the Freeh report

[Earl]

I was away from the PC last week. (When it eventually breaks down, I'll buy a laptop instead of another PC.) I was half a continent away and had only a few minutes to spend online. Otherwise, I would have started this topic much sooner.




http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/id/8162 ... rue-legacy

COMMENTARY
The sins of the father

By Rick Reilly | ESPN.com

Updated: July 13, 2012, 6:56 PM ET




What a fool I was.

In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.

It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.

"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.

"What's hagiography?" I asked.

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."

Jealous egghead, I figured.

What an idiot I was.

Twenty-five years later, when former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of a 15-year reign of pedophilia on young boys, I thought Paterno was too old and too addled to understand, too grandfatherly and Catholic to get that Sandusky was committing grisly crimes using Paterno's own football program as bait.

But I was wrong. Paterno knew. He knew all about it. He'd known for years. He knew and he followed it vigilantly.

That's all clear now after Penn State's own investigator, former FBI director Louis Freeh, came out Thursday and hung the whole disgusting canvas on a wall for us. Showed us the emails, read us the interviews, shined a black light on all of the lies they left behind. It cost $6.5 million and took eight months and the truth it uncovered was 100 times uglier than the bills.

Paterno knew about a mother's cry that Sandusky had molested her son in 1998. Later, Paterno lied to a grand jury and said he didn't. Paterno and university president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley all knew what kind of sick coach they had on the payroll in Sandusky. Schultz had pertinent questions. "Is this opening of pandora's box?" he wrote in personal notes on the case. "Other children?" "Sexual improprieties?"

It gets worse. According to Freeh, Spanier, Schultz and Curley were set to call child services on Sandusky in February 2001 until Paterno apparently talked them out of it. Curley wasn't "comfortable" going to child services after that talk with JoePa.

Yeah, that's the most important thing, your comfort.

What'd they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody. And let Sandusky keep leading his horrific tours around campus. "Hey, want to see the showers?" That sentence alone ought to bring down the statue.

What a stooge I was.

I talked about Paterno's "true legacy" in all of this. Here's his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.

Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment. The mother of Victim 1 is "filled with hatred toward Joe Paterno," the victim's lawyer says. "She just hates him, and reviles him." Can you blame her?

What a sap I was.

I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier, Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.

What a chump I was.

I tweeted that, yes, Paterno should be fired, but that he was, overall, "a good and decent man." I was wrong. Good and decent men don't do what Paterno did. Good and decent men protect kids, not rapists. And to think Paterno comes from "father" in Italian.

This throws a can of black paint on anything anybody tells me about Paterno from here on in. "No NCAA violations in all those years." I believe it. He was great at hiding stuff. "He gave $4 million to the library." In exchange for what? "He cared about kids away from the football field." No, he didn't. Not all of them. Not when it really mattered.

What a tool I was.

As Joe Paterno lay dying, I actually felt sorry for him. Little did I know he was taking all of his dirty secrets to the grave. Nine days before he died, he had The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins in his kitchen. He could've admitted it then. Could've tried a simple "I'm sorry." But he didn't. Instead, he just lied deeper. Right to her face. Right to all of our faces.

That professor was right, all those years ago. I was engaging in hagiography. So was that school. So was that town. It was dangerous. Turns out it builds monsters.

Not all of them ended up in prison.

[Fat Man]

Good morning Earl:

Very good article. It's about time that a sports writer finally came out with the truth.

Not only do those involved in sports lie and cover up, but even the sports media dose not give damn about criminals in their ranks. They're too fucking busy promoting some jock and they couldn't care less if someone gets beaten and raped by some drooling moron who kicks a ball.

This is why the Penn State scandal was allowed to go on for years.

And now, finally, a sports writer learns, and comes out and admits, that he's been duped.

Yeah! It's high time a sports writer wrote the truth for a change. I wish more writers and broadcasters in the sports media were more truthful.

Oh! By the way, the latest NEWS!!!

The NCAA is bringing additional charges against Penn State.

It looks like Penn State will be fined $60 million dollars.

Well, I think it's the athletic department that should be fined, and I think the athletic department and the sports program should be shut down.

Penn State is suppose to be a University, an educational institution, and NOT a sports academy!

I think sports should be removed from all colleges and universities.

In the meantime, I'm glad that Sandusky is going off to the slammer.

I hope on the first day there, they'll have him tumbling down stairs all night long!

[Safety]

To be honest, I don't understand how the NCAA can punish someone for something that should be dealt with by the legal system. I feel bad for the student athletes who worked themselves to death for that football team, only to have their wins "vacated" because of something that they didn't do. Not being able to play in bowl games for several years doesn't make sense either, as no one who was involved in the scandal will be punished for it. It's just punishing students.

It reminds me of when Cedric Benson was suspended for four games in the NFL for punching his living mate. Why is the NFL punishing him? That's none of their business, right?

I also wish that people would stop acting like everything related to Joe Paterno should be removed, as if they could just erase his entire existence at Penn State.

[Earl]

No, I don't believe the players should be penalized. None of them were involved in this scandal.

But many of the fans have totally disgraced themselves. First, why did the students riot? Did they riot because a pedophile had not been reported to the police, but instead was allowed to roam the campus? No, they rioted because their "hero" Joe Paterno (whom they had idolized like a little god) had been fired. Then there was the sister of one of the victims who was a coed at the university. She did not reveal that she had a brother who was among Sandusky's victims. She listened to classmates joke about the boys who had been raped. What compassion! Then there was the victim who was a senior at a high school in the state, where his coach told others that he was going to testify against Sandusky. The mother of the victim told reporters that soon afterwards a grandmother of one of the Penn State players walked up to her and said (and I don't remember her exact words), "Now my grandson's team is going to lose, and it's all your son's fault"! Sure, I guess Sandusky had nothing to do with it. Perhaps Sandusky had been seduced by the boy. In cases of rape, it's always convenient to blame the victim. The victim soon was subjected to bullying by classmates who were upset with him because his testimony was likely to discredit the image of Joe Paterno. Wow, what a terrible offense! So, the victim was eventually driven out of his high school before he could graduate with his classmates. And now an alumni group has let it be publicly known they do not accept the findings of the Freeh report. Diehards to the end! What despicable jerks! These people care more about their precious football program and the "legacy" of Paterno than they do about the traumatized boys who were raped. They spit on the victims. Their moral values are undeniably warped and all in the name of a game. Their "Football Uber Alles" attitude is disgusting. They remind me why I'm not a football fan. If the victim had been a local teenage girl or a coed instead of a number of young boys and the perp had been one or more of the players, there no doubt would have been a cover-up (as has been the case at a number of other big-time universities, such as Notre Dame); and the scandal never would have made the news. Of course, until very recently, the sports media has functioned not as a journalistic institution, but as a propaganda mill intent upon turning as many people as they possibly can into sports fans (because there's a lot of money in it). Investigative reporting be damned!

Pity any rape victim who "gets in the way" of a high-school or college football program.

As far as Paterno's statue being taken down, since when is anyone honored by having a statue erected while he's still alive? I'm reminded of the "cult of personality" that dictators such as Stalin and Hitler used to increase their power. What happened at Penn State was a cult. Paterno may have started off as a reformer, but he ended up succumbing to his own arrogance. He insisted that the football players he coached not be subject to the same rules as all the other students. There was a woman administration official who was in charge of disciplining students. Paterno interfered with her job because he believed that the rules for "commoners" did not apply to the distinguished players he coached. They were above the rules. I'm not positive about this, but I heard Paterno had this woman fired simply because she was trying to do her job by enforcing student discipline impartially. No wonder some college football players have a "rule the roost" attitude! Safety, did you read Rick Riley's column? Paterno knew what Sandusky was doing years before, and chose to do nothing because he was more concerned about the image of Penn State football than he was about anything else; and as a result of his irresponsibility, more boys were raped by the pedophile. Paterno claimed his football program was about "victory with honor," but he betrayed his professed ideal. He was a liar. No, the purpose of taking the statue down was not to obliterate any memory of Paterno; the point was to dishonor him, which is what he so richly deserved.

[Fat Man]

OK, I shall respond with heavy red text!

To be honest, I don't understand how the NCAA can punish someone for something that should be dealt with by the legal system.

I don't give a flying fucking Hootenanny in Hell for their lousy football team!

First of all, the NCAA does have rules against what Sandusky had done to those kids, so the NCAA has a right to penalize those who violate NCAA rules.

I wish they would do that more often, enforcing their own rules.

So, I'm glad that BOTH the legal system AND the NCAA has taken action in this scandal.

I feel bad for the student athletes who worked themselves to death for that football team, only to have their wins "vacated" because of something that they didn't do. Not being able to play in bowl games for several years doesn't make sense either, as no one who was involved in the scandal will be punished for it. It's just punishing students.

Well, I was suspended from school for three fucking years, from 1965 to 1968 just because I told my PE coach to go to Hell after he had attacked me in the gymnasium. This happened in Truth Or Consequence New Mexico when I was 14 years old, and I was 17 years old before I was allowed to go back to school again.

Yeah! Suspended from getting an education for three fucking years!

So, I'm not going to cry boo hoo because they won't be able to play in any reindeer . . . uh . . . I mean . . . Toilet Bowl games for several years!

Aw! The poor babies!

Time to get out my world's smallest violin.



And play it just for them!

It reminds me of when Cedric Benson was suspended for four games in the NFL for punching his living mate. Why is the NFL punishing him? That's none of their business, right?

WRONG!!!

I think it's about time that the NFL hold it's players accountable for their actions! Yes, I would say it's their business, if one of their players assaults, or rapes someone. I wish the NFL would do that more often!

yeah! Another cry baby ball player!

Do I have to get out my world's smallest violin again?



Yeah, I guess I do!

I also wish that people would stop acting like everything related to Joe Paterno should be removed, as if they could just erase his entire existence at Penn State.

Well, boo hoo for Joe Paterno!

Don't make me get out my world's smallest violin again!



Well ya done it! You went and made me get out my world's smallest violin again!

Actually, I think is rather narcissistic of Joe Paterno to have a statue of himself erected. Statues to anyone are usually not erected until after that person dies, just like, only dead Presidents are put on American money.

Of course, even now that he's dead, he still deserves to have NO statue erected to him. We don't erect statues to douche-bags. NO! We take 'em down!

Anyway, I'm glad Joe Paterno has kicked the bucket and bought the farm and is now taking a dirt nap! It was getting way past his dead-time!

I think Sandusky should have his penis sliced lengthways with a barber's razor, alcohol applied to his split penis, his testicles crushed in a vice, his kneecaps busted with a lead pipe, and then, he should be nailed up-side-down on a shit-house door, and the shit-house set on fire!

And then, he should be cut up into little pieces and flushed down a sewer!

He's another scum-sucking shit-bag who needs to take a dirt nap!

Yeah! It's getting way past his dead-time!

OK! The concert is over now!

No more violin music!

The fat lady has sung so the opera is over!

Sorry! Game called off on account of reign!

Of terror that is!

[Earl]

Thanks for not engaging in any name-calling with Safety, Fat Man. We can disagree with one another, even strongly, but still remain civil.

I love your "world's smallest violin." and I thought your "concert" remarks were funny.

[Earl]

[Fat Man]

Yeah! This cartoon says it all.

It's been said, a picture can paint a thousand words.

This picture is worth a million words!

Joe Paterno wasn't even worth a shirt button and two shoe laces!

The innocent young victims of Sandusky will remember what was done to them for the rest of their lives.

Yes, Sandusky has been sentenced to life in prison, thank goodness.

He's 68 years old, and he may live into his 80s. He may even live to be 90 for all we know.

But if he lives to be 90, he will have served only 22 years in prison.

Those young victims who were molested and raped by Sandusky, they will have to live with those memories for the rest of their lives which could be another 50 to 60 years, or more, so those innocent victims are serving a much longer life sentence, because they will have many more years to have to live with those painful memories.

As I had mentioned so many time before in these forums, when I was 17 years old, I was beaten and raped by an older man, and I'm now 60 years old, soon to be 61 on September 30, and so far, I have served about 43 years of my life sentence of having to live with the memory of what had happened to me back in April of 1968 and we never get released, not until the day we die. Only then, is the life sentence over.

Also, there is no chance of parole, no early release, except through death.

Now that Sandusky in in the slammer, I hope they make his life a living Hell for him. I hope they kick him in the testicles twice every day and thrice on Sundays, and at the end of each day, I hope they'll have him tumbling down stairs all night long!

I also hope that sports, especially football, gets removed from all our universities and high schools.



YES! I believe sports should be eradicated!

[Safety]

I'm glad that you agree when I say that the students shouldn't be as punished like they are. But I still don't think that Joe Paterno is as guilty as people make him out to be. There are many others that are just as guilty, but since Paterno was such a high-profile person, he is receiving more criticism than he deserves.

[Fat Man]

I'm glad that you agree when I say that the students shouldn't be as punished like they are. But I still don't think that Joe Paterno is as guilty as people make him out to be. There are many others that are just as guilty, but since Paterno was such a high-profile person, he is receiving more criticism than he deserves.

That rat bastard, Joe Paterno, is as GUILTY AS HELL!!!

He knew about Sandusky molesting kids ever since 1998!!! Yeah! He knew about it for 12 fucking years, and did nothing about it.

Yes, all the other Penn State officials are just as guilty, and charges should be filed against them as well.

Joe Paterno could have intervened, and stopped Sandusky from molesting any more kids. He should have turned Sandusk in by reporting him to the police 12 years ago.

Paterno has even seen Sandusky in the act of sexually molesting kids, and he should have stop Sandusky right then and there when he saw it happening.

But NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

He kept silent about it for 12 fucking years!

Sandusky even sexually molested his own adopted kids!

WOW! Talk about keeping it in the family!!!

Fucking redneck piece of trailer trash!!!

As far as I'm concerned, Joe Paterno was just as guilty as Sandusky is!

Joe Paterno was a sanctimonious scum-bag piece of dog shit!!!

Safety, I really wish you would stop defending that worthless pile of shit!

He was a walking dung heap!

I'm glad the son-of-a-bitch is DEAD!!!

It's just too bad I don't believe there's a Hell for him to go to!

If they had given Joe Paterno an enema before he died they could have buried him in a match box!

I wish people would stop defending that worthless shit-bag!

[Earl]

Safety, why do you believe Paterno is "receiving more criticism than he deserves"? (Incidentally, did you know at one point that Paterno had more or less made Sandusky his heir apparent?) Why do you have no comment on the odious attitudes and actions of many of the Penn State fans, which I described in an earlier post? Why don't any of those items merit your outrage?

I'm sick and tired of all the buck-passing here. The fact is that Penn State leaders were aware of Sandusky's activities and chose to do nothing. Paterno (or any of the other creepy Penn State officials) could have become a hero by reporting Sandusky to the police immediately. But, instead, they chose to do nothing; and more young boys were raped, victims whom students at Penn State could mock.

Fat Man recently told me in a long-distance phone conversation that if Paterno had reported Sandusky to the police, he would have had a lot of admiration for him and would have regarded him as a hero. Imagine Fat Man, of all people, making a statement like that. But, no, Paterno had to "protect" the image of the football program.

How many times has this sort of scandal taken place on high-school, college, and university campuses (except that in these cases the cover-up was successful)? As I've said at two other websites, pity any rape victim who "gets in the way" of a high-school or college football program. The only people who seem to matter to many football coaches are the players. Forget any nonparticipant who may have been seriously injured or even traumatized by a football player. After all, the game is far more important than anything else.

I'm sick and tired of little twerps, such as the college basketball player (so-claimed) who recently posted his little one-shot "hit and run" in the bullying board, who throw hissy fits over this obscure website -- never mind that no one forces them to come here; and never mind we never invade their space, they're always coming over here to invade ours because they have no respect for freedom of speech -- instead of paying attention to the real "sports haters." This website has no power over anyone, except the capacity for individual members to be rude to any decent athlete such as Andy Austin who happens to visit us. I personally disagree with a few of the statements and one of the images on the home page, but this is the only website where the sports culture can be discussed critically without having to put up with the hysterically hateful reaction of unreasonable sports fans (as opposed to those who are reasonable, who often seem to not make their voices heard). The real sports haters are all the fans and supporters who are nothing less than enablers. These are the people who corrupt school sports. These people are the reason why some school athletes have a "rule the roost" attitude and feel that the rules don't apply to them. This is the reason why Penn State's football program has been driven to its proverbial knees. None of the supporters of this website would ever have the power to do such a thing. The true enemies of sport are to be found among the sports crowd, not here. But the cowardly "one post" twerps will only rail at this obscure, unpopular website instead of railing at the real enemies of sport. What hypocrisy and what stupidity!

Fat Man, thank you for maintaining a level of civility and for not engaging in name-calling with Safety.

[Fat Man]

Fat Man, thank you for maintaining a level of civility and for not engaging in name-calling with Safety.

Do you think it was easy for me to refrain from name calling???

Hell no!!!

It was like being in the middle of Death Valley, and not being able to unscrew the cap on my canteen.

[Earl]

I know it wasn't easy. As I've learned in my own life, personal growth frequently is not easy; but it is worth the effort.

[Fat Man]

I know it wasn't easy. As I've learned in my own life, personal growth frequently is not easy; but it is worth the effort.

Well, I have learned over the years that in our society, personal growth is often not allowed.

I think of education as personal growth, acquiring new knowledge, and learning new things about the world around us and the universe.

But, our Republican party wants to flush science education down the crapper and replace it with Creationist fairy tales.

They want to keep young people in a state of perpetual infancy!

Personal growth is not allowed.

Texas Republicans want to remove critical thinking from the high school curriculum, and remove Higher Order Thinking Skills, what they call HOTS!

Yeah! Soon, thinking will not be allowed!

They prefer that we all just sit in front of out TVs, slack-jawed and drooling, while watching sports, and cheering for professional rapists chasing a ball.

And many Republicans believe that people get raped because they deserve it, and some even joke about it!

Yes! I remember a comment that was made years ago by some Republican candidate, where he joked about rape, saying that it was like rain, that both are inevitable, so you might as well relax and enjoy it! Or something like that! I didn't remember his exact words.

OK, I could not remember exactly who made that comment or exactly when, because it was many years ago, so I did a Google search for "rain is like rape" and found it on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Williams

I'm not going to post the entire article, just the highlights of what was said, by who, and when it was said.

Here is is . . .

It was back in 1990 during the Texas gubernatorial race, and it was, Clayton Williams, the unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1990 against the Democratic State Treasurer Ann Richards.

He lost to Ann Richards, even though he initially led in opinion polls by twenty points.

During the campaign there was a really heavy rain storm, and he publicly made a joke comparing rape to bad weather, having said: "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it!".

I then did a more extensive search for the exact words he had said.

His exact words were . . . . .

"Well, bad weather is like rape: if it's inevitable, you might as well relax and enjoy it!"



Yeah! This guy is a real asshat!!!

Now, I do enjoy watching a really good rain storm, watching the lightening and listening to the thunder. But I certainly don't enjoy rape, and I do not like hearing rape jokes!

When I make comments about Republicans, I do some follow-up research to back up what I have to say about these moronic fuck-tards!

Yeah! And these bed-wetting ignoramuses want to control our country???

There's not a dry pair of pants among them!

Oh! By the way!

Jerry Sandusky is another ASSHAT!!!



I'm happy that he's gone from Penn State to the State Pen!