to move up and down
A year after his death, Paterno and a reputation tarnished in the aftermath of the child sex abuse scandal involving retired assistant coach Jerry Sandusky remain sensitive topics for groups of alumni, former players, staffers and community residents.
The Hall of Fame coach died of lung cancer on Jan. 22, 2012, at age 85. On Tuesday — exactly a year after his passing — community residents have organized a vigil at a downtown mural that includes a depiction of Paterno.
A family spokesman has said the Paternos would not take part, and remain in privacy.
Their supporters, though, spoke up at a recent meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees.
Most critics are angered by how school leaders handled Paterno’s ouster as coach and the explosive findings of the internal investigation led by former FBI director Louis Freeh that put part of the blame on Paterno. (Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
The young man whose claims of abuse began the criminal investigation that put Jerry Sandusky in prison said he contemplated suicide because authorities took so long to prosecute the former Penn State assistant football coach.
Speaking out publicly by name for the first time, Aaron Fisher said in an interview airing Friday on ABC’s 20/20 that the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office had told him it needed more victims before Sandusky would be charged. He was known during the trial as “Victim 1.”
Fisher first reported the abuse in 2008. Sandusky was arrested last November. Fisher said the delay made him increasingly desperate.
“I thought maybe it would be easier to take myself out of the equation,” he told ABC. “Let somebody else deal with it.”
Jerry Sandusky blames victims in broadcast before sentencing
The ex-Penn State coach professed his innocence and vowed to continue fighting his child molestation conviction in a recorded statement broadcast on the eve of his sentencing Tuesday, a possible preview of remarks he was expected to make at the hearing.
In the three-minute monologue aired Monday night by Penn State Com Radio, Sandusky said he knows in his heart that he did not do what he called “these alleged disgusting acts” and described himself as the victim of Penn State, investigators, civil attorneys, the media and others.
“They can take away my life, they can make me out as a monster, they can treat me as a monster, but they can’t take away my heart,” he said. “In my heart, I know I did not do these alleged disgusting acts. My wife has been my only sex partner and that was after marriage.”
A thinner Sandusky, smiling and accompanied by sheriff’s deputies, showed up at the courthouse Tuesday wearing a red prison jumpsuit, white sneakers and holding a manila envelope.
Nearly three months after Penn State said it wanted to settle “privately, expeditiously and fairly” with the boys Jerry Sandusky sexually abused, lawyers for the victims from his criminal case and other potential claimants say the school has not followed up with concrete action.
The attorneys told The Associated Press in recent days that had very limited contact with the university and, if that continues, more lawsuits may follow the four now under way.
“I believe there has been a window of opportunity, which is closing, despite enormous patience by the lawyers who represent the victims,” said Philadelphia attorney Tom Kline, who represents a young man who testified during Sandusky’s criminal trial he was fondled in a school shower in 2001.
Kline and the other lawyers told the AP that they will not wait indefinitely for the university to propose a settlement process stemming from Sandusky’s conviction in June on 45 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys. The former assistant football coach awaits sentencing and will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno and other senior officials “concealed critical facts” about Jerry Sandusky’s child abuse because they were worried about bad publicity, according to an internal investigation into the scandal.
The 267-page report released Thursday is the result of an eight-month inquiry by former FBI director Louis Freeh, hired by university trustees weeks after Sandusky was arrested in November to look into what has become one of sports’ biggest scandals.
The report concluded that 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.”
2011 in Sport: Bruce Arthur on Penn State
When the grand jury report on sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky became public, the outrage was whipped forward like a forest fire in a high wind. The testimony was horrifying, and catalogued eight separate victims in excruciating detail; it seemed to catalogue a cover-up by the leaders of a major university, too, who responded clumsily. Tim Curley and Gary Schultz were charged with perjury and failing to report the incident.
But the power of football was on full display — even as pressure began to press down on Joe Paterno, even as the media descended on Happy Valley like a plague, the university attempted to limit the questions at his weekly news conference to those about the big game against Nebraska Saturday. The news conference was cancelled, instead.
Photo: Tim Shaffer/Reuters
More Sandusky victims come forward
Investigators were probing the new allegations against Jerry Sandusky, former defensive coordinator for Pennsylvania State University’s football team, who earlier this month was indicted on 40 counts of sexually abusing eight young boys. Photo: Pat Little/Reuters
‘It’s therapy’
The Nebraska and Penn State players gathered at midfield before the game, kneeling together for a long moment in a quiet stadium.
Sometimes, the most powerful statements are the simplest.
Saturday’s game was a combination of pep rally, cleansing and tribute for a Penn State community rocked by the child sex-abuse scandal involving former assistant Jerry Sandusky that cost Joe Paterno his job.
Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty Images
It’s time for justice at Penn State
Now comes the reckoning, too late but here in full, and everybody wants somebody to blame. Everybody needs someone to blame. When humanity visits its darkest places — when it becomes unimaginable, unthinkable, when it truly touches evil — there must be somebody held to account. Maybe we just need to reclaim humanity from those who debase it. Maybe we demand justice for the same reason.
So at Penn State, a place which has now been defined by the worst actions of a few people embedded in a larger culture, it is time to see responsibility for those who let it happen. Chief among them is Jerry Sandusky, the former pillar of the football program, the alleged pedophile, the monster. On that there is no disagreement other than a silent urge not to pre-judge matters before the law does. But read the 23-page grand jury indictment, or about the dozens of potential victims coming forward, and it is hard to hold onto the pretense of doubt that this is anything but an abomination.
And then, there is everybody else. The reaction from those who are not absolutists on this — usually from those with a connection to the university, if not exclusively — is that there has been a rush to judgement. That we do not know all the facts. That people are trying to howl louder than one another, over and over, to prove their righteousness. That it is not entirely fair. That 84-year-old icon Joe Paterno, seen as a pillar of rectitude for decades, deserved better than to be fired over the phone. (Photo: Pat Little/Reuters)
Paterno’s legend ends in Penn State boardroom
How many football wins does it take to balance the books for one broken child? How about for eight, or 15, or 20 children? Will 409 do it, or would Joe Paterno’s 410th, if he could have lasted long enough to get it, have made all the difference?
How many millions of dollars contributed by a coach to his university does it take to cancel out one tragically flawed, cynical decision, nine years ago, that protected The Brand at the cost of one forever damaged preteen, who was being sacrificed to save it.
How long past his usefulness could a football coach expect to stay employed before he risked eroding all the good he has done in his career and his life, risked being viewed as a vain old man wielding his immense power to fight off all attempts to take it away?
I don’t suppose these questions are entirely fair — nothing is quite as black-and-white as it seems, not even the multi-layered horror of the Jerry Sandusky story — and I’m mortally certain that none of the faithful who gathered outside Joe Paterno’s home Tuesday night in State College, Pennsylvania, who rallied in vain for St. Joe on the Penn State campus, who no doubt rioted Wednesday night in the wake of his firing, will ever be moved to ponder the answers.
Unconditional fandom plus “Be True To Your School” plus mythologization of a coach and a football program adds up to a level of credulity that evidently cannot be dented even by news of the most unspeakable crimes unfolding in these supporters’ very midst by the people they have deified. (Photo: Tim Shaffer/Reuters)
