The Glade 4.0

Wow, I somehow totally missed this. I was thinking all this was fairly recent events. That puts a rather different light on it, since Paterno would have been.. not even 70, yet, in '98, yes?

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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."

68-69

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I feel almost churlish pointing this out:

Let me get this straight.

Graduate assistant witnesses child molestation.

Graduate assistant flees the scene, talks to his father, and reports the incident to Joe Paterno.

Joe Paterno and the graduate assistant report the incident to the athletic director and a vice president.

Joe Paterno testifies in court and corroborates the graduate assistant's story.

The athletic director and vice president both offer the same testimony, which is that the graduate assistant reported a more minor incident.

The opinion of the court is that the athletic director and the vice president committed perjury.

We are supposed to be upset at Joe Paterno for misconduct and "not doing more."

The graduate assistant's identity is being protected.

So what I want to know is why Joe Paterno did wrong? He reported the incident to his superiors, who he thought were going to take appropriate steps. He testified in court supporting the graduate assistant, when powerful men were claiming to have never received report of such a scandalous incident. I actually wonder if the graduate assistant would have had the sand to tell anybody if it weren't for Paterno? That's a question we'll never get an answer to, but I'm leaning towards no. I honestly think that Paterno is the only reason this ever came to light.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

The graduate assistant is known, so not sure why you think his identity is being kept a secret.

But the GA shoulders a good deal of blame as well, in my opinion, but not calling the police immediately.

Where Paterno fails... again in my opinion, at the point that this is his direct employee as the DC of the team and is complacent in the arrangement that allows Sandusky to continue to use the football office in the athletic department to run his "charity", gives him access with minors to Penn State football events, etc, for the last decade.

The fact that he testified (according to your post) to the Grand Jury supporting the events as presented by the GA makes it more clear he was aware of the nature of the event. That's pretty damning considering the amount of time and continued contact with the program, minors, etc.

Also, not to delve into the conspiracy side of things, but no one has mentioned the missing Assistant DA that originally had the case against Sandusky.

A warning sign lit up for me too, when I heard about the ADA. It just don't pass the smell test, whether or not it is related.

As for the rest of your post.......agree. Joe at the least turned a blind eye, and worst, he helped cover it up.

How many of you are contracted faculty at a Title 9 compliant university?

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I would love to see the portion of the requirements for Title IX compliance that absolves Paterno's complacency in this issue.

There's probably nothing in Title IX that absolves anyone of complacency; there is, however, a **** load of things in Title IX that causes state university systems to have really **** up employment contracts for faculty and coaches.

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The graduate assistant's name appears to be left out of the Grand Jury report. He is simply referred to as "the graduate assistant" while everyone else is called out by name several times. That indicates that efforts are being made to protect his identity.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This, right here, is a huge issue for me. If you physically see someone being sexually assaulted or molested, you call the police right then and there, and if that can't be done for some reason, you pick up a 2x4 or a wrench or something and clobber the **** with it before calling the police.

The fact that he didn't do this makes me call into question exactly what Paterno, Paterno's boss, the cops, the DA, or anyone else was eventually able to establish. I really have to question how firm the evidence against Sandusky was at the time; if I were a football coach and someone came to me and said "Hey coach, I saw coach so-and-so diddling a little kid in the shower yesterday." my first questions would be "Did you call the police?" and if not "Why the **** not?"

Most likely "why the **** not?" would, and in this case did, reveal some reason or other why it was less than entirely certain (even if highly probable) that what Sandusky was up to was actually child molestation. If it can't be established by the cops, the school, or everyone else, that he was diddling little kids, then quite frankly it's good that he wasn't simply railroaded out of his job and into jail merely on suspicion or to protect the good name of Penn State.

We don't need repeats elsewhere of RCC coverups, but we also don't need the sex-offender witch hunt that's been going on in much of the country for the last decade-plus. Trying to balance those things is tough and is going to inevitably result in mistakes being made.

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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."

I don't know why that would be the case (I still haven't read the entire indictment), but he is has been identified.

I agree for the most part, especially the part about the wrench. However, my initial response to this thread was directed at Hannibal's question about how Paterno's name got dragged into this. That there is plenty of blame to go around, and some people at Penn State deserve jail time if the facts are correct, is not a question in my opinion.

As I said, I was just responding to how Joe Paterno is involved.

And for him, there is no scenario in which the stink of this **** doesn't stick to him, and unless the comments by his son are accurate and he has essentially been a vegetable headed figure for the last decade, the impact of this on his legacy at PSU is probably deserved.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because of what's happening to Joe Paterno. Everybody wants Paterno's head for doing exactly the same thing that his graduate assistant did: reporting it to a superior. The court wants the graduate assistant's name left out of it as much as possible so that he doesn't get strung up like Joe Paterno for "not doing enough."

And the court would be right to do so, because if that young man hadn't told Paterno, nobody would have ever found out.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Up to a point, I agree. However, I'd say that if a prosecution simply couldn't go forward at the time, the arrangement with Sandusky was probably about all that could be expected at the time without simply running the guy out on a rail. In retrospect, that would have been the thing to do, but that's in retrospect and I would not want to see university employees in general run out of their job to protect University reputations, or those of football coaches, when a case is not strong enough for prosecution.

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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."

Well, that prosecution is an interesting twist to the story. The DA that had the case... well, they found his pick up truck, and upon searching the adjacent river, found his laptop at the bottom sans its hard drive. His where about are still unknown, though after this many years, he is presumed dead. That's the conspiracy side I'm not sure how to approach.

But see, part of the problem I have is that he was essentially "run out on rails", though without some of the drama. After the GA and Paterno talked to the VP and AD, Paterno had a meeting with Sandusky where he was informed he was not in line any longer for the head coaching job and he "retired". There certainly appears to have been enough concern over the incident that he was removed from the football program as a direct staff member, yet they let him keep his office on the facility, made him an emeritus member with full access to campus facilities?

That really just covers the incident in 1998. There have been multiple incidents since that time that that further implicate the upper echelons of PSU (though not necessarily Paterno) in a cover up.

Just FYI, one of the timelines I read, and which I have been using, is either wrong, or the another source is wrong.

The incident that involved the GA, the report to Paterno and subsequently to the AD and VP was in 2002.

Sandusky was "asked" to "retire" in 1999 due to separate allegations of child molestation at that time, but was allowed to continue using the facilities as an emeritus of the Unversity.

I see.

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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."

What really gets me (and it will take some time to get all of the facts straight) is supposedly the GA and on a different occasion a janitor saw him molesting a child. How people seeing something like that can do so little just amazes me. I don't care who it is, if I saw that I would call the cops and tell them they had better get there before I am finished beating the molester to death.

Woopee they reported it to their bosses, I don't care what the policy at the institution says you call the cops. If you get fired for it at least you can sleep at night. I just couldn't walk away from something like that ever.

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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

It's college sports. It's worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the university, of course they're going to look the other way if at all possible at anything that would jeopardize that.

Totally irrelevant in every way. The fact that a college doesn't want bad publicity, and so would prefer to handle things internally, doesn't somehow absolve them of of their real and actual duty to report the incident to the police, and not up some imagined chain of command whose entire purpose is to conduct damage control and PR. I don't care if it costs them their job. I don't care if it irreparably damages the reputation of the institution in question.

Colleges hide behind this all the time. I've seen it happen first hand while I was playing varsity college sports. The rape accusations and the assaults which are all "handled internally", for the benefit of the school.

It's disgusting.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

You're telling me you would report a crime even if you knew doing so would cost you your career?

First of all, that's a strawman. But I'll indulge you: Yes, I absolutely would.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I know I would, if you cannot hold to your principles in something like that you are no better than the perpetrators. How someone can live with themselves knowing something like that happened and they did nothing is beyond 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

With the exception of the two men who committed perjury, every observer appears to have reported it to who they perceived as "the authorities." I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that they did nothing.

You all seem to be under the notion that, had you been the graduate assistant, you'd have swooped in with your Superman cape to save the day and pummel the perpetrator. Given our society that touts sitting back and letting the proper authorities handle the situation as a virtue, I trust you will understand how I remain skeptical that the situation would have turned out differently had any of us been involved.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.