Mr. Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator under Mr. Paterno, has been charged with sexually abusing eight boys across a 15-year period, and Mr. Paterno has been widely criticized for failing to involve the police when he learned of the allegation of the assault of the young boy in 2002.
Additionally, two top university officials ”” Gary Schultz, the senior vice president for finance and business, and Tim Curley, the athletic director ”” were charged with perjury and failure to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations, as required by state law.
Since Mr. Sandusky’s arrest Saturday, officials at Penn State ”” notably its president, Graham B. Spanier, and Mr. Paterno ”” have come under withering criticism for a failure to act adequately after learning, at different points over the years, that Mr. Sandusky might have been abusing children. Newspapers have called for their resignations; prosecutors have suggested their inaction led to more children being harmed by Mr. Sandusky; and students and faculty at the university have expressed a mix of disgust and confusion, and a hope that much of what prosecutors have charged is not true.
No comments about the Penn State situation? What a horrifying story this is. With two top officials charged with perjury and failure to report abuse, it’s clear that protecting the institution is a sin which extends beyond churches. This isn’t even the more familiar pattern of abuse of near-consenting age teens, as wrong as that is. This was a ten-year-old boy.
Based on what I’ve seen in the press thus far, I’m a bit surprised at the enthusiasm being shown for pushing Paterno out the window. It appears that he reported this to his superiors in a timely fashion. The problem comes with what happened after that.
Further reading compels me to alter my previously-expressed view. Coach Paterno’s report up the line did not convey the severity of what his assistant had witnessed and reported to him. Some children might have been saved if either the Assistant or the Coach had been more assertive early on and/or had gone directly to the police. Theirs was a narrow, bureaucratic response to a horrible crime. I respect much of what Paterno did for the program and for Penn State, but there is no getting around a complete failure that had innocent victims. He had to go.