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WESTCHESTER, N.Y. – Penn State officials, including former head football coach Joe Paterno, failed to protect children who were sexually abused by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, according to a report released Thursday.
Penn State Report: What's Your Opinion?
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Joe Paterno and others knew all along and acted irresponsibly.
92% -
Joe Paterno and others followed proper procedures and handled the matter appropriately.
3% -
Jerry Sandusky is the chief offender. He alone should be held accountable.
5%
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh accused the university’s top officials of failing to act on information that Sandusky had molested children on school grounds. Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator under Paterno, is in jail awaiting sentencing after being found guilty on 45 charges of sexually abusing 10 boys over a period of 15 years.
According to the Freeh investigation, Penn State officials concealed information to avoid bad publicity.
Comments (5)
Jerry Sandusky innocent you have got to be kidding me....and NO Penn State DID NOT act properly nothing left to be said here...rambling about so called community madness is madness unto itself
Are you saying that the 19 hanged people and the crushed to death person were guilt in Salem? Are you saying the Salem affair was not madness?
You miss the point you cannot compare that with what happened in Penn State to what happened in Salem...Sandusky is guilty it is MADNESS to suggest otherwise....
Why can't Penn State be compared to Salem? In both cases there were accusations by children, a trial and convictions. Even the Massachusetts legislator admitted a couple decades ago that Salem was madness and the 20 death penalties were unwarranted. A few years ago the New Jersey appellate court recognized the insanity of the prosecution and conviction of a child abuse case there. There were well understood cases of madness in North Carolina, Florida, Boston, California, and Long Island.
Several years ago there was hoopla about Satanism in Bedford in Westchester County. The children took and interest in fortune tellers and Tarot cards. It took several years for the community to settle down. And we had the horrible cases in Croton involving a school teacher who foolishly tutored students in her home and of the self defense instructor sentenced to six years for teaching girls how to fend off rapists.
Political opportunism, dreams of Jeeps, and madness explain the Sandusky conviction. The accusers said their fancy pants lawyers helped with media. Do you believe that? The jury decision on victim 2 was incoherent, and Mr. McGettigan, the prosecutor on the case, said that the accusers' memories were repressed by shame. Repressed memories have been studied and found to be bogus.
A common story is of a firm looking for an accountant. Eight applicants wre rejected when they replied to the question "How much is 2 plus 2?" with the answer '4". A ninth applicant was hired when he responded to "How much is 2 plus 2?" with "How much do you want it to be?".
Louis Freeh was hired to find out who at Penn State knew about Sandusky, and everybody was open game to him. Surprise! Freeh found that four high officials,including Coach Paterno wantantly failed to stop Sandusky's crimes against children. Freeh gave those who hired him what they wanted, except that Freeh's inferences were not supported by his 267 page report. Not at all.
It is common for people to think high level people control day-to-day affairs more than they do. Robert Rubin got a lot of flack about no-doc loans when he had almost nothing to do with the mortgage business. The bank had a highly reguarded,and highly paid, risk manager to look over mortgages. In the Penn State case, a complaint in 1989 by a mother who said that Sandusky showered with her boy was investigated by Penn State police. The matter was referred to the District Attorney, who found insufficient evidence of a crime. The evidence of Sandusky's predations was not known at the time because, according to Mr. McGittigan, the prosecutor of Sandusky, the boy's kept quite over the years because of shame. The 1998 matter was handle properly by Penn State Officials.
Also in the Freeh report is that two police officers hid in the house of the complaining mother to overhear her conversation with Sandusky. Those officers wanted to ponce on the guy if he admitted to his genitalia brushing against the mother's child.
McGittigan's claim in opening statement that testimony was hidden over the years was an appeal to repressed memory theory. There is absolutely conclusive literature that repressed memory theory is junk science. It was a fad some time ago that led to thousands of cases now known to be unjust prosecutions.
There are several well understood examples of community madness cases, the most famous being the Salem Witch trial where 19 people were hanged and one was crushed to death. In the recent Little Rascals case, Dawn Williams had her baby taken from her and she got a life sentence. Her conviction has been set aside, and I hope she is doing well. A lady in New Jersey was imprisoned for six or so years before the Appellate Court threw out her conviction and excoriated the prosecutors in the case. Of interest is that the FBI searched a piano stool for fecal matter. Freeh was an FBI director of the FBI. He made a fool of himself when he charged that Bernard Nussbaum invited two agents to Vince Foster's office to deceive the agents.
The Penn State matter fits with the cases of community madness. Jerry Sandusky is an innocent man. At least he wasn't crushed to death.