I recently encountered a story on the Internet about this woman in Texas who killed her infant son, broke open his skull and ate part of his brain. It’s odd, but this happened a few years ago and I don’t remember ever hearing anything about this on CNN, let alone the local media. This kind of thing happens all the time in Texas, where mothers engage in drowning, hanging, stabbing and stoning to death their children at a remarkable rate. The latest incident was a Texas woman going all the way to Maine to kill her child, and dumping the unfortunate on the side of the road. To me, this qualifies as an “epidemic,” but for the most part it is relegated to the “believe it or not” section of news coverage. After all, these people are just ordinary folk, and who cares about what they do; some of them even get off for “reasons of insanity.”
On the other hand, what is going on in State College, Pennsylvania is a ratings “winner.” 85-year-old Penn State football coach Joe Paterno has been pounded mercilessly by the media by what he didn’t do to prevent his former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, from engaging in sodomy with young boys under his “care” at a youth organization known as “The Second Mile,” which allegedly provided support for “troubled” boys from “dysfunctional” homes. Paterno’s football program had never been tainted by any allegation of cheating or illegal activity in over forty years, but now Paterno’s life has come crashing down like the World Trade Center. He has been fired as coach, along with the president of the university. Although police say that he is not guilty of a crime technically by merely informing his superiors in regard to the one incident he had knowledge of, he “should have done more”—as is the belief of nearly everyone.
Paterno’s legacy will be forever stained by this episode. But to what extent should it be? And is he really the one, outside of Sandusky, who is most culpable?
I read the grand jury report, and there was no way I could feel anything but revulsion when I was finished. It was almost impossible to believe that a 60-year-old man could actually engage in such acts with 10-year-olds. And then I thought if I found this hard to wrap my mind around, how could Paterno, a conservative Catholic of Italian extraction, understand how someone he knew and worked with for decades could do such things? Even to be suspected of doing such things should be sufficiently mortifying to avoid engaging in them. Paterno stated that he had been “fooled” by Sandusky, which might suggest that he was in denial about what was going on; it wasn’t real. Not by anyone connected to him.
Let’s consider another angle to the story. I wonder if people remember Gary Ridgway. Yes, he was the Green River Killer. He was a suspect as early as 1984, even 1983, when he “officially” began his killing spree; I say officially because there were police reports even earlier from prostitutes who claimed that Ridgway had assaulted them. Dave Reichert was the lead detective on the case, but it was his colleagues who wanted to focus on Ridgway; Reichert did not seriously consider him suspect, choosing to go off on tangents. Ridgway was not arrested until 2001, after dozens of women were felled by his hand. Reichert was treated as a celebrity and a hero, and was even elected to Congress. Yet people choose not to remember that Ridgway could have been stopped years ago if Reichert had focused on him instead of his fantasies.
And so it is with the Sandusky case. There has been much talk about how Paterno and school officials did not contact police after the 2002 incident, which is the principle basis of Paterno’s troubles. The problem is that local police had knowledge of at least one prior complaint, and along with prosecutors did nothing. In 1998, “Victim 6” in the grand jury report said that after working out in a weight room and then wrestling, Sandusky suggested that they take a shower, in the course of which Sandusky “bear hugged” him. When the boy returned home, his mother was concerned about even the idea that Sandusky would be showering alone with her son, and called campus police. A Detective Ronald Schreffler testified that he and another detective were allowed to eavesdrop on two exchanges the mother had with Sandusky in her home. Sandusky admitted to showering with the boy, and when he tells her that he won’t promise not to do it again, she tells him she will not allow her son to be with him again. Sandusky tells her ''I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won't get it from you. I wish I were dead.''
Was this sufficient to bring charges against Sandusky? It should have been, but that would not be the case. An investigator with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Jerry Lauro, testified that he and Schreffler interviewed Sandusky, who admitted to showering with “Victim 6,” and acknowledging that what he did was wrong. Apparently he also said that he would not do this again, because the investigation was closed after the county district attorney, Ray Gricar, decided not to press charges against Sandusky. As we now know, Sandusky did not take advantage of his own “second chance,” and continued to abuse the boys in his “care.” We should also consider the fact that officials at “The Second Mile” were also informed of the allegations against Sandusky. They more than anyone else should have had some clue that something amiss was going on, but they also did nothing.
So local law enforcement was hardly the “innocent” party in all of this. They could have stopped it at least four years before Paterno presumably became aware of what was going on. Of course, this is also an assumption; Sandusky was still a coach at that time, and are we to believe Paterno did not know of the investigation? Perhaps police didn’t want to bother him with such a potentially explosive charge, especially if they were “unfounded.” But Sandusky resigned as coach in 1999, after Paterno had informed him that he would not allow Sandusky to succeed him as coach. Meaning what? That Paterno had some awareness that Sandusky had the potential to bring discredit on the program he had built? Perhaps, but that would also mean that we would have to question Paterno’s sincerity when he claims that he was fooled by Sandusky’s own denials.
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