[seacapt]

Should Penn State have fired Paterno or is he just being used as a scape goat ?
I have to go supervise a childrens martial arts class now , but will check back later.

[joe.penn]

That's tough considering we don't know all of the facts and seems as though there are cover-up's everywhere in this thing - I filed a police report, police have no police report, the judge overlooked it, the grand jury previously screwed up, etc. etc.. I think that maybe administrative leave until it can get sorted out, but again hell just fire him along with everyone else and start fresh. I am up in the air on this one...




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[stevewig]

Should Penn State have fired Paterno or is he just being used as a scape goat ?
I have to go supervise a childrens martial arts class now , but will check back later.

Tough call also for us who only hear what the media want us to hear BUT, I do tend to think that if he was (or is) part of the wall of silence then he should have been fired (maybe also sued) and if he did in fact know what was going on he should be in JAIL.

I suspect that if this had been women being abused the jails would be pretty full by now!

[lammie200]

I totally agree that we don't know the facts. We may never know the facts.

However, I think that it is entirely possible that Paterno had no first hand knowledge of Sandusky's expoits. He may have had ample information to assume that Sandusky was a sexual predator from as far back as 1999, or thereabouts. But since he may not have witnessed anything untoward by Sandusky at that time, he might have just assumed that the rumors about Sandusky were untrue and being spread by people that had a grudge against him, or didn't know him, or that he needed treatment and got it. A lot of people have felt fooled by Sandusky. Paterno could have been one of them.

Paterno also only heard of the 2002 incident second hand from a supposed eye witness. The fact that the eye witness didn't go to the police is disturbing to me. (I know that he is now claiming that he did, but that seems very specious to me given that it wasn't recorded by the police.)

I seriously doubt that Paterno would prefer to let Sandusky continue on his exploits if he actually had first hand knowledge about them. Since he might not have had first hand knowledge, he probably felt that he was doing the right thing to report what he was told by the supposed eye witness to his superiors so that they could take the appropriate actions. Of course they did nothing so it looks like Paterno and the Penn State culture influenced their decision to do nothing. I think that it might not have been Paterno's idea to not go to the police. It was first, the supposed eye witness', and then the AD's and the president's ideas to not go to the police. That said, Paterno still could have gone to the police. Especially if he thought that what was conveyed to him was factual.

[subeeds]

Even if somebody did report this to the police, I'm not surprised there is no report. Most of the income this town gets comes from the school. To file a report would kind of be like biting the hand that feeds them. Paterno broke no laws according to the state of PA..Morally and ethically is a whole different question. Yes, he should have reported it to the cops. That's why they are scrambling to change those laws now. I think he should have been left alone to do his job until all the facts are out there, but that would have put the focus on the scandle instead of the game. I think it was extremely tacky of them to fire a man with Paterno's reputation and longevity, over the phone. I read the indictment online. It's horrifying and I don't believe it's made up. On the news tonight, I heard that there are now people coming forward from the 70's with the same accusations.

[stevewig]

.............I think he should have been left alone to do his job until all the facts are out there, but that would have put the focus on the scandle instead of the game. I think it was extremely tacky of them to fire a man with Paterno's reputation and longevity, over the phone. I read the indictment online. It's horrifying and I don't believe it's made up......

Sounds to me like you have some sympathy for the guy (or its badly expressed)?

All these terrible allegations happened on his watch, he has to go and fast and even be prepared for possible criminal charges. No doubts in my mind.

[normhead]

It still isn't clear to me what happened. If you read through the legalese, it sounds like the victim isn't going to testify against Sanduskey, it's the mom, who is possibly looking for a pay day who's pushing the legal action. No one is clear on what anyone saw. We know what the guy thinks he saw, but anyone who has had any dealings with witness reliability knows, one witness can be wrong...and because we are talking Grand Jury, there is no right to cross examine witnesses, there is no ability to determine guilt, there is only the ability to say something might have been wrong, enough to warrant a full trial. But guilt can't be determined, and shouldn't be assumed, before the full trial. IN Grand Jury proceedings the defendant is not allowed to mount a defense.

I'm all for removing accused sexual predators from the scene of their crime. In that case making a statement before legal actions have been taken is a justifiable infringement on the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. However, Joe Paterno was not a sexual predator and isn't accused of being one. There is absolutely no reason for not fining out what the truth is as related to his case. . There is no justification for removing him from his position before his time. At some point there may be, but this is all premature.

Here's a brief synopsis of what has actually been said.

Nothing has been said on the record by any supposed victim.
Sanduskey has said he showered with the kids but denies and sexual activity and denies that he's even attracted to young boys.
McCreary, claims to have seen Sanduskey sodomizing a child.
McCreary also claims to have gone to Joe Paterno and the police with these allegations.
There is no record of a police report filed by McCreary
Joe Paterno says McCreary never said anything about a sexual act when he reported the incident to him.

This entire case seems to hinge on the testimony of someone who is very likely to prove to deemed not to a credible witness under cross examination.

Now you can take the position that both the police and Joe Paterno and the police engaged in a coverup.
Or you can take the position that McCreary didn't say what he says he did.

You can take the position that McCreary saw sodomy.
Or you can take the position that McCreary thinks he saw sodomy but was so outraged by his own emotion seeing Sanduskey naked in the showers with a 10 year old that he really doesn't know what he saw.

You can take the position that Sandusky is a child molester.
Or you can take the position that Sanduskey is an ordinary jock who used extremely poor judgement and showered with 10 year olds.

You can take the position that this mother is truly concerned about her child.
Or you can take the position that she's a mother who sees an opportunty for a huge payday by suing a respected institution for damages. After all, it's not costing her a thing to reap havoc on Penn State's reputation.

You can take any frigging position you want because a lot of the information that will come out at Sanduskey's trial will not be available until his trial. And at this time it's very likely he can even get a fair trial. No one cares about this man's reputation. And make no mistake, there are a lot of people in the US and in the jury pool, who won't even differentiate between the nudity and sex thing, because in their warped minds, they are the same thing.

Anyone who has made up their mind in this case is jumping to conclusions. The case against Sanduskey is so weak, a judge released him on 100 grand, a piddly amount for a person such as himself. He/she obviously doesn't consider him a threat to re-offend while he's out on bail or flee.

Given the outlandish way in which the press and the public jump all over the whole child abuse thing... society has a vested interest in Sanduskey being guilty. They have fired people , attacked one of the icons of American society and gotten him fired from his job... people hear the words "child molester " and they lose all sense of fairness and reason. This is a typical case of mob hysteria based on limited information. Nothing more noting less. I believe once every thing goes down, you could find Sanduskey convicted on very sketchy evidence for a crime of which he is may not be guilty, because of the hysteria whipped up by the police, DAs and media.

But really, there is no way to know. As in most instances of mob rule, the biggest victim of this kind of mob hysteria will be the truth. And the historical examples are endless.

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Last edited by normhead; 11-18-2011 at 08:38 AM.

[seacapt]

I have to go with the not enough facts camp on this.
Things just don't add up.
First if a graduate assistant says he saw Sandusky in the shower with a 10 year old being raped , Why didn't he stop it? It might be hard to tell a 16 year old minor from a young adult but a 10 y/o is just a little kid. I think if I was in that position Sandusky would have been hurt badly.
Secondly if the witness did tell Paterno immediately, I can't see the coach just sitting back . If Paterno was told about it after the fact and reported it to his superiors , why was Sandusky not fired ?
From a coaches point of veiw there is nothing good about one of your assistants bum blasting anyone let alone a kid in the locker room.
The college administration , legal department and human resources dept. would probably all have been aware of the situation. Was no action taken for fear of legal action on the basis of discrimination?
My speculation is that if Paterno was aware of the problem he did try to resolve it but was told by his superiors to leave it to them.
Yes I think he is being used as a scape goat and taking the fall for members of the administration of Penn State.
BTW did anybody see that Franco Harris lost a contract for supporting his old coach?

[Ratmagiclady]

I have to go with the not enough facts camp on this.
Things just don't add up.
First if a graduate assistant says he saw Sandusky in the shower with a 10 year old being raped , Why didn't he stop it? It might be hard to tell a 16 year old minor from a young adult but a 10 y/o is just a little kid. I think if I was in that position Sandusky would have been hurt badly.
Secondly if the witness did tell Paterno immediately, I can't see the coach just sitting back . If Paterno was told about it after the fact and reported it to his superiors , why was Sandusky not fired ?
From a coaches point of veiw there is nothing good about one of your assistants bum blasting anyone let alone a kid in the locker room.
The college administration , legal department and human resources dept. would probably all have been aware of the situation. Was no action taken for fear of legal action on the basis of discrimination?
My speculation is that if Paterno was aware of the problem he did try to resolve it but was told by his superiors to leave it to them.
Yes I think he is being used as a scape goat and taking the fall for members of the administration of Penn State.
BTW did anybody see that Franco Harris lost a contract for supporting his old coach?

Well, at least you're using the proper term: (Subeeds, saying 'sodomy' over and over' doesn't mean the allegations aren't about what they are: Child rape. 'Sodomy' is a term they use to smear the LGBT community while of course, covering up for the actual perpetrators and their institutions. The word's pretty much been reduced to an anti-gay slur, especially when it comes to things like this. This is about child rape. )

The key problem here is the institutional coverup and enabling. There *should* be consequences, even just for *not* taking the matter seriously when it was happening. People act differently in hierarchies, especially ones like college football or big churches where there's a lot of money, image, and authority at stake. The very fact that Paterno is so ...*revered* is something that would make it very difficult for people to stand up against something he allows, etc. As to the merits of the various accusations themselves, that's the sort of thing that courts should be deciding: the fact that they didn't get their chance is the real reason those school/team authorities are responsible.

[stevewig]

Well, at least you're using the proper term: (Subeeds, saying 'sodomy' over and over' doesn't mean the allegations aren't about what they are: Child rape. 'Sodomy' is a term they use to smear the LGBT community while of course, covering up for the actual perpetrators and their institutions. The word's pretty much been reduced to an anti-gay slur, especially when it comes to things like this. This is about child rape. )

The key problem here is the institutional coverup and enabling. There *should* be consequences, even just for *not* taking the matter seriously when it was happening. People act differently in hierarchies, especially ones like college football or big churches where there's a lot of money, image, and authority at stake. The very fact that Paterno is so ...*revered* is something that would make it very difficult for people to stand up against something he allows, etc. As to the merits of the various accusations themselves, that's the sort of thing that courts should be deciding: the fact that they didn't get their chance is the real reason those school/team authorities are responsible.

RML - on this issue I agree with you 100%!

Typically, on these cases I take issue with all trial by media and strongly oppose it - I have done this a couple of times on this forum.

I still do oppose it in this case but because the charges are crimes against children and over such a long period of time I do think that all concerned parties should be removed from the "scene of the crimes" until proper investigations have been carried out.

[Nesster]

The case against Sanduskey is so weak, a judge released him on 100 grand, a piddly amount for a person such as himself. He/she obviously doesn't consider him a threat to re-offend while he's out on bail or flee.

It could also be that Sanduskey is not likely to be in a situation to re-offend as I doubt any parent or organization will be letting him anywhere near... and fleeing for such a high profile person would not be easy.

When I served on a grand jury they gave us the child abuse / sex abuse cases at the end. It was truly exhausting and depressing... and we really had little choice but to send them all to trial given the nature of the charges and evidence that was not obviously faked.

[normhead]

When I served on a grand jury they gave us the child abuse / sex abuse cases at the end. It was truly exhausting and depressing... and we really had little choice but to send them all to trial given the nature of the charges and evidence that was not obviously faked.

As a supporting witness in case of similar nature, the case was essentially driven by the testimony of the witnesses. My testimony was as a supporting witness, one of the children had opened up to another child at a time when I happened to be out of site but within earshot. This happened at a summer camp, so the Childrens aid people, removed the kids from camp, and used "you can go back to Camp when you tell us what you were talking about", using what I had overheard as leverage and summer camp. These kids had been suspected having been abused for years.. and CA had never been able to get them to open up. So I can understand how hard it can be for young people to come forward.

The thing that troubles me so far, is I don't see any record of victim testimony. I've seen the lawyer speak, where he said 'the victim is reluctant to testify because of his feelings of closeness to the Penn State commmunity". Well that's what he told the lawyer his mother hired. But, reading between the lines, that may just be an excuse for "nothing really happened but my mom is so gung ho I feel I have to go along with this."

As I said, I'll be happier with the whole thing after witness testimony has been given, not third party as in Mr. McCreary, but victim testimony. I coached basketball for years, and I would never have for a minute considered showering with my team... so, I can't understand where Sandusky is coming from. I'm sure Sanduskey is guilty of something. But whether it should have been someone saying "Stop doing that you moron" or something more serious, as I said, we need a trial where everything can come out. Worst case scenario right now, would be some kind of plea bargain and all this gets buried.

[grhazelton]

I haven't had a chance to speak with my brother in Pittsburg, he's more au courant with the sports scene than I am, and his daughter graduated from Penn State.

But. The buck has to stop somewhere. Had Sandusky been, say, the coach of the tennis team, could he have escaped being fired after the first of his apparently many abusive encounters? How goes the saying, when money talks justice walks? If Paterno were informed of this disgusting offense, surely as the head coach he could fire Sandusky or see that he was fired. His is a sin of omission, or of cowardice, or of ignorance, and surely a long term coach could hardly remain ignorant of this sort of thing for long.

Isn't it time to look closely at the sort of college or society which allows a sport to dominate a major university so thoroughly that students riot over the discharge of a coach? What sort of foolishness is this? A 24 year old "student" was quoted as saying "They fired our coach. Of course we're rioting."

It's hardly unique to the Penn State campus; back in the 80's an English Instructor, Jan Kemp, was literally hounded out of town for daring to refuse to pad grades for football players at the University of Georgia, another football power obsessed with what is, after all merely a game! Ms. Kemp's life was threatened, all for acting ethically.

Collegiate football and basketball as they are presently constituted are severely distorting American colleges and universities. I once heard a coach from Georgia Southern College (now a University) proclaim at a Kiwanis meeting that a good sports program was what produced a good college. I wonder what he would think of MIT, U of Chicago, Johns Hopkins and other fine schools where sports are an adjunct to education, where the tail doesn't wag the dog. As I recall from a recent magazine article the graduation rates of varsity athletes at the major "sports campuses" are far below the general college population.

A college is or should be an institute of learning, not a professional ball team. An honest approach would be for colleges to field an openly professional team without the pretense of the student athlete. Such teams could better justify paying their coaches millions than can the present system where a college coach can have a higher salary than a distinguished scholar.

Or, abolish athletic scholarships and field truly amateur teams with small enough schedules so that players could somehow find time to study. This is what the Ivy League does. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell and the others are generally accorded to be among the finest schools in the nation, and they have sane sports programs.

[jeffkrol]

WASHINGTON -- The average fair market value of top-tier college football and men's basketball players is over $100,000 each, and the athletes are entitled to at least a portion of that, a new report from an advocacy group argues.

Instead of getting what they're worth, the players receive athletic scholarships that don't cover the full cost of attending school, leaving many of them living below the poverty line, says the report, "The Price of Poverty in Big Time College Sport."

A national college athletes' advocacy group and a sports management professor calculate in the report that if college sports shared their revenues the way pro sports do, the average Football Bowl Subdivision player would be worth $121,000 per year, while the average basketball player at that level would be worth $265,000.

Advocacy group says top college athletes worth six figures - ESPN

The report argues that the main beneficiaries of preserving the current system for athletes are coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners and bowl directors, citing, for example, the multimillion-dollar salaries of several high-profile coaches

.


Really, what would you expect?

[grhazelton]

Whether student athletes are paid what they are worth is only one aspect of the problem. Their skill at football or basketball is a perishable asset, a serious injury could end their career.

In 1974 Moses Malone, a basketball star from Petersburg, Virginia turned down a big scholarship to go pro. He was raked over the coals by the media for turning down the chance for "a fine education." But he might well have flunked out, even with the liberal policies for student athletes of the day, or been injured. The contract he signed at least assured him of enough money which, if carefully managed, to pay for a real education if he wanted it, after his basketball career ended, either through retirement or injury. As it turned out he had a stellar professional career and apparently never went to college.

He or his advisors made a rational decision. Have a look at this Moses Malone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Just imagine if all that athletic scholarship money went to academic scholarships. But of course, if athletic programs really do pay for themselves they don't drain academic scholarships...I hope.