After reading the Freeh report on the Penn State child molestation
case last year, I discovered that the evidence of a “cover-up” by three Penn
State administrators and football coach Joe Paterno amounted to two or three
pages worth of emails. We may presume that there were private discussions on handling
what assistant coach Mike McQueary reported seeing in a campus shower room that
were not recorded, but given the lack of evidence to judge what the accused
knew of the exact nature Jerry Sandusky’s “activities”—none of his victims
personally made an accusation against him until 2008—the Freeh report bases its
conclusions on broad assumptions, understandable bias, and the “benefit” of hindsight.
The report sought to put the worst possible spin on the administrators and
Paterno, and there was clearly no effort at giving them a fair and impartial
hearing. As for Sandusky, he has “defended” himself as being the “victim” of
“troubled” kids looking for attention; only he and his wife continue to believe
this.
The Paterno family, angered about the how the Freeh report
“unjustly” tarnished the late coach’s reputation, decided to hire the
Washington D.C. law firm of King & Spalding to conduct their own
“independent” report. This past weekend, their report, “The Rush to Injustice
regarding Joe Paterno” was released. It is a scathing condemnation of the Freeh
report and its influence on media reporting and NCAA sanctions against the
school. Of course, it is natural that the “politically correct” thing to do is
to insist that there was no “mitigating” factors in the way the Penn State Four
handled the information they received, that we in the same situation would have
acted differently. There is no doubt that in “hindsight” that is easy to say,
but it is clear that given what was known,
Paterno—rather than being the all-powerful, all-knowing omnipotence on
campus—seems to have been protected by an information cocoon, much the same way
Ronald Reagan was from the details of the Iran-Contra scandal. As for the Penn
State administrators, for right or wrong in their own minds, they apparently
loathed to stir-up a media hornet’s nest, depending on other parties (like the
Second Mile administrators) to “decide” for them what should be done based on
the little information they allowed themselves to be privy to.
Unlike the Freeh report, the King & Spalding report did
not rely on a literal or biased interpretation of the testimony that was presented
to the grand jury. Three “prominent experts”—former U.S. Attorney General Dick
Thornburgh, Jim Clemente, a “former FBI profiler and child molestation and
behavioral expert,” and Fred Berlin, a physician and psychologist at the Johns
Hopkins Hospital and School of Medicine—were consulted to examine and offer
their conclusions on Paterno’s role in the scandal. What they found was perhaps
predictably favorable to Paterno, at least in a legal sense given the current
dearth of information about what he knew and when. This may change, of course, during
the upcoming perjury trial of two of the administrators, although they would
have little to gain by throwing Paterno under the bus at this point.
The report gets to the point right-off: That the experts “each
carefully examined the July 12, 2012 report prepared by Louis Freeh, and have
each determined that the report is deeply flawed and that key conclusions
regarding Joe Paterno are unsubstantiated and unfair.” It makes the following
charges:
(1) Joe Paterno never
asked or told anyone not to investigate fully the allegations in 2001,
(2) Joe Paterno never
asked or told anyone, including Dr. Spanier and Messrs. Curley and Schultz, not
to report the 2001 incident, and
(3) Joe Paterno never
asked or told anyone not to discuss or to hide in any way the information
reported by Mr. McQueary. Joe Paterno reported the information to his
superior(s) pursuant to his understanding of University protocol and relied
upon them to investigate and report as appropriate.
Furthermore,
“Perhaps most
significantly, the findings in the Freeh Report about Mr. Paterno concerning
his alleged knowledge of the 1998 incident and purported concealment of the
2001 incident were not properly supported…This lack of evidence supporting the
Report’s most scathing findings and the serious flaws with respect to the
process of the Special Investigative Counsel’s investigation cause me (Thornburgh)
to conclude that the Report’s findings concerning Mr. Paterno are unjust and wrong.”
The King report further criticizes the Freeh report as
having “missed a critical opportunity to educate the public on the
identification of child sexual victimization, and instead used the platform
created by this scandal to sensationalize the blaming of Joe Paterno. The Freeh
report ignored decades of expert research and behavioral analysis regarding the
appropriate way to understand and investigate a child sexual victimization case…
Mr. Jim Clemente is one of the leading former FBI profilers of child sex
offenders, and himself a survivor of childhood sexual victimization. As Mr.
Clemente bluntly put it: ‘The SIC failed to properly factor the dynamics of
acquaintance child sexual victimization cases into their investigation.
Consequently, the SIC misinterpreted evidence and behavior and reached
erroneous conclusions. Any investigation will reach the wrong result by using
the wrong approach and by interpreting the facts through the wrong filter.’”
In examining what the accused knew of Sandusky’s activities,
the report’s “expert analysis” of Sandusky revealed a “skilled and masterful
manipulator, who deceived an entire community to obscure the signs of child
abuse, using a variety of proven techniques. Those techniques included: perpetuating
an image as a playful ‘nice guy’ who was a foster and adoptive parent with kids
around him at all hours in all types of capacities, leveraging his position as
a respected member of the community, and creating a children’s charity to
legitimize his credibility in interacting with kids…Expert analysis shows that
Jerry Sandusky fooled qualified child welfare professionals and law
enforcement, as well as laymen inexperienced and untrained in child sexual victimization
like Joe Paterno. Sandusky’s techniques as a pillar of the community created a
proven psychological and cognitive impediment for them to recognize the red flags
and other signs that Sandusky was a child molester. Joe Paterno himself knew
very little about Jerry Sandusky’s personal life and did not know private
details about Sandusky or his victims.
“For decades, Joe Paterno respected Sandusky’s talent as a coach
and professional colleague and recognized Sandusky’s widely-stated passion for
helping kids, but the Freeh report missed that they disliked each other
personally, had very little in common outside work, and did not interact much
if at all socially…Expert analysis shows that while signs of Jerry Sandusky’s
child molestation existed with the benefit of hindsight, at the time of the
2001 shower incident reported by graduate assistant Mike McQueary, information
was conveyed to Joe Paterno in terms that were too general and vague for him to
disregard decades of contrary experience with Sandusky and to conclude that
Sandusky was a child predator.”
The former FBI profiler Clemente concluded that Paterno
actions were like many people who are confronted with even the suggestion that
someone they thought they knew was engaged in an activity beyond their own
comprehension: ‘Given my 30 years of education, training and experience
working, evaluating and assessing child sex crimes investigations around the
world, it is my expert opinion that Paterno did not know, or even believe in
the possibility, that Sandusky was capable of sexually assaulting boys. At
worst, he believed that Sandusky was a touchy-feely guy who had boundary
issues. This fact is clear from his repeated statements before he died…
“[Paterno] did what he believed was reasonable and necessary
to address the situation based on his understanding of the facts, and his
position at the time. Paterno did what most people who cared about children
would have done in the same situation. More than a decade later, and in
hindsight, Paterno showed his concern for the victims when he stated he,
‘wished [he] had done more…
“Paterno, like everyone else who knew Sandusky, simply fell
victim to effective ‘grooming.’ [Grooming is a dynamic process of seemingly
innocent, positive public behaviors by the offender, aimed at gaining the trust
of the targeted child, parents and the community.] As an expert behavioral analyst
and based on my review of the evidence, Paterno did not believe that the
information he received from McQueary amounted to Sandusky being a predatory
child sex offender.”
Clemente describes a man who “like many others, was fooled
by Sandusky’s nice-guy, goofy image. In Mr. Clemente’s expert judgment as an
FBI profiler who specializes in child sexual victimization investigations, Joe
Paterno was not equipped to process and recognize a preferential ‘nice-guy’
child molester under the circumstances of this case. Mr. Clemente analyzed the
2001 report of a Sandusky shower incident from graduate assistant, Mike
McQueary, to Joe Paterno. Mr. Clemente concluded that the report was couched in
too vague and general terms for Joe Paterno, as a 72-year-old football coach
who was untrained in the complicated, counterintuitive dynamics of child sexual
victimization and who came from a traditional background where even consensual
sex was not discussed, to conclude that Sandusky was a child molester…“Given my
30 years of education, training and experience working, evaluating and
assessing child sex crimes investigations around the world, it is my expert
opinion that Paterno did not know, or even believe in the possibility, that
Sandusky was capable of sexually assaulting boys. At worst, he believed that
Sandusky was a touchy-feely guy who had boundary issues. This fact is clear
from his repeated statements before he died.”
There was an assumption by Freeh and the media that Paterno
and Sandusky were “friends,” and this was a motive to “protect” Sandusky.” But
the King report found that while the two coaches respected each other, they
were not friends and had “clashed” for years. According to a 2012 biography of
Paterno by Joe Posnanski, “The two men despised each other from the start. This
was well-known among those who knew Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky, but at the
end it seemed like nobody wanted to mention it. The news reports would assume
they were the best of friends or, at the very least, colleagues who respected each
other. . .Sandusky, in the words of Penn State’s marketing guru and many
others, was ‘a knucklehead.’ He liked practical jokes and messing around,
knocking a guy’s hat off his head, making prank calls, sneaking up behind
people to startle them. . . At one of the first practices before the season,
Sandusky was supposed to be on the field but was instead joking around with
some players. . . Later, when Paterno watched film of the practice, he saw
Sandusky running onto the field waving his arms like a bird and shouting, ‘The
breakdown coach is on the way! The breakdown coach was on the way!’ It was
ridiculous. Paterno called in Sandusky, screamed at him at length, called him a
complete goofball. . . Over time, for all of their personal differences, Paterno
did come to admire Sandusky’s coaching on the field. . . When he was focused,
Sandusky was a force of nature around the players; he connected to them in ways
Paterno never could. He joked with them, hugged them, taunted them, and often
inspired them. The players, most of them, loved him for that. . . He was like a
big brother teasing them, pushing them, grabbing them, reminding them that they
could be great.”
Thus it was “easy” for Penn State officials to believe
Sandusky’s explanation that he was just “horsing around” with the kids.
The King report pointed out that Paterno and the Penn State
administrators were not the only people who made a mistake in their
interpretation of Sandusky’s activities. “Between 1998 and 2001 alone, the
following trained experts were fooled by Sandusky’s deceptions: a detective, a
police officer, a caseworker for the Department of Public Welfare, a caseworker
for the Centre County Children and Youth Services, an outside counselor who did
contract work for Children and Youth Services, and apparently everyone at a
kids charity, The Second Mile, including its executive director, Jack
Raykovitz, who is a licensed psychologist.”
Furthermore, the fact that Sandusky was able to adopt six children demonstrated
that he “was evaluated by state officials and a Pennsylvania judge for fitness
to adopt; and six times Sandusky passed that expert scrutiny.”
The report noted that during the years that Sandusky was
victimizing boys, none had come forward with an allegation until 2008. It was
also noted that the Freeh report supplied not a single written communication
from Paterno “reflecting any knowledge of Sandusky and sexual misconduct
allegations in 1998. In the 2001 incident reported to him by McQueary, the
report claims although McQueary’s story didn’t make sense to Paterno—McQueary
himself testified he was vague about details, “out of respect” for the
75-year-old Joe Paterno, and due to his
own embarrassment, “did not provide him with specific and graphic details of
the 2001 incident.” However, because of the emotional state he was, Paterno did
feel obligated to report the incident to his superiors.
The report did not address the culpability of or defend former
Penn State president Graham Spanier, athletic director Timothy Curley and senior
vice president Gary Schultz, although it was suggested that they were as likely
fooled by Sandusky’s “goofy” and “nice guy” persona as they suggested Paterno
was. On the other hand, they likely allowed themselves to be fooled, because the
information they had—even from McQueary to them or even in his grand jury
testimony—did bring up the subject of sodomy. Male-on-male pedophilia—particularly
when it involves sodomy which was at one time was considered not only a
criminal offense in this country, but a capital offense in many parts of Europe;
as late as 1835 two Englishmen were hanged for “buggery.” Perhaps the Penn
State administrators—and certainly the devout Roman Catholic Paterno—could not
imagine something that was so far beyond their comprehension, that they clung
to any rationalization to the contrary; it is certainly easy to condemn them
for not wanting to know more than the facts as were presented to them.
Does the King report exonerate Joe Paterno, who by all
accounts was a person who had been known for his upstanding moral character? The
Freeh report, it is true, overturns this impression—but in a way that seems more
self-congratulatory and self-righteous than based on the knowable facts. Given the state of the evidence, it does
provide ample proof that it is unlikely that it would be sufficient to convict
Paterno of being an accessory to a cover-up. After all, he was obligated to and
did contact his superiors when he was informed by McQueary admittedly vague
report. Should he have simply gone to the police—who had declined to cite
Sandusky in 1998? It is easy enough to say that he should have; but then again,
without anything other than an emotional state to go on, it was only natural to
“pass the buck” to his superiors who would have had a better understanding of
how to proceed with a potentially explosive accusation.
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