Report: Penn State officials concealed sex abuse

[Chase]

PHILADELPHIA — Joe Paterno and other top Penn State officials hushed up child sex abuse allegation against Jerry Sandusky more than a decade ago for fear of bad publicity, allowing Sandusky to prey on other youngsters, according to a scathing internal report issued this morning on the scandal.

"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," said former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who was hired by university trustees to look into what has become one of sports' biggest scandals. "The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized."

After an eight-month inquiry, Freeh's firm produced a 267-page report that concluded that Hall of Fame coach Paterno, President Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade."

Freeh called the officials' disregard for child victims "callous and shocking."

"In order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at the university — Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley — repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky's child abuse," the report said. Paterno "was an integral part of this active decision to conceal," Freeh said at a news conference.

School leaders "empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims to the campus and football events by allowing him to have continued, unrestricted and unsupervised access" to campus and his affiliation with the football program, the report said. The access, the report states, "provided Sandusky with the very currency that enabled him to attract his victims."

Freeh said officials had opportunities in 1998 and 2001 to step in.

Sexual abuse might have been prevented if university officials had banned Sandusky from bringing children onto campus after a 1998 inquiry, the report said. Despite their knowledge of the police probe into Sandusky showering with a boy in a football locker room, Spanier, Paterno, Curley and Schultz took no action to limit his access to campus, the report said.


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[max1]

Grrrr.....

effin football.

[max1]

Grrrr.....

effin football.

I know some of you here are big fans of the school and the football team. I'm sorry if I offend you in advance but HOLY FUCKSHITGODDAMNITALLTOEFFINHELLWTFAREPEOPLETHINKIN G.....

[Bellicose]

I honestly don't even know what to say. Damn shame!

[childOfLacroix]

Universities should be institutions of higher education, not a development league for the NFL.

Edited to add: or the NBA, or any other professional league.

[Joe Walther]

Ego and arrogance inevitably mate using condoms made of rationalization. Of course, the condoms always rupture giving birth to an offspring called stupidity. It’s been going on since the dawn of humanity and there isn’t a shred of evidence—not even a hint—that it’s going to stop before the human race annihilates itself. In fact, it most likely will be this offspring of ego and arrogance that will be at the root of it.

For those who have not done so, read the full report, especially the part about the janitor who witnessed Jerry Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy in a university locker-room shower. I’m including an excerpt below.

"The janitor who observed it says it's the worst thing he ever saw," Freeh said, outlining the explosive findings of his 267-page review, which found a complete failure of the university leadership to stop Sandusky. "He's a Korean War veteran. … He spoke to the other janitors. They were awed and shocked by it. But, what did they do? They said they can't report this because they'd be fired. They were afraid to take on the football program. They said the university would circle around it. It was like going against the president of United States. If that's the culture on the bottom, God help the culture at the top."

This culture, by the way, isn’t applicable ONLY to Penn State. Every organization has its “sacred cows” that NOBODY criticizes, even when the evidence justifies doing so. And the farther removed people are from the TOP, the more likely they are to succumb to a “see no evil… hear no evil… speak no evil” mentality.

The arrogance and egos of Graham Spanier, Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, and Gary Shultz in believing that only they, ALONE, could save Penn State’s reputation was bad enough. But the idea that they thought that their magnanimous personalities could somehow make it all go away reeks of abject stupidity.

[longnecker]

Since this was long before the protection of whistle blowers I wonder what would have happened if a witness had called 911 instead of going "through channels"?