NYT report that Paterno was told about Sandusky in 1976

[Spotcheck Billy]

and yet most reporters are convinced that Pitino knew nothing about the strippers

[mu03eng]

Here's the thing that's difficult to square. There are two unbelievable scenarios that seem at play....either the coach and a lot of his staff + administrators where all enablers of child molestation when the organization was very key on doing things the "right" way. Otherwise there was a pernicious child predator that managed to operate under everyone's nose for 30 years.

Honestly, don't know what to believe at this point.

[Coleman]

Here's the thing that's difficult to square. There are two unbelievable scenarios that seem at play....either the coach and a lot of his staff + administrators where all enablers of child molestation when the organization was very key on doing things the "right" way. Otherwise there was a pernicious child predator that managed to operate under everyone's nose for 30 years.

Honestly, don't know what to believe at this point.

Sadly, the former seems infinitely more likely. As mentioned, coaches are emperors and control freaks. They know everything that is going on in their program.

Just because they were claiming to do the right thing, means nothing. Plenty of institutions claiming moral superiority are pure hypocrites (see the Catholic Church's cover up of pedophiles)

[mu03eng]

Sadly, the former seems infinitely more likely. As mentioned, coaches are emperors and control freaks. They know everything that is going on in their program.

Just because they were claiming to do the right thing, means nothing. Plenty of institutions claiming moral superiority are pure hypocrites (see the Catholic Church's cover up of pedophiles)

Here's the thing...if Paterno knew the administration and the town knew. There is no place quite as isolated and insular as State College. The entire town would have to be involved in the cover which is what makes it very hard to believe

[warriorchick]

Here's the thing...if Paterno knew the administration and the town knew. There is no place quite as isolated and insular as State College. The entire town would have to be involved in the cover which is what makes it very hard to believe

I guess that is why AD Timothy Curley pleaded the fifth for 168 pages of transcripts.

http://deadspin.com/former-penn-state-ad-timothy-curley-pleaded-the-fifth-t-1783520917

[Chicos' Buzz Scandal Countdown]

Here's the thing...if Paterno knew the administration and the town knew. There is no place quite as isolated and insular as State College. The entire town would have to be involved in the cover which is what makes it very hard to believe

I don't follow... how is it that if Paterno/AD knew... the whole town knew?

[mu03eng]

I don't follow... how is it that if Paterno/AD knew... the whole town knew?

This is something you just have to trust me on. If you haven't spent time there you can't really understand how in grained football is to the area and how accessible these people are to the community. State College is the only town of import within 30 minutes, there are no suburbs. The next largest population of any size is a federal prison 45 minutes down the road. Two hours of mountain road from Harrisburg, 3 hours from Philly, if you work or attend school at PSU you live in State College and it's a town of 6,000 people. If the coaching staff was exposed to Sandusky's evil, the town was exposed to it as well. It would require a tremendous and willful conspiracy to hide this for 30 years.

[MerrittsMustache]

This is something you just have to trust me on. If you haven't spent time there you can't really understand how in grained football is to the area and how accessible these people are to the community. State College is the only town of import within 30 minutes, there are no suburbs. The next largest population of any size is a federal prison 45 minutes down the road. Two hours of mountain road from Harrisburg, 3 hours from Philly, if you work or attend school at PSU you live in State College and it's a town of 6,000 people. If the coaching staff was exposed to Sandusky's evil, the town was exposed to it as well. It would require a tremendous and willful conspiracy to hide this for 30 years.

So you honestly believe that no one at PSU knew? Students used to joke on campus about Sandusky being a child molester. Obviously they did not actually know it to be true but it wasn't like this came out of no where to those close to the situation.

Let's face it, none of the lower-tier coaches who witnessed Sandusky's actions had the stones to be the whistle-blower. No one wanted to be the guy who brought this type of accusation against the beloved coordinator and potentially brought down the iconic head coach. Paterno ran Penn State. He was the face of that university. He was a god in that area. No one was willing to stand up to him for a long, long time and many PSU fans are still in denial about all of this happening. It's truly, truly sad.

[CTWarrior]

There's no way Paterno didn't know.

I don't know why, but I always wanted to give Paterno the benefit of the doubt.  But I agree, he must've known.

[warriorchick]

So you honestly believe that no one at PSU knew? Students used to joke on campus about Sandusky being a child molester. Obviously they did not actually know it to be true but it wasn't like this came out of no where to those close to the situation.

Sounds strikingly familiar to the jokes that were made in Hollywood about Bill Cosby drugging and raping women.

[mu03eng]

So you honestly believe that no one at PSU knew? Students used to joke on campus about Sandusky being a child molester. Obviously they did not actually know it to be true but it wasn't like this came out of no where to those close to the situation.

Let's face it, none of the lower-tier coaches who witnessed Sandusky's actions had the stones to be the whistle-blower. No one wanted to be the guy who brought this type of accusation against the beloved coordinator and potentially brought down the iconic head coach. Paterno ran Penn State. He was the face of that university. He was a god in that area. No one was willing to stand up to him for a long, long time and many PSU fans are still in denial about all of this happening. It's truly, truly sad.

The bolded statement is flat out incorrect. Jerry Sandusky was not beloved on campus or by the staff...he and Joe famously clashed all the time and people respected him for his charity work with Second Mile(ugh) but he was far from loved. Mostly people thought he was a nice but slight weird dude.

Again, I haven't made up my mind on the situation yet, but give me the theory of the crime in which Joe Paterno in 1976 is told by a boy that he was molested by a little known graduate assistant and Paterno chooses to tell no one and essentially covers it up for 40 years....all the while talking about putting a person's development above winning. Why do that?

[MerrittsMustache]

The bolded statement is flat out incorrect. Jerry Sandusky was not beloved on campus or by the staff...he and Joe famously clashed all the time and people respected him for his charity work with Second Mile(ugh) but he was far from loved. Mostly people thought he was a nice but slight weird dude.

Again, I haven't made up my mind on the situation yet, but give me the theory of the crime in which Joe Paterno in 1976 is told by a boy that he was molested by a little known graduate assistant and Paterno chooses to tell no one and essentially covers it up for 40 years....all the while talking about putting a person's development above winning. Why do that?

"Beloved" may have been a poor choice of words. He was a "well-respected" coach.

Also, in 1976, Sandusky was the LB coach and was promoted to DC the following season. He had played under Paterno (then an assistant) at PSU, was a grad assistant in 1966 (Paterno's first season as head coach), left for 2 seasons and was hired back by Paterno in 1969. He was hardly "little known" to JoePa.

Why do that? Because he didn't want to believe and/or acknowledge that one of his up-and-coming coaches was a child molester. He ignored it the first time, perhaps assuming it was a one-time deal, but was made aware of it on other occasions going forward but he was too far in to come out saying that he had heard these types of accusations for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 years.

I don't think that he was blatantly involved in any sort of elaborate cover-up. I think the whole situation snowballed on him and he decided to put blinders on and hope it went away and never came to light.

[mu03eng]

"Beloved" may have been a poor choice of words. He was a "well-respected" coach.

Also, in 1976, Sandusky was the LB coach and was promoted to DC the following season. He had played under Paterno (then an assistant) at PSU, was a grad assistant in 1966 (Paterno's first season as head coach), left for 2 seasons and was hired back by Paterno in 1969. He was hardly "little known" to JoePa.

Why do that? Because he didn't want to believe and/or acknowledge that one of his up-and-coming coaches was a child molester. He ignored it the first time, perhaps assuming it was a one-time deal, but was made aware of it on other occasions going forward but he was too far in to come out saying that he had heard these types of accusations for 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 years.

I don't think that he was blatantly involved in any sort of elaborate cover-up. I think the whole situation snowballed on him and he decided to put blinders on and hope it went away and never came to light.

You're right on the timeline, I was thinking 1970 not 1976.

I don't disgree with your concept that Joe put on blinders to avoid dealing with it, but that also requires that hundreds of people also made the same decision to put blinders on over the span of 40 years.

[MerrittsMustache]

You're right on the timeline, I was thinking 1970 not 1976.

I don't disgree with your concept that Joe put on blinders to avoid dealing with it, but that also requires that hundreds of people also made the same decision to put blinders on over the span of 40 years.

Why would hundreds of people be involved?

[mu03eng]

Why would hundreds of people be involved?

Between his activities on campus and his 2nd Mile charity....if Paterno knew, hundreds of people knew. Hell, I was out at PSU for multiple soccer camps in the summers in late 90s and had numerous chance encounters with Sandusky and others of the football staff. There is no way he was just doing this stuff in the lockerroom on campus....it had to have happened lots of other places and had other witnesses who would/should have talked about it.

[warriorchick]

Between his activities on campus and his 2nd Mile charity....if Paterno knew, hundreds of people knew. Hell, I was out at PSU for multiple soccer camps in the summers in late 90s and had numerous chance encounters with Sandusky and others of the football staff. There is no way he was just doing this stuff in the lockerroom on campus....it had to have happened lots of other places and had other witnesses who would/should have talked about it.

Kind of like the Catholic priest scandal? How many decades did that take for it to see real daylight?

[GGGG]

Kind of like the Catholic priest scandal? How many decades did that take for it to see real daylight?

Exactly.  Authority figures are given the benefit of the doubt, and the higher ups shelter them.  This is playing out the exact same way. 

[mu03eng]

Exactly.  Authority figures are given the benefit of the doubt, and the higher ups shelter them.  This is playing out the exact same way.

Not super knowledgeable about the catholic priest thing, but that at least involved the shuffling of priests around to different communities where it was logical that the originating parish, if they were aware it was going on, would assume the matter had been handled appropriately when the priest was removed. In this scenario, this one person was in the same community for 40 years, that takes it from passive to active cover up.

Additionally, didn't the church higher ups know what was going on and actively participate in a cover up by moving the priests around?

My point is, given the circumstances around Sandusky, either a lot of people knew and actively covered it up or nobody knew what was going on. There is no way that just one or two people knew or suspected and that was it.

[Coleman]

I think what happened in the Catholic Church is a perfect parallel.

You have institutions claiming moral authority and supposedly doing things the right way.

When something develops that contradicts that narrative, it causes cognitive dissonance. You can admit the problem and try to correct it, or put blinders on and continue believing that you are the best representative of your moral message, despite the issues boiling beneath the surface.

Doing the right thing is hard. Both Paterno and Catholic bishops chose to believe that these incidents were isolated and would just go away.

Both shamefully let the image of their institutions come before protecting the vulnerable in their midst.

[warriorchick]

I think what happened in the Catholic Church is a perfect parallel.

You have institutions claiming moral authority and supposedly doing things the right way.

When something develops that contradicts that narrative, it causes cognitive dissonance. You can admit the problem and try to correct it, or put blinders on and continue believing that you are the best representative of your moral message, despite the issues boiling beneath the surface.

Doing the right thing is hard. Both Paterno and Catholic bishops chose to believe that these incidents were isolated and would just go away.

Both shamefully let the image of their institutions come before protecting the vulnerable in their midst.

Here's the other thing:  It's not like the entire football team walked in on Sandusky raping a kid and they all took a vote on whether or not they were going to say anything.  For the most part, it was multiple instances of a single person finding something out.  I am sure most of those witnesses stayed quiet assuming they would not be believed, or in the alternate, punished for taking down an institution (Penn State football)  to which hundreds of thousands of people are blindly loyal.

[mu-rara]

Here's the other thing:  It's not like the entire football team walked in on Sandusky raping a kid and they all took a vote on whether or not they were going to say anything.  For the most part, it was multiple instances of a single person finding something out.  I am sure most of those witnesses stayed quiet assuming they would not be believed, or in the alternate, punished for taking down an institution (Penn State football)  to which hundreds of thousands of people are blindly loyal.

Agreed WC.  Parallels the corruption in any institution when the institution becomes to large.

[warriorchick]

Agreed WC.  Parallels the corruption in any institution when the institution becomes to large.

Also, imagine how incredibly shocking it must have been to witness (or experience) something like that.  It was unimaginable.  I am sure for some of them, they were in denial themselves.  "I must be seeing things. This can't be happening" or "I must be misinterpreting this situation" would not have been a completely unreasonable reaction.

[Coleman]

Here's the other thing:  It's not like the entire football team walked in on Sandusky raping a kid and they all took a vote on whether or not they were going to say anything.  For the most part, it was multiple instances of a single person finding something out.  I am sure most of those witnesses stayed quiet assuming they would not be believed, or in the alternate, punished for taking down an institution (Penn State football)  to which hundreds of thousands of people are blindly loyal.

bingo. Which is why the "whole town" didn't cover it up

[mu03eng]

bingo. Which is why the "whole town" didn't cover it up

The victims were almost universally "sourced" from his 2nd Mile charity. While the events occured on campus and/or football facilities they were not part of program activities. 2nd Mile was very much a community activity around State College. If stuff was witnessed at the football facility it surely had to be witnessed in the greater community.

[Frenns Liquor Depot]

The victims were almost universally "sourced" from his 2nd Mile charity. While the events occured on campus and/or football facilities they were not part of program activities. 2nd Mile was very much a community activity around State College. If stuff was witnessed at the football facility it surely had to be witnessed in the greater community.

I think knew bits and pieces, heard unsubstantiated rumors or maybe even witnessed some things across in the broad community did occur.

Cover up means something different to me.