Piling on at Penn State - It's About Time

Now that the courts have ruled that three Penn State officials will have to face trial over the Sandusky child molestation case we may be able to set this sad state of affairs behind us.

Last week Pennsylvania state prosecutors called ex-President Graham Spanier, former vice president Gary Schultz, and ex-athletic director Tim Curley to a hearing to see if there was sufficient evidence to bring all three to trial. It might have been four, had Joe Paterno not passed away months after the allegations against Jerry Sandusky led to his firing as Penn State’s vaunted football coach.

What Sandusky did notwithstanding, those three officials certainly allowed him to continue grooming children through his non-profit charity, The Second Mile. How Sandusky went about his business was to pinpoint potential victims and then lavish gifts and visits to Penn State’s football team. He would groom them, and at some point cross the line and molest them. All of that is in the record and Jerry is serving 30 to 60 years; essentially a life sentence for a man in his 60s.

But he wasn’t the only problem.

At some level, Penn State, through its officials, knew about the Sandusky problem. They chose simply to try to cover it up.

When Mike McQueary notified Joe Paterno about what he saw Sandusky doing with a boy in the showers, it should have started the whole investigation. Paterno should have notified the three stooges – Spanier, Schultz, and Curley – and then contacted the state police. No ifs ands or buts about it.

There was reason to be suspicious even before McQueary reported the incident in 2001 that led to Sandusky’s trial and conviction. During the ‘90s, suspicions were raised about Sandusky and a kid that he brought to a bowl game in Texas. That incident never resulted in charges and everyone sort of forgot about it and went about their business.

But someone should have been suspicious about Sandusky. Even under the guise of the great humanitarian, and what better disguise is there for a pederast other than being a priest, his actions should have sent off a hundred red flags. Maybe I’m just a skeptic, but when a grown man is actively involved with so many young boys it just seems weird to me.

So why wasn’t Sandusky brought up on charges way back when? Well, if you ask the prosecution, it was to shelter the school and preserve the football team’s image. And in truth, that seems about right.

But their decision not to throw Sandusky under the bus was a bad one. There is little question that all three, and Paterno, were in on the final decision to suggest to Sandusky that he not bring any boys around campus anymore. They pinned their hopes on Sandusky stopping his bad behavior, but anyone who has a brain knows that sex offenders rarely stop being sex offenders just because you ask them politely.

Needless to say, Sandusky continued to do his thing and that left the school negligent. The question that the court has to decide against these three is whether or not they interfered with the investigation and whether or not they acted together to cover up the crimes.

They, of course, have pleaded not guilty. What else are you going to plead under those circumstances? Proving they acted in concert can be pretty difficult, except that there is the proverbial “smoking gun” or in this case a smoking email.

During the email exchanges between these men over this problem, it became apparent that they were leaning toward giving Sandusky a warning and telling him to stop bringing kids on campus. They felt that would be sufficient to handle the matter, and in the email basically stated that the only way it could come back on them was if Sandusky failed to follow through on his part. Needless to say, Sandusky continued business as usual and the fall out lands squarely in the three stooges’ laps. They all deserve jail time. What they did was allow a suspected predator to continue molesting children for a decade. How many of those boys could they have saved? No one’s counting, but there is little question that they need to be brought up on charges and held accountable for their inactions.