These days, even the most shocking scandal trends and memes for an hour on social media, and then fades from public consciousness. Therefore, the Penn State child sex abuse scandal might seem like ancient history.
As it happened, I wrote a number of commentaries decrying the abuse and cover-up involved – beginning with “Penn State’s Catholic-Church Problem,” November 10, 2011, and ending with “Judgment Day for Pedophile Enablers at Penn State,” August 2, 2013.
Here is an excerpt from the former, which should prick your memory … as well as your conscience.
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Sandusky … used a group home he founded for troubled boys as a plucking ground for his pedophile pleasure…
All of the top officials associated with the team/university, most notably 84-year-old Head Coach Joe Paterno, allegedly knew about this abuse almost from the outset, but decided not to report it to the police… [A]ll of them were clearly involved in a conspiracy to cover-up the ongoing sexual abuse of little boys…
[I]nstead of wasting what little moral outrage I can still muster on child sex abusers, I just react by wishing them a fair trial, followed by a lifetime in prison having ‘big’ men do to them what they did to little children. And Sandusky will surely get his…
But let me hasten to add that I believe the same fate should befall all of those who knew about this abuse and failed to report it. That clearly includes Sandusky’s three conspiring stooges Paterno, Curly, and Shultz. But just as I suspect there are more victims, I suspect there are other professed good men (and they are almost always … men) who knew about this abuse and did nothing. Their motivation of course was to protect the big-money enterprise Penn State football has become.
I know many will consider it punishment enough that Paterno is resigning in disgrace. The outpouring of support among misguided students – for whom Football is a religion and Paterno a demigod – is testament to this fact…
[But] nobody in his right mind would argue that decades of pastoring are sufficient mitigation to grant leniency to bishops who stood by and allowed pedophile priests to serially rape little boys. Therefore, nobody should argue that decades of coaching are sufficient mitigation to grant leniency to coaches who stood by and allowed pedophile assistants to do the same.
Accordingly, not only should the university force him to resign immediately, but prosecutors should have him arrested to boot.
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I was hardly surprised when Penn State supporters began trolling me for damning Joe Paterno. And they only became more menacing after I commented on his death as follows:
If ever there were a case where a lifetime of good could (indeed should) be fatally undermined by one act, this is it.
Ironically, I suspect Paterno wished he were dead when the details of this child-sex abuse became public last November. After all, it exposed him as showing more concern about protecting his football program from scandal than protecting little boys from the pedophile clutches of his assistant coach. Well, he was finally put out of his misery yesterday when he died of lung cancer. He was 85.
No doubt many people will shed tears for Paterno, and do all they can to salvage his reputation and legacy. But I prefer to save my tears for those little boys, and will do all I can to remind people of how he betrayed them so unconscionably.
(“Joe Paterno, Penn State’s Pedophile-Enabling Coach, Is Dead,” The iPINIONS Journal, January 23, 2012)
Most notably, doing all they can to salvage his reputation and legacy included prevailing upon the NCAA to vacate the penalties it imposed upon Paterno and Penn State:
Penn State’s football team is getting back 112 wins wiped out during the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal, and the late Joe Paterno has been restored as the winningest coach in major college football history…
The announcement follows the NCAA’s decision last year to reinstate the school’s full complement of football scholarships and let Penn State participate in postseason play…
In a statement, Paterno’s family called the announcement of a settlement ‘a great victory for everyone who has fought for the truth in the Sandusky tragedy.’
(ESPN, January 16, 2015)
In effect, Paterno’s avenging trolls bullied the NCAA into absolving him of any complicity in the scandal. What’s more, they seemed as determined to return Paterno’s statue to its prominent place on campus, as they were to remove Sandusky’s name from any mention in the annals of Penn State football.
Then came this:
A court order related to the millions of dollars owed to the victims of Jerry Sandusky says that Penn State coaches, including Joe Paterno, may have known of child abuse allegations against Sandusky as far back as 1976.
According to PennLive.com, a line in a court order claims one of Penn State’s insurers said a child ‘allegedly reported’ to Joe Paterno in 1976 he was ‘sexually molested by Sandusky.’ Sandusky, who is currently serving 30-60 years after being found guilty on 45 counts of sexual abuse, was a defensive assistant under Paterno from 1969-1999, when he retired.
(Yahoo! News, May 5, 2016)
In other words, there’s now credible and compelling evidence that Paterno was every bit as complicit in Sandusky’s sexual abuse of children as I decried. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if documents reveal someday that Paterno himself was a bird-of-a-feather pedophile.
For now, though, the NCAA and Penn State are terminally vested in vindicating their whitewashing of Paterno’s legacy; so much so that, for them, this documentary evidence blasphemes rather than indicts his good name.
Meanwhile, one high-profile booster spoke for many Penn State supporters when he admitted to me that this new evidence left them with egg on their faces.
Alas, such admissions might be all Sandusky’s victims can hope for. This, notwithstanding the nearly $95 million Penn State paid to settle all sex abuse cases, which seems insulting given the $140 million Gawker is paying for publishing a Hulk Hogan sex tape.
On the other hand, what this booster admitted is vindication enough for me.
NOTE: Reports are that, in late 2014, Penn State’s post-Paterno president, Rodney Erickson, had the JoePa statue ‘removed from storage and melted down in order to make the bronze letters affixed to the Food Science building that now bears his [Erickson’s] name.’
Related commentaries:
Penn State’s … problem
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