OPINION: Joe Paterno should serve jail time

To ignore clear evidence of such acts is to put more children in danger. It’s analogous to knowing a car has no brakes or faulty steering, but allowing children to be driven in the vehicle anyway. It is reckless endangerment. And the legal guidelines on such matters may be fuzzy, but the moral line is painfully clear — it’s a form of criminal intent.

Joe Paterno is a college football icon. And to a lesser extent, so was his right hand man, Jerry Sandusky, who engineered Penn State’s ferocious defenses and helped the Nittany Lions capture two national titles at “Linebacker U.” But all that is mere trivia in the story of Sandusky, a man now known as a serial child molester, a man whose biography, “Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story,” now has a new, chilling meaning.

Thousands of Penn State students took to the streets after Paterno was fired last week to express support for the head coach of 46 years. The students chanted “We want Joe!” They yelled “&##$ the media!” Some of them complained that they had been “Sanduskied.” A news van was overturned.

Those college students were whipped into a passionate frenzy of support, expressing righteous indignation and school pride. But to the outside world, the scene in Happy Valley was truly disturbing. It had the air of a third-world country in chaos after the toppling of a long-time dictator.

What about priorities? There is so much in the world to protest, so much wrongdoing, tragedy, helplessness, injustice. Yet, it was the firing of a football coach who turned a blind eye to his child rapist friend that aroused the passions of the crowd? Frankly, if this was Georgia, I don’t know if I could remain a fan after this sick story.

I’ll omit the graphic details, but the 23-page Grand Jury indictment, which has been made available to the public, is X-rated and utterly awful. Had these students read that report? Surely not. Surely they couldn’t have read what many of us did and believed they were right in their hearts.

Sandusky used his proximity to Penn State and Paterno to establish a program for troubled boys, which gave him constant access to underprivileged young boys, the kind of kids who might not have anyone to go to bat for them if they complained of Sandusky’s actions.

Sandusky had numerous boys stay with him at his house and his hotel rooms under the guise of being a fatherly figure. He used Penn State’s locker room showers to carry out his crimes. And the awful details of these incidents by the eight victims interviewed by the Grand Jury were eerily similar. He had a clear method of operation.

Sadly, many cases of abuse could have been avoided if someone in authority had just shown some guts. Sandusky was confronted in 1998 by a victim’s mother about what he had done with her child in a shower. Two cops eavesdropped from another room. They heard him confess to the crime. Still, the police were told by their superior that the case would not be pursued. The prosecutor, who received a report on the incident, didn’t go after Sandusky either. Strangely, that prosecutor disappeared in 2005 and has since been declared dead. This could be just a strange coincidence, but what a peculiar story this is.

The following year, Sandusky met with Paterno. And the Grand Jury indictment includes the testimony of one victim, who said Sandusky was emotionally distraught after this meeting.

“Victim 4 remembers Sandusky being emotionally upset after having a meeting with Joe Paterno in which Paterno told Sandusky he would not be the next head coach at Penn State and which preceded Sandusky’s retirement,” the report stated.
So Sandusky is investigated for molestation in 1998, meets with Paterno in 1999 and is emotionally distraught about that meeting, then he abruptly resigns. We’re supposed to believe that Paterno never caught wind of Sandusky’s molestation investigation the previous year? Without the appearance of internal memos, it’s hard to prove Paterno’s knowledge about such an incident. But this is highly suspicious. Why did that 1998 case just suddenly disappear despite a confession in the presence of cops? Why did the successful defensive coach suddenly quit? What exactly did he and Paterno talk about in 1999? Was this meeting really about Sandusky not succeeding Paterno, who has never indicated any willingness to step down, or was it about Sandusky’s criminal behavior and how it could shame them all?

But the primary focus of the Sandusky saga so far has been a 2002 incident in which Penn State graduate assistant Mike McQueary walked in on Sandusky sodomizing a child in a football locker room shower. McQueary said both Sandusky and the victim saw him. He didn’t do anything to stop the crime, but went to his dad and told him what happened, then went to Paterno the next day.

Ugh!

They never figured out who the poor kid was. That is an egregious oversight in itself. How can you not ask questions and find out who this poor child is? Instead, Paterno later met with athletic director Timothy Curley, and Gary Schultz, who oversees the Penn State Police Department.

According to the Grand Jury report, “Paterno reported ‘disturbing’ and ‘inappropriate’ conduct in a shower by Sandusky upon a young boy.” Paterno reported this to his boss, the athletic director, who happened to be one of his former players. So who was really in charge here, the coach or his former player?

Nothing was ever done. Sandusky was told not to bring boys around campus. But he did anyway and continued to maintain an office at Penn State. And he was still using the facilities as recently as two weeks ago.

So, a head coach gets eyewitness testimony from an assistant coach of a child rape by a former coach on school grounds, then he fails to alert police and just lets the offender go about his business like nothing happened. He lets the offender continue to draw vulnerable kids to his program without any peep of protest? And thousands of people take to the street in support of this guy?

No one should be immune to the consequences of criminal negligence. Child safety should take precedence over any reputation, no matter how great. Football and fame are secondary here. Coaches and administrators across the land should take heed of that lesson.

Joe Paterno always talked about doing things “the right way.” Unfortunately, the only “right way” now is to jail.

Zach Mitcham is editor of The Madison County Journal.