexual molestation supposedly happened 9 years ago?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

My opinion.

I think Penn State tried to cover this up.

I think they told Sandusky he was out, but he could keep his perks if he kept his mouth shut.

They told Paterno to forget it, it was "handled", and he could remain coach for life.

That's my personal belief. I think Paterno sold out in order to keep his "status". The AD and President tried to cover it all up to keep from blemishing the school and suffer lawsuits. Sandusky took his perks and kept his mouth shut for fear of doing time behind bars.

I personally hope they all burn. **** them all.

Here's a link to the Grand Jury Transcript.

The first initial reporting, yes.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

Actually, I think it was longer than that. Seems to me that the GA that witnessed the first event was in 98, which is what lead to Sandusky "retiring" in '99. Since then, there were other incidences on campus involving minors (Sandusky was running his "charity" for under privileged boys out of his former football coach's office per his agreement with the school). One involved a janitor discovering Sanduskey performing oral sex on a 10yr old in the shower while holding him pinned to the wall, another involved a child's mom calling the school about something she was told confidentially, and another involved a HS coach witnessing Sandusky and a minor "spooning".

One of news papers from PA has a time line pulled together based upon the testimony in the GJ indictment. This spans a decade.