Mike Wise
Columnist
If Jerry Sandusky allegations are true, Penn State and Joe Paterno deserve part of the blame
AP - In this photo provided by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, former Penn State football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, center, is placed in a police car in Bellefonte, Pa.
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By Mike Wise, Saturday, November 5, 8:53 PM
After what allegedly happened to
“Victim 2,” a boy estimated to be 10 years old, in the same room where Penn State football players shower, it’s near impossible to keep reading the grand jury’s report. By “Victim 8,” numbness turns to anger.
You want to scream at the traumatized graduate assistant coach in 2002 and janitor in 2000 who saw and didn’t stop it, according to the report released by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office. You want to grab hold of and shake those who reported the crime only to their superiors, washed their hands of responsibility and then let it go, treating a kid’s life as if it were a football that slipped through their hands.
Wise: If allegations are true, Penn State and Joe Paterno deserve blame
Grand jury report (Caution: Contains graphic descriptions)
Former Penn State assistant accused
Most of all, you want to have an audience with one of sports’ most endearing icons, Joe Paterno, Happy Valley’s homespun saint, and ask Joe Pa, repeatedly, “While you were regaling everyone with sappy tales about meeting your wife 50 years ago over ice cream at the local creamery in State College, Pa., did you have any idea what your longtime defensive coordinator was doing in the company of young boys?”
If the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office is to be taken at its word — if the sad, sickening details of alleged sexual abuse of young boys by Jerry Sandusky are true — a once-immaculate program thought of as beyond reproach is now close to beyond redemption.
Paterno wasn’t charged, but if Sandusky is guilty he would be guilty — just as Penn State’s athletic director and a university vice president, who were charged with perjury and failure to report suspected child abuse on Saturday, would be guilty.
They would all be party to a worse crime than any crooked, pay-for-play booster at Miami, Ohio State or even SMU ever committed: guilty of protecting a program before a child.
You can’t read the 23-page grand jury report and come to any other conclusion; Penn State football and its pristine reputation apparently superseded the alleged sexual assault of a young boy — perhaps as many as
eight young boys — over 15 years by Sandusky.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/if-jerry-sandusky-allegations-are-true-penn-state-and-joe-paterno-deserve/2011/11/05/gIQAYIucqM_story.html
