Michele Catalano at American McCarver:
Will forcing Paterno’s resignation mess up Penn State’s season? Sure it will. But anyone who puts the value of a winning college football season over righting a wrong has skewed priorities.
Florida State coach Bobby Bowden said: “He’s the number one guy in college coaching and everybody looks up to Joe,” Bowden said. “When something like this occurs to his program all it just says is, ‘Joe, hey, you’re just like all of us. You have problems like all of us.’ “
Yea. Not many people have the “problem” of not having reported to the police their knowledge of the sexual abuse of ten year old boy.
There are moral victories and there are sports victories. Only one of them is important in the long run.
In 2002, then graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed a young boy being raped; innocence lost, soul destroyed. He didn’t call the police. Instead, he called his own father. The father didn’t call the police. The following day, the graduate assistant met with head football coach Joe Paterno to discuss what he saw. Joe Paterno didn’t call the police, he called the athletic director, Tim Curley, and a senior vice president, Gary Schultz. The two met with the graduate assistant over one week after the incident. They didn’t call the police. In fact, they merely told the alleged rapist, Jerry Sandusky, not to bring any children from his youth organization to the football building.
In summary, a child was anally raped. This was witnessed by an adult. The story was conveyed to no less than four other adults. Yet, instead of any one of these adults calling the police, they called each other. Instead of contacting the child’s parents, they remained silent. Instead of protecting this child, they protected themselves and their institution. Now people like Joe Paterno want us to believe it was okay for him to fail his moral obligation to this child because he did the minimum of what the law required. If Penn State University reciprocates this “protection”, if any one of these people continue to represent their institution, then we should all be disgusted.
UPDATED: Here is the complete grand jury presentation.