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We all know that the Jerry Sanduskys are out there, grown men looking for boys to molest.
They look for them in or around schools — elementary schools, middle schools, high schools — and anywhere else that boys congregate. They often work or volunteer in schools or scouting groups or somewhere else they have access to these boys, these minors, these children. Others target underage girls, children.
They tend to prey upon the most vulnerable, those with emotional and/or mental problems, from broken or unstable families, or they seek out those who are struggling with their sexuality.
They pass themselves off as strong family men and pillars of the community, when in fact they are neither.
They are monsters, just pure evil.
But they rely on the Joe Paternos of the world to be their protectors, their enablers. The ones who cover the tracks of these predators and keep them on the prowl year after year after year — instead of in prison, where they belong.
And that makes Paterno a monster as well, and all the enablers like him.
Paterno has been more than just the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions these past several decades. Paterno is the vaunted Penn State football program and, in many ways, he is Penn State. Well, he was. That’s all over now, and not a moment too soon.
It was nearly two decades ago that stories first began to surface about Paterno’s longtime assistant Sandusky, the team’s defensive coordinator, sexually assaulting boys. For Paterno, who was accurately described as the “king” of the Penn State campus, a man who knew if one of his coaches or players got a jaywalking ticket before the coach or player even had an opportunity to call him about it, the idea that he was somehow in the dark about Sandusky is completely implausible.
By 1998, when campus police investigated yet another assault of a child and heard what amounted to a confession from Sandusky, Paterno certainly knew he had a predator on his hands. And still no action was taken, although Sandusky — always thought to be Paterno’s heir apparent — left his position unexpectedly the following year.
Even then, he remained a fixture on the PSU campus and used his access there to procure victims through his youth foundation, assaulting them on campus and elsewhere according to the 40 criminal counts he now faces.
In 2002, Mike McQueary was a 28-year-old graduate assistant when he walked into the shower room at Penn State and found Sandusky committing the anal rape of a 10-year-old boy. Instead of rescuing the victim, he walked back out and later reported the incident to Paterno, who did the very bare minimum required of him to protect himself legally.
We all know that the Jerry Sanduskys are out there, grown men looking for boys to molest.
They look for them in or around schools — elementary schools, middle schools, high schools — and anywhere else that boys congregate. They often work or volunteer in schools or scouting groups or somewhere else they have access to these boys, these minors, these children. Others target underage girls, children.
They tend to prey upon the most vulnerable, those with emotional and/or mental problems, from broken or unstable families, or they seek out those who are struggling with their sexuality.
They pass themselves off as strong family men and pillars of the community, when in fact they are neither.
They are monsters, just pure evil.
But they rely on the Joe Paternos of the world to be their protectors, their enablers. The ones who cover the tracks of these predators and keep them on the prowl year after year after year — instead of in prison, where they belong.
And that makes Paterno a monster as well, and all the enablers like him.
Paterno has been more than just the head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions these past several decades. Paterno is the vaunted Penn State football program and, in many ways, he is Penn State. Well, he was. That’s all over now, and not a moment too soon.
It was nearly two decades ago that stories first began to surface about Paterno’s longtime assistant Sandusky, the team’s defensive coordinator, sexually assaulting boys. For Paterno, who was accurately described as the “king” of the Penn State campus, a man who knew if one of his coaches or players got a jaywalking ticket before the coach or player even had an opportunity to call him about it, the idea that he was somehow in the dark about Sandusky is completely implausible.
By 1998, when campus police investigated yet another assault of a child and heard what amounted to a confession from Sandusky, Paterno certainly knew he had a predator on his hands. And still no action was taken, although Sandusky — always thought to be Paterno’s heir apparent — left his position unexpectedly the following year.
Even then, he remained a fixture on the PSU campus and used his access there to procure victims through his youth foundation, assaulting them on campus and elsewhere according to the 40 criminal counts he now faces.
In 2002, Mike McQueary was a 28-year-old graduate assistant when he walked into the shower room at Penn State and found Sandusky committing the anal rape of a 10-year-old boy. Instead of rescuing the victim, he walked back out and later reported the incident to Paterno, who did the very bare minimum required of him to protect himself legally.
Paterno told the athletic director, who reported it to university president Graham Spanier. However, Spanier did nothing but bar Sandusky from bringing boys onto campus in the future — and even that was never fully enforced. Neither the police nor child protection agencies were ever contacted or notified of the incident.
So Spanier, Paterno and Co. essentially said to Sandusky: “Don’t do it here. Rape the little boys somewhere else.”
Sandusky was still making regular visits to the campus up until almost the day he was arrested last week and the national scandal erupted. Two other PSU officials have also been arrested, charged with failing to report criminal activity and lying to the grand jury.
True to form, Paterno remained as arrogant and self-centered and oblivious to all the human damage he allowed to take place right up to the end, trying to craft a “graceful exit” on his own terms by announcing that he would retire at the end of this season.
Thankfully, the Board of Trustees finally acted late Wednesday night by summarily firing both Paterno and Spanier. More heads were still waiting to roll, starting with wide receivers coach McQueary (part of the decade-long cover-up of the 2002 rape), but at least the purge was underway, starting right at the top two spots.
With that, Penn State officials are doing the right thing at last. The university is no doubt facing massive civil liability, in which it will either pay out a lot of huge settlements or go to court and lose big. Either way, this story isn’t over for PSU, not by a long shot.
The same goes for Paterno and some other key figures in the scandal. If there were true justice, they would all be heading to jail — sorry, Paterno was not a “frail old man” in 1998 or 2002, as some supporters are now trying to excuse him — but at the very least they will find themselves defendants in civil lawsuits.
As for Paterno’s legacy, which was supposed to be all about him being the winningest coach in Division I history and running what was hailed as the “Camelot of college football,” that’s all gone now, and forever.
His legacy is one of utter shame and disgrace, on a scale that would have seemed unimaginable just a certain number of days ago.
Paterno’s perfidy in protecting a known serial child predator all these years and never even bothering to confront him about his heinous crimes (as Paterno’s own son admits) is the only legacy he has left.
How he and his fellow enablers can live with it, or sleep at night, is the only mystery going forward, and one we may never get an adequate answer to — either from the perpetually-in-denial JoePa or his dwindling number of defenders.
e-mail: tom3264@msn.com, or go to tom’s Facebook page to send a message
