Avoid running at all times.-S. Paige Posted: January 05, 2012 at 11:12 AM (#4029462)

GtwMA, these are all fair points, and I do admit that I probably don't have the proper perspective. The hardest thing for me to reconcile is Paterno's response, but then again this is based on a superficial knowledge of his work and position in the school. He works directly with young men, he's supposedly this great leader, he's the leader of the football program which is the major moneymaker and central focus in Happy Valley, and yet his response seems so weak.

DINGDINGDINGDING

I understand that all of this is complicated by the taboo nature of the crime (heck, the DA even allowed Paterno not to get into graphic detail during his testimony, seemingly out of respect for the elder), but if he's a leader, if he's fundamentally decent as Poz states, how does he not use his power to protect young people?[/quote]

because that "fundamental decency" image became a good part of what made him powerful - that IMAGE - and he wasn't willing to sacrifice that over some nothing kid.

at this point, learning what i have learned about "happy" valley, i can't be convinced that paterno had nooooooo idea about sandusky's pedophilia history. and i can't be convinced that paterno's ACTUAL power wasn't greater than curley, schultz, univ prez all combined. paterno had heard ALL about sandusky in 98, which is why sandusky voluntarily retired. paterno at THAT point certainly had the power to keep sandusky away from the university and i am positive he had the power to do just about anything at all with sandusky - keeping him away from 10 year old boys. making him "retire" from the charity, telling him he couldn't go in schools, etc. and he didn't because truth is he didn't care. or maybe i should say that he wasn't about to let some 10 year old a**holes stand in his way of being proclaimed a saint.

as far as mcqueary and how/when he told people - he sounds like a 10 year old kid who is nervous about telling what someone in authority was doing. afraid. afraid they wouldn't believe him. afraid they would PUNISH him for telling. yeah, i know he was over 20. and supposed to be an "adult" - but i think that some people are judging him too harshly. because i know how easy it is to suddenly feel like a 10 year old around your parents - and you guys should know it too.

i know, in fact, about a kid, around age 10, who didn't tell his mom that an adult was abusing one of his friends because he was afraid his mom wouldn't let them be friends any more and she would be mad. i know another kid who was doing something with a group of kids and one of the adult leaders was saying, um, inappropriate things and "hugging" him and he didn't want to tell his mama because he was afraid it would get him either kicked out of the group for causing trouble or his mom wouldn't let him be in the group.

he sounds like a girl i know who was 13 when she went to a party - she had told her mom that it was a bunch of 13 year olds and that the mom would be there too. there were older boys there, drugs and alcohol. she was afraid to call her mother because she was afraid her mother would be mad at HER and wouldn't let her go to any more parties. bad things happened to the girl, who was afraid to tell her mother about THAT. when mother finally DID find out, mother was freaked, kept saying why WHY didn't you call me /tell me, i've told you to so many times, WHY didn't you trust me???

and, by the way, it is normal for kids to tell a story differently to different people - it's time to get suspiscious when the kid says the exact same thing to different people. remember that the kids are afraid that IT IS THEIR FAULT or that THE KID themself will be the one in trouble. LIke "victim 1" - and don't think THAT doesn't happen.

it isn't really fair to compare what happened with mcqueary to what would have happened if one of us adults, a TOTAL stranger, would have done.

and something other,
i understand what you are saying about males and a community shower, but you were not "horsing around" or "wrestling" naked with other children who just happened to be showering off at the same time. and how many under 12 kids were just dropped off at those pools with no responsible adult nearby?

and no, you can't just keep your kidz chained to you 24/7 unless you are some kind of tigermother person who doesn't want his/her kids to ever grow up or become independent or learn to think. you can't protect your kids from everything bad for the rest of their life. and one of the hardest things to deal with is when your kid doesn't want to/ is afraid to tell you about something bad because they are thinking about the situation LIKE A KID.

So yeah, I botched the story about the school... I was going by a recollection of reading early on that the officials at the school were the only ones to report it. So basically, no one who knew what was going on went to the proper authorities for this sort of thing, except for one of the victims' moms.

i see the edit comment button doesn't work - sorry

and agree with ray about the "moral" duty to report.

i guess the self - justifying is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few 10 year old butts of unwanted unloved boys

S Paige: I think all their responses are pretty difficult to understand, for sure. At the time Mike's father, Dranov, Paterno, and possibly Curley and Schultz (if Paterno told them that immediate Sunday) all first hear this report it was anywhere from just hours to less than 48 hours after Mike saw it. How do you not think about that child and where he may be and whether Sandusky may be trying to do something even worse than Mike reports to protect himself? And, so far, I don't believe that victim has ever been identified and found. So, I absolutely share your feelings and the difficulty in reconciling it, not just about Paterno.

What I can guess is that Paterno testifies that he absolutely trusts Curley to handle the matter. Curley played football for him. Paterno helped promote him for the AD position. This is someone that he has known for a long, long time, and been through a lot of issues with and feels he will do the right thing. Paterno often complains about how complex the NCAA rules have become and seems to go more with instincts about right and wrong. And this is an area where he knows there are very specific rules that probably need to be followed and he's not familiar with them. Sandusky is formally not supervised by Paterno. He's not even an employee, being in that limbo of faculty emeritus. So, maybe Paterno feels the best path is to call on the people he thinks have the expertise to handle the situation.

I certainly don't think that explains all the decisions, and it's very much just idle speculation on my part to try to make some sense out of things. I've tried to imagine myself in a similar situation--a graduate assistant tells me something like this about an emeritus faculty member. I would certainly be reaching out to my HR rep and others to understand what were the appropriate steps I should take, because it's not the everyday situation where I think I know what to do.

Agnes,

That is a very nuanced response, but I still go back to what I said earlier and bbc's DINGDINGDING repeated. You are a faculty member, presumably a respected one. But this was JOE PATERNO. There are many reasons Paterno might have done what he did and not done what he didn't do, but I still see him as being in a position where he could have, easily, pushed harder on this, simply based on who he is. He didn't. If you feel that is not fair to Paterno, I am ready to listen to a rebuttal. You are there at PSU, after all.

I just skimmed the testimony of both Schultz and Curley, and I didn't see in there any place where either of them was asked whether they knew of the mandatory reporting law in PA. Perhaps I missed it, but it seems like an obvious question to ask.

Not that that would change anything as far as criminal responsibility goes, since generally ignorance of the law is no excuse; I was just trying to find out specifically whether they claimed to be aware of the law.

What's striking is that Curley and Schultz are both asked if they made any attempt to follow up and find who the boy was. "No."

Of course, they both basically convey that they thought whatever was being reported to them by McQueary/Paterno was no big deal; inappropriate but not criminal. As the lawyers questioning them tried to get at, it doesn't really make much sense that a report of inappropriate conduct in the shower between a naked man and a naked boy wouldn't raise any red flags that there was unlawful sexual conduct going on, and it doesn't really make much sense that Paterno coming to them with a report of this nature on a Sunday would be no big deal, and it doesn't really make much sense that the need to speak to Sandusky and take his locker room keys away and prohibit him from bringing young boys on the campus would be no big deal, and it doesn't really make much sense that the need to inform the director of Second Mile would be no big deal... but there you have it.

I'm definitely speaking outside my direct experience, Ray, but of all those individuals, I would guess that Curley may have been expected to be the most knowledgeable, primarily because of the many sports camps that are run during the summers. Schultz oversaw multiple business operations (basically ALL non-academic units), not just police. While I imagine some of these issues may have come up (for instance, in the child care centers), I think with such broad responsibilities, it's possible for someone to not have the detailed knowledge that you might expect from, say an elementary school principal. I think Spanier and Paterno, as well, could not have been familiar in detail with mandatory reporting laws. None of them are graduates from a College of Education where this might have been taught.

In addition, Pennsylvania mandatory reporting law is very weak. If I remember what I read and was told, until 2007 the law only required reporting from individuals in certain occupations who had a direct report of knowledge from a child under their care (the amendment in 2007, I believe, extended the requirement to supervisors who received a report from someone that had direct knowledge). The law specifies certain people by training who have to report, particularly in health care and in K-12 education, but is quite vague about others and says nothing about university faculty or administrators. So, even if they were aware of this, it's not clear that anyone here had even a legal requirement to report under PA law. The child was not under their care, and only McQueary had a direct report and in 2002 the requirement for mandatory reporting by a supervisor in a higher education setting who received McQueary's report didn't even exist. The weaknesses in the law, I think, also represent weaknesses in training in the state, too. If I have some time, I can check back on my recollections there, since it's been several weeks since I read and spoke with others about that. I may have some of the details there wrong.

And, I don't disagree at all about the moral duty, though I may still be more at the point where I am trying to make sense of how people who seemed to me to be reasonably good could fail in such a profound way.

Curley and Schultz both seemed to be of the mindset, in their testimony, that there was a lot of room between "inappropriate conduct in the shower" and "sexual in nature." I just am not seeing any room at all there, let alone such a clear distinction that the former should not have absolutely suggested the latter and thus the incident should have been specifically investigated. And they DID NOT investigate it or have anyone else do so. Sandusky was merely "spoken to," and there's no real indication that he was even asked directly just what in the hell had occurred.

Robin, I don't think I would disagree with your main points, except to say that I think the conclusion that "He didn't" may be premature. We know from McQueary's testimony that Paterno approached him a few times after the incident to ask whether he was OK with how the incident was being handled. There are no questions on record regarding whether Paterno pressed Curley or Schultz for more information or further efforts to do something. And, while I know people think JoePa can just snap his fingers and make anything happen, I think he also recognizes when he's out of his depth. If McQueary tells him he's not bothered with the situation and Curley/Schultz/Spanier tell him they looked into it, Mike misinterpreted what he saw, and they've restricted Sandusky's access and spoken to Second Mile to prevent any similar misunderstandings--well, I can see him as feeling that the person who actually saw it and the person he most trusts to look into it have handled it.

We do know that Paterno didn't notify any authority other than Schultz.
We do know he didn't do anything that Saturday to identify, find, rescue that kid.
It doesn't appear that he didn't anything subsequently to find out about the kid(and as Ray notes, and I agree, that just seems like an incredible failure on everyone's part--not a single person appears to have tried to identify and find him).

I agree that there is no getting around some of those moral failings, and I just try to understand how that may have happened, trying to judge the actions and not the individuals. I've never been in the situation they faced; I know of plenty others who failed in such situations; I know plenty of ways I fail, too. Judging them is for the courts and whatever higher power they believe in. And, on other issues, I try to wait and see what new information will come to help me with that understanding.

and, if all yall don't mind, one little personal story about abuse from a person in power

when i was younger, i was hired to answer phones at a small company. i noticed that almost all the other employees are women, fairly young. no one beautiful or really HOTTTTT. my second day of work, on my break, i'm getting some coffee and this woman stands next to me and says - you're gonna meet the boss tomorrow. he'll call you into his office. i asked why he would do that with a receptionist - i mean, like he would even notice i existed. she said - he calls ALL new employees into his office, talk to them.

i looked at her. she looked at me - you know, like a girl does when she thinks there is gonna be some new grrrl who is gonna try to take her boyfriend away. i noticed that day that whole LOT of other women were sizing me up, too. it's not like i'd be taking their JOBS away, so i figger it's that i'm the new cow in the herd.

i could have quit right then, but it was a nice clean office, an easy job. i thought maybe i could handle it so the boss would stay away from me and i could keep the job. so he calls me into the office the next day, sez, tell me a little about yourself. he's one of those guys who looks at you with a smile so you think he likes you personally - he sounds generous, helpful, kindly. he ain't foolin ME none. He asks me, finally, if i'm willing to do what it takes, sometimes that is staying late. i told him i can't because my brother the cop be picking me up. i smile at the boss - brother is kind of overprotective, you know how big brothers are about their baby sisters i tell him. i smile at him with my big eyes.

boss smiles at me but eyes have lost their friendliness. sure he sez, i got a baby sister myself.

it's later on, i go to the break room (the smoking room). most of the women who work here smoke. a lot. another woman is there, she asks me how did it go with the boss. they ALL know. they all "work late" - i told her - i don't think he liked me. why do you stay here? the pay is good she sez. she looks a little ashamed, but more than a little angry too. the - dontchu go thinkin you bettern us - look women give each other when we are supposed to agree to be dominated by some male - i think of paul saying that females must cover our heads in church - because we are something dirty that needs to be not seen and not heard. and that women go along with this and instead of being happy if any one woman sez - no, we are just as much human beings as the men here are you are a false prophet, they turn on the woman who stands up to disrespect. (kind of like the counselor and the principal with Victim 1/his mom)

i get fired 2 days later - too many typing mistakes in the phone messages. spelling mistakes, not phone number mistakes. i had told my mama about this, told her my plan. she said i'd be gone in a week. told me she knew ALL about that kind of man. he picks women who are too afraid to do anything about it - they need the job, they need the compliments, they spend their time fighting the other women instead of him, they are easy victims for a man who gets off on intimidating women. it's why there are not beautiful or HOTTTTT women - much MUCH tougher to intimidate and they already have better jobs and are getting bigger, uh, bonuses.

me, i'm shy, i don't talk much, but i figger if i was gonna be a ho, it wouldn't be for a dollar an hour over minimum wage. and he!!! would freeze before i would EVER agree to be a cow in a herd - or a groupie. what i don't guess i'll ever understand is the attitute that the powerful have some RIGHT to treat others like dirt and anyone who objects is just causing trouble for everyone including the powerless/abused. and of course, the first one who objects usually pays BIG time for daring to object.

one of the reasons i actually have respect for mcqueary having the guts to even tell his dad, let alone repeat his story, scared as he must have been...

Robin, I don't think I would disagree with your main points, except to say that I think the conclusion that "He didn't" may be premature. We know from McQueary's testimony that Paterno approached him a few times after the incident to ask whether he was OK with how the incident was being handled. There are no questions on record regarding whether Paterno pressed Curley or Schultz for more information or further efforts to do something. And, while I know people think JoePa can just snap his fingers and make anything happen, I think he also recognizes when he's out of his depth. If McQueary tells him he's not bothered with the situation and Curley/Schultz/Spanier tell him they looked into it, Mike misinterpreted what he saw, and they've restricted Sandusky's access and spoken to Second Mile to prevent any similar misunderstandings--well, I can see him as feeling that the person who actually saw it and the person he most trusts to look into it have handled it.

Given McQueary's report as testified to by Paterno, and the fact that Paterno testified to McQueary being very upset, and the fact that McQueary came to him on a Saturday which had never been done before, I think it was incumbent on Paterno to say to them "What happened? Is this being investigated? Did you call the authorities? No? Well then I'm going to do that."

The "out of his depth" thing doesn't work, because everyone can pick up the phone and call the police.

i know, in fact, about a kid, around age 10, who didn't tell his mom that an adult was abusing one of his friends because he was afraid his mom wouldn't let them be friends any more and she would be mad. i know another kid who was doing something with a group of kids and one of the adult leaders was saying, um, inappropriate things and "hugging" him and he didn't want to tell his mama because he was afraid it would get him either kicked out of the group for causing trouble or his mom wouldn't let him be in the group.

he sounds like a girl i know who was 13 when she went to a party - she had told her mom that it was a bunch of 13 year olds and that the mom would be there too. there were older boys there, drugs and alcohol. she was afraid to call her mother because she was afraid her mother would be mad at HER and wouldn't let her go to any more parties. bad things happened to the girl, who was afraid to tell her mother about THAT. when mother finally DID find out, mother was freaked, kept saying why WHY didn't you call me /tell me, i've told you to so many times, WHY didn't you trust me???

This is EXACTLY the sort of thing I was talking about, CFB.

Lisa, thank you for your posts.

ray

anyone CAN pick up the phone and call the police, true. but you would have a very VERY hard time doing it anonymously. and if you didn't, the police would have YOUR name as the one who reported. and you could be sure that the cops had NO paterno worshippers, like HOW? you have no reason to worry that cops wouldn't turn on you like WHY? you KNOW what "happy" valley is like seeing as how you have lived/worked there your whole LIFE.

have YOU ever been, um, interrogated (ahem) by cops - especially when you have every reason to think they are, uh, less than sympathetic to YOU? do you REALLY think they would keep your name out of anything if they were not extremely sympathetic to you, and then even if they were, they could still use it to force you into doing what they want.

let's suppose - let's just suppose, that in your big law firm, they have a policy about ANY sexual misconduct has to be reported to HR and ONLY to HR and not to the police. let's suppose you stay late to work and you see the Big Boss' right hand man, who, by the way, has been one of your biggest mentors, naked in a shower with a young boy. let's suppose there are no cameras in your cell phone and for some reason, this man knows how to get the child in and out of the building without being caught on camera. so you can't PROVE it. and just for fun, let's suppose the head of HR is big boss' wife/mistress/best friend 100% loyal to the Boss.


tell me what YOU would do. let's suppose you are Good Little Boy and you trot off to HR in the morning and she says - you've done a good thing. we'll take care of it. and you notice that 2 weeks have gone by and no cop, no CPS people have talked to you. NOW what are you gonna do? you even figure out how to call cops anonymously, they trot in, talk to the guy, talk to HR, they gonna KNOW it was you didn't keep his trap SHUT. you don't even know who the kid is, they can't investigate THAT.

let's suppose you decide to bypass HR and call the cops on your own. you gonna give your real name? you gonna get, uh, in trouble or fired for disobeying rules. you gonna do it anonymously HOW? if you call from work, you'd have to do it from someone else's phone where you weren't seen. or you got another idea? they even GOT pay phones in manhattan any more?

how do YOU plan to follow up on any of this without committing career suicide? are you gonna do this for some nameless faceless kid? are YOU gonna stand up to serious power?

anyone CAN pick up the phone and call the police, true. but you would have a very VERY hard time doing it anonymously

I think a lot of what you say is right bbc, but I'm skeptical about this.

In an office, after hours, you could walk into any conference room, or anyone's cube or office and use the phone. How are the cops going to link that to you?

Well, Ray, we don't know that Paterno didn't ask those questions. He was never asked about that. Curley was never asked about follow-up by Paterno, although he briefly says he reported back to Paterno what was being done. Schultz was never asked about follow-up by Paterno. Schultz was seen by Paterno and McQueary as "the authorities", since the campus cops have jurisdiction over the Lasch Building. And they both had reported it to him. So, suppose the content of Curley's response back to Paterno was that he and Gary investigated, could not confirm Mike's report or found that it was inaccurate, but just to be sure, they are taking the following steps, etc.

And this is not Tim Curley, some guy you never heard of until 2 months ago. It's Tim Curley, an individual you've known and worked with for decades, the person you think you can trust the most to look into this situation. Think of the person you most trust at your workplace. Think of that person reassuring you that they've done their best to look into this situation.

Maybe you can honestly say that you are 100% sure that you would ignore that relationship and that trust and pick up the phone. I can't.

In an office, after hours, you could walk into any conference room, or anyone's cube or office and use the phone. How are the cops going to link that to you?

I'm sort of amazed that folks think that if McQueary makes that call anonymously, the police (who have known Jerry Sandusky for DECADES) are going to treat it as anything other than a crank call. Oh, sure, the police are certainly (I would hope!) obligated to look into it, but what will that entail? I'd imagine it goes something like: flatfoot wanders over to locker room, finds Jerry, shoots bull with him for a bit, maybe even chats a bit with a shy little kid who is involved in a sports camp -- you know, asks him if Coach is teaching him all about football and life, gets a "yeah" back, smiles, maybe tousles the kids hair -- and then walks out the door. McQueary knows this is what will happen and it isn't like Sandusky won't figure out who made the call, so....what's the point? If he's going to call the police, he needs to give his name, but I'm not sure things turn out any differently. Sure, the police will be obligated to do more, but...as has been noted by many before, the core hope of most of the people peripherally involved here was for there to be "nothing to see" here. Abuse cases are perfect for this type of examination, because except for those times at which something is actively happening, there generally IS "nothing to see" from the perspective of an outsider. So, yes, McQueary still SHOULD have called the cops, but I can at least understand (and strongly sympathize with) one possible line of reasoning by which no anonymous call was made.

Also...to go back to a few questions about how Universities run, from earlier in the thread:

1. The President's job is NOT, as has been proposed, to protect the U. Rather, the job is all about raising money and being (externally) important so as to raise the prestige of the U...neither of those require knowledge about reporting laws. Heck, most University Presidents feel dirty if they have to come in contact with the faculty...can't imagine them caring much about contact with local kids.

2. While our athletic camps are "run" by the athletic department, they are coordinated by the sports information and public relations folks within the athletic department, and largely administered by the athletic training staff. Sure, coaches are there, but they show up for their allotted times, as given to them by the SID/PR folks. Thus, I actually would expect that the Head AT would know more about the rules than the AD...based on my interactions, I'm almost certain this is true here. (Doesn't sounds like the ATs were ever involved in this process, however.)

3. Last, not same level of problem, but one of my PhD students was working in a colleague's lab for a chunk of his research and started coming to me because he had been informed by my colleague that all of his publications could NOT go out with his name as 1st author because they did not represent 100% independent research (WTF does THAT mean?), but that --- instead --- my colleague's name had to go in the 1st author position so that everyone would know he (the faculty member) had done this work...that had been implemented, conducted, analyzed and written by my student. It took me TWO MONTHS to convince my student we needed to have a confrontation with the faculty member about this, and that, even then, the best we could hope for was for him to get out of the lab, but still at least be an author on those works (I had not been scientifically involved in the works in question, so didn't have a strong basis to argue for authorship ordering). My student, like most "abused," was really afraid to leave the guy's lab, because he was at least being given some degree of authorship. Absolutely appalling. We had a good (by which I mean "entertaining" with the faculty member exposing his true colors quite strongly) meeting with the Dept. Head and an Associate Dean of that department's College, and got the "best outcome" I could envision. That said, NOTHING formal can be done to the guy (he now has graduated 1 PhD student in the last 14 years...the rest have left his lab for this very same reason, but none were in a position to raise it to a Departmental level without notable repercussions) and I expect he soon will leave to go to another school to repeat the process. (And my gut feeling is that this was a repeat of what happened at his previous University.) That's just the nature of a University ... academic freedom (and the administrative philosophy it engenders) has notable pluses and appreciable minuses. At least my student will now wrap up our collaborative projects and get a couple 1st author papers so he can graduate and be competitive for a job.

Anyway, as I interpret GtwMA and Andere's comments above, I think they also see that the built-in desire to trust colleagues was a massive roadblock toward justice. In the end, I think this means that acrimony directed at JoePa specifically due to his "peculiar position" is inaccurate...this could have happened at ANY University just as easily (cf. Bernie Fine; or in a more morbid sense, Florida A&M).

And this is not Tim Curley, some guy you never heard of until 2 months ago. It's Tim Curley, an individual you've known and worked with for decades, the person you think you can trust the most to look into this situation. Think of the person you most trust at your workplace. Think of that person reassuring you that they've done their best to look into this situation.

Maybe you can honestly say that you are 100% sure that you would ignore that relationship and that trust and pick up the phone. I can't.

Right. I don't have that type of relationship with my current management for a number of reasons so I wouldn't have that level of trust, but in my first job, there were certainly people that I would have taken at their word. I can think of a few people in management in prior jobs where "I checked it out and we're doing everything appropriate for the situation" would be enough for me. I don't see that as a tremendous moral failing to have faith in people you know well to evaluate the merits of the accusation and decide whether to involve the authorities. Especially if I know the accused and have difficultly believing that this is the sort of behavior he'd engage in.

I'm sort of amazed that folks think that if McQueary makes that call anonymously, the police (who have known Jerry Sandusky for DECADES) are going to treat it as anything other than a crank call. Oh, sure, the police are certainly (I would hope!) obligated to look into it, but what will that entail?

That's probably right. I'm just saying that you can make the anonymous call if you need to.

If it's something with concrete evidence to find, like you call the IRS or SEC to say your company is cooking the books, an anonymous call may do the trick (depending on whogets assigned).

If it's something with concrete evidence to find, like you call the IRS or SEC to say your company is cooking the books, an anonymous call may do the trick (depending on whogets assigned).

Agreed. Always a slim chance the guy on the force who still believes he's there actively to pursue justice gets the task of looking into the call. Or that the cop just finds he can't let it go when it eventually dawns on him that the other camp kids didn't seem to be around....

Regarding non-legal issues, I forgot to mention we also had the whole "bubble fusion" (sono-fusion) fiasco a few years back. That was entertaining, as the President and Provost basically fought over who could more vigorously defend the faculty member in question. I think those blind (and erroneous) efforts were a large component of why the Provost was NOT a finalist to replace the President when he...er...retired (requested another term, but was denied; same with current President). And for those interested, no, I don't believe the faculty member in question intended to falsify his data, but I do believe he was aware that nobody else could get his results on their own, yet was unwilling to accept what that meant about how HE could get those those data. Just another case of it taking a long time before people were forced to stop assuming their colleague was in the right (and, even then, it may have been brought forward more due to personal conflict than concern about the truth).

Ray, I don't know how much experience you have with youth sports or knowledge of a major university locker room, so forgive me if I'm telling you something you know. But, in my experience, if there are a handful of 10 year old boys like my son in a setting like that, they are going to do stuff like turning on all the showers and making the place into a giant slip and slide or playing king of the shower. So, the room that you don't see, that I think Schultz and Curley do (perhaps blinded by that unwillingness to believe such a horrible thing about Sandusky), is that Sandusky may have been engaging in that type of roughhousing. Given Schultz's testimony and that I think they had experience with the kind of roughhousing Sandusky typically engaged in with kids, I think they drew the conclusion that it was possible that McQueary misinterpreted what he saw. While they may have felt it was inappropriate, they weren't able to call it sexual or a crime.

To understand the potential for that, here's a diagram and a picture of the room:
http://cdn1.sbnation.com/imported_assets/921506/438691.jpg
http://cdn1.sbnation.com/imported_assets/921500/Locker_2BRoom.jpg

According to McQueary's testimony, he comes in through the doors at the bottom of the diagram (marked "to meeting rooms") and his locker is the first one on the right as he enters the room. He turns to his locker, looks back over his right shoulder and into the mirror on the far wall of the towel room. Shocked at what he sees, he steps to his right and looks again in the mirror (not clear whether this is also over the shoulder or if he has turned to face the towel and shower room). He describes both of these glances as lasting no more than a second or two. He slams the locker, takes 2-3 steps towards the towel and shower room and looks again. It's not exactly clear whether he is looking directly into the shower or still into the mirror, but he says he is now 2-3 yards from the shower room. By this time, Sandusky and the child are 4-5 feet apart. So, his initial glances--the only ones where he sees close contact between Sandusky and the child---lasting a second or two, are over the shoulder (for at least one of them) into a mirror that is 10-15 feet away, showing the shower room, which is several additional feet away. This is 9:30 PM, and we have no information in the record about what type of lighting is on in any of these rooms.

Find a mirror in your house and try it. Put the mirror 10-15 feet from you across from another room in your house. Have someone else put a few objects 5-6 feet away from the mirror in that room at an angle so that if they stand back to back with you they can see it. Try it under different lighting conditions and see if you can tell what you see. You get two 2 second glances.

Having that perspective on Mike's report and trying to find some understanding of their myopia towards Sandusky, is it possible you'd reach the conclusion that Mike misinterpeted? We really don't know how much they investigated, because they weren't really asked in detail about that. Curley reports that he asked Sandusky about it and he first denied being there on that date, then came back in a subsequent meeting and acknowledged that he was there (again, another red flag, to me).

Now, I certainly don't understand why you make these judgments yourself, rather than call in a professional investigator. Even if I believe there's some room to accept that distinction between inappropriate and sexual, I think I recognize that it's not my job to make those calls, and I need to have police and CYS investigate.

I'm kind of amazed that Paterno's GJ testimony was that short. They couldn't think of any other questions to ask him? WTF?

Well, unlike you, Ray, they weren't out to get him. They were out to get Sandusky. They didn't need anything more from him for that than what they got.

Plus, of course, they don't want to give away to much. Again, you don't try someone before a grand jury. That would make it easier for the defense attorneys.

You have to do serious hard work to handwave away Paterno's sworn testimony that a very upset McQueary came to his home on a Saturday to report to him an eye witness account of fondling or conduct of a sexual nature in the shower.

The defenses of Paterno remind me of the misguided defense Bill James put up for Pete Rose, wherein James ended with something like "I've looked at the evidence as closely as I can. The closer you look, the less you see."

The suggestion seems to be that McQueary never saw what he now claims to have seen, or that McQueary never reported to Paterno what Paterno testified McQueary reported to him. Well, what was McQueary so upset about on a Saturday morning, then? That Sandusky used too many fresh towels in the locker room? The thing speaks for itself. And Schultz concedes that McQueary's report to him and Curley was of inappropriate _sexual_ conduct. Which would match with Paterno's testimony.

snapper (history's 42nd greatest monster) Posted: January 05, 2012 at 02:30 PM (#4029634)

anyone CAN pick up the phone and call the police, true. but you would have a very VERY hard time doing it anonymously

I think a lot of what you say is right bbc, but I'm skeptical about this.

In an office, after hours, you could walk into any conference room, or anyone's cube or office and use the phone. How are the cops going to link that to you?

- well, i don't know real too much about offices with cubicles and i don't know how your security is. if you need a badge to get in and out, or if they got security cameras on who is going in and out of the building, they gonna narrow down the suspect list pretty quick if you call after hours. at least they do on TV...

i personally don't have any access to a large anonymous office without security. so i can't think of anywhere i could go that i have access to where i could make an anonymous phone call. i can only think of a few places in houston where there are still pay phones up - not sure if they even work - but they have security cameras in the area, not sure if they are anywheres near the phones - if it's the summer, pretty tough to disguise your self.

best i can tell, the only way to send an anonymous message is to use a fake email with free wifi at mcdonalds or something. and even then i don't know if they can trace your computer like they do on TV. you sure can't use an internet phone anonymously.

but i see what you mean about an anonymous call coming into the local cops about sandusky - you'd have to call the state cops out of town or call child protective services. and even if the cops DID investigate, mcqueary doesn't know who the kid is and all sandusky has to do is say there wasn't any kid there or he wasn't there or whatever and that's the end of that. AND it's not anonymous because sandusky knows mcqueary saw him

tomT's story about that student sounds just like my story about the other women at that company.

- well, i don't know real too much about offices with cubicles and i don't know how your security is. if you need a badge to get in and out, or if they got security cameras on who is going in and out of the building, they gonna narrow down the suspect list pretty quick if you call after hours. at least they do on TV...

i personally don't have any access to a large anonymous office without security. so i can't think of anywhere i could go that i have access to where i could make an anonymous phone call. i can only think of a few places in houston where there are still pay phones up - not sure if they even work - but they have security cameras in the area, not sure if they are anywheres near the phones - if it's the summer, pretty tough to disguise your self.

OK. Where I work there's probably 200 people on each floor, and you can walk between our five floore w/o using a badge. So, if you do it around 6 or 7 when there are still plenty of people in the office, you'll be completely unnoticed. There are even "hoteling" cubicles used by people who work at other locations. You could wear your coat and carry your bag and go sit at one of those for an hour in the middle of the day, and it's highly likely no one would notice you.

Also, in NYC, you can still walk into Grand Central Station, and other places, and use a pay phone.

325:

Your objections are met and you simply riff on.

No one is hand-waving away Paterno's testimony. In fact, I'm sure it played an emphatic role in leading to the indictment of Sandusky. What some are saying here is let’s wait on this unindicted co-conspirator thing you keep pushing. You’re huffing and puffing without adequate motivation.

You do highlight, perversely, why people are very reluctant to get involved in stuff like this—they sense they can could very well just end up going down in a quicksand pit of steaming ####. Some loon will think you in some way to be an aid-and-abettor before or after the fact. Everyone knows without thinking about that they, too, will become a target of head hunters with some sort of agenda in some sort of way--in the press only, if they are lucky, but that can be ugly enough. However, that restriction even is not assured, what with all those prosecutors with essentially carte blanche to forage everywhere, who knows how fast things can unravel and in what way.

Things get out of hand really fast in these high-profile cases teeming with emotionalism. Remember those lacrosse players? Everyone really believe that woman's accusation there for a while--and were outrage that someone wasn't as willing to lose their heads as they were. So the DA obliged and lost his.. That turned out good for everybody, didn't it? In some way, the witness's life will go on trial also, not just the victim and the accused, and not just within the courtroom setting. They will be investigated, officially and unofficially, and the press will play fast and loose with details of their lives on the merest gossamer-like pretext. But you're safe and warm here before the fires of the internet.

And you know what? If this would turn out to be nothing but phantasmagoria, some will find a way to make sure Paterno gets his share of the blame for that. What don't you just wait. Take it easy. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

No, Ray, Schultz confirms that is was inappropriate, but denies that he sees it as sexual or a crime.

From his testimony:
Q: At that time, did McQueary relate to you what he had observed in the locker room.
A: No. My recollection was McQueary and Joe both only described that was observed in a very general way. There was no details.
Q: Did you, nevertheless, form an impression about what type of conduct this might have been that occurred in the locker room?

Note, we are already on to Schultz impression, rather than what McQueary told him

A: Well, I had the impression that it was inappropriate....I had the feeling that there was perhaps some kind of wrestling around activity and maybe Jerry might have grabbed the young boy's genitals or something of that sort is kind of the impression that I had.
Q: Would you consider that to be inappropriate sexual conduct.
A: Oh, absolutely. Well, I don't know the definition of sexual, but that's certainly inappropriate for somebody to do.

So, here, I think is a line that deserves attention. Schultz's immediate response is absolutely, grabbing genitals is inappropriate sexual conduct. But, he then immediately backtracks and says he doesn't know about sexual, but it's inappropriate.


Later..
Q: One more thing I just want to be clear on. When you met with Mike McQueary, was it or was it not your impression that he was reporting inappropriate sexual conduct, your impression--
A: Yes
Q: Inappropriate sexual conduct by Jerry Sandusky?
A. You know, I don't know what sexual conduct's definition to be, but I told you that my impression was --you know, Jerry was kind of guy that he regularly kind of like physically wrestled people....etc.

So again, Schultz interrupts the question and says "yes" in response to a the phrase "inappropriate sexual conduct" but then backtracks again into the issue of what the definition of sexual conduct is.

This is from that same back and forth on 224-226. At least my reading of what I've quoted and what else is on those pages is that Schultz is saying that he does not feel qualified to define sexual conduct, and that Mike's description was not explicit enough for him to say that what happened was clearly sexual conduct and not some wrestling around where something inappropriate, but not sexual, might have occurred.

Again, later in Schultz's testimony
Q: I'm not asking you what impression you had of your observations of Mr. Sandusky over the years. I'm asking you of your impression, what you learned from Mr. McQueary, what he observed in the shower.
A. I don't recall himself telling us what he observed specifically.
Q: What generally did he report?
A. I believe he said that he saw something that he felt was inappropriate between Jerry and a boy.
Q: And from his saying along the line of something inappropriate, you took, oh, they must have been wrestling and maybe he toughed the kid's groin?
A: I could imagine that might have taken place, yes.

So, I have to disagree Ray. Schultz is a lot less certain that the report was of sexual contact than you seem to think.

On Paterno, I have to say that I don;t see this as handwaving. I'm trying to understand what happened, not explain away or excuse what he did. And, I'm not saying McQueary never saw what he claims to have seen. But, even he says it was two quick glances across a distance into a mirror. And how he described to other people what he saw in those glances and the certainty he had in that impression is critical for understanding how those individuals responded to his report.

We know that Mike described this to his father and Jon Dranov, and we have little information on how he described it to them.

We know he described it to Paterno, who reports it was described as "fondling" "doing something with the youngster. It was a sexual nature. I'm not sure exactly what it was".

And we know he described it to Curley and Schultz, who report that McQueary's description was far less graphic than what Mike says he told them.

I think it's reasonable to give defense attorneys, as well as the prosecution, the chance to question Mr. McQueary, Mike, Dranov, Paterno, Curley and Schultz for further details on how Mike described what he saw and how each of these individuals acted before reaching conclusions about some of those actions.

I'm sorry GTWMA but I'm not buying your argument that the ambiguity of McQueary's original information may have allowed Curley, Paterno, et al to fool themselves into thinking a felony might not have occurred, or that confusion over what they felt they were legally bound to report mitigates in any way their culpability.

First, McQueary, and Paterno, both testified that an act on a minor of a sexual nature had occurred. That alone should have set off the fire engines sirens. That's afelony and both of them know it's a felony. If McQueary was at first reticent about describing what he had seen, he should have been reassured first, then pressed for more exact details. This information should have also been recorded, since they all should have know that such information would have been relevant for later court proceedings.

I also can't disagree with you more about you claim that we should be also to pass judgement because this was not immediately referred to the appropriate legal authorities, because Paterno and Curley are not lawyers and may not have been certain what they were obligated to divulge and how they should proceed. PSU, like very university in the country, has legal council to advise them in such matters and Paterno and Curleyknow they have access to such counsel. I bet the both of them refer matters to it several times a year. All large organizations are confronted by legal issues from time to time.

More likely, Paterno and Curley didn't request legal advisement because that would have started an investigation and they would have lost control of the situation. It seems to me their paramount concern was to protect the image of integrity the program has with the larger public.

Curley and Schultz both seemed to be of the mindset, in their testimony, that there was a lot of room between "inappropriate conduct in the shower" and "sexual in nature." I just am not seeing any room at all there...

How about peeing in shampoo bottles, like Jeromy Burnitz? Clearly inappropriate, but not sexual.

(Not really germane - just popped into my head as an example of something that'd qualify on both counts, so I figured I'd share.)

More likely, Paterno and Curley didn't request legal advisement because that would have started an investigation and they would have lost control of the situation. It seems to me their paramount concern was to protect the image of integrity the program has with the larger public.

This. (I agree with the other Ray, for a change.) Either they knew they had to take action, or they knew they had to consult with a lawyer. The first thing you do when you hear that a serious crime may have been committed is either call the police, or call your lawyer to find out what you should do. There is no way they didn't think of speaking to the university counsel. I mean, jesus, even if you're 100% convinced that there's a misunderstanding and that Sandusky was innocent (*), the next thought any bureaucrat is going to have is, "Oh, no; there's going to be a lawsuit." I guarantee that it's been pounded into their skulls to call legal if they're unsure about anything.



(*) And I don't believe that any of them thought that, because I think any one of them who claims he didn't know about the prior incident is a liar-liar-pants-on-fire. And nobody who hears two independent, unrelated allegations years apart is 100% convinced of innocence.

This has been an interesting (and surprisingly civil) thread, but I'm less and less impressed with the lawyering and sophistry on the part of the people defending Paterno, et al.

For one thing, these are all supposed to be tough-guy football people, the men's men of the sports world, and yet none of them had the stomach to have a frank discussion, let alone to confront Sandusky face-to-face and demand answers?

For another, if Paterno was confident that his superiors would handle the issue properly, then he knew damn well that the police would come calling or knocking within a matter of days (if not hours), yet not a single one of Paterno, et al., felt compelled to follow up when this didn't happen. And we're supposed to believe this was some minor or innocent oversight? Unlike episodes of Law and Order, in which people continue to casually stock shelves and answer phones after the homicide detectives have shown up to ask questions, people out here in the real world don't simply forget that the police were supposed to knock on their door to inquire about possible pedophilia.

GotowarMissAgnes Posted: January 05, 2012 at 04:01 PM (#4029736)

Ray, I don't know how much experience you have with youth sports or knowledge of a major university locker room, so forgive me if I'm telling you something you know. But, in my experience, if there are a handful of 10 year old boys like my son in a setting like that, they are going to do stuff like turning on all the showers and making the place into a giant slip and slide or playing king of the shower. So, the room that you don't see, that I think Schultz and Curley do (perhaps blinded by that unwillingness to believe such a horrible thing about Sandusky), is that Sandusky may have been engaging in that type of roughhousing.

- well, ray doesn't have kids, but i sure nuff do - 3 boys ages 8 and 9. and yep, boys do all KINDS of stuff like turning on all the showers and roughhousing and playing my weener pees more then yourrrrrr weener!!!! (there are times i am soooooooo glad i'm a grrrrrrrrrrrrl) and a bunch of 10 year old boys gonna snap towels at asses and stuff like that.

BUT

we are talking about ONE 60 year old ADULT man with one unrelated 10 year old boy, BOTH NEKKID, doing this stuff? and this could be innocent? we aren't talking about a place where some kid could get in coincidentally at the same time as sandusky and they are both just happening to take a shower and doing the men at the urinal thing (yes, the boyz here have explained "urinal ettiquette" to me and all i can say is there are times i am sooooooooo glad i'm a grrrl.) but i digress

you have a 10 year old son. let's suppose he and a dozen other 10 year old nekkid boys are playing king of the shower (all this stuff my life as a grrrrl did NOT prepare me for). OK that's what boyz do, no prob. do you want their 60 year old coach, ALSO nekkid as a jaybird, coming over, joining in, playing king of the shower?

there is a difference between interacting WITH 10 year old boys and interacting with them LIKE YOU ARE ALSO a 10 year old boy.

Trying to deal with multiple comments:

RayJ, I'm not sure that we are really saying much that's different, so perhaps I'm not being clear. I don't see what I've said as mitigating culpability. I see it more as coming to an understanding of why they might have done what they did. I might very well agree with you that their actions deserve condemnation, regardless of how I make sense of how they came to the decision about taking that action. I don't think you can argue that Paterno should have recorded his meeting with McQueary. He didn't even know what Mike was coming over to discuss. So, if you are talking about Curley and Schultz, I think I would probably agree. They had more notice about the nature of the discussion. But, we also don't know that they did not seek counsel with the University lawyer, David. While neither Curley nor Schultz mention it in their testimony, they were also not directly asked questions about that. And before you conclude that you know what that lawyer would have said or done, don't forget that in the 1998 incident--which involved Sandusky naked in the shower with a boy whom he bearhugged from behind--the DA chose not to press charges. I'm still trying to figure out how that decision came to pass. While any of us can speculate about what each person knew, only Schultz, and possibly Spanier, according to Schultz, knew of both incidents. And, when the first case resulted in an investigation which a DA and CYS decided to then close without charges, isn't it reasonable for some people who knew that to think that a new charge might very well have the same end result?

Joe, I'd say I think the bias is in the exact opposite direction. Jocks, especially of older generations, are extremely reluctant to have frank and honest discussions about topics like this. And, why would Paterno assume that the police would call on him? If Curley and Schultz first investigated on their own (whether you think that is appropriate or not), and they assure him that the matter was a misunderstanding and didn't need to be referred to the police? And, again, I'm trying not to defend Paterno or any other individual, but to try and understand their actions. Maybe that's a distinction that's too fine or maybe my own immersion in the events makes me too willing to look for those explanations, rather than the simpler story of deliberate cover-up. I'm willing to recognize that real possibility, and that the facts will eventually show that to be the truth. If so, I'll plead guilty to lawyering and sophistry and throw myself on the mercy of the court, as long as it's a kangaroo court.

I hear you bbc. All I can say is that plenty of people talk about Sandusky interacting with kids like he was one of them a lot. I don't know how you get from there to not hearing that dingdingding when he's interacting with kids like he was one of them while naked in the shower. But, we do know that even in cases where spouses and parents see lots of warning signs, they don't hear those bells or they ignore them or disbelieve them or whatever. Maybe that's not the case here, and they heard the bells and decided to cover them up. I don't know.

335 — I don't doubt that your comments are in good faith, and it seems like you're closer to the situation than anyone else here. It just seems like there's too much focus on a lot of trivialities. Even if we give McQueary a free pass for coming forward late because he feared for his career, etc., Paterno had no one to fear, nor did the higher-ups. If I'm Paterno and I find out a 60-year-old guy was caught naked in my locker room, there's no way in the world that issue is allowed to fade away without any discernible action or resolution.

Look, once McQueary shows up at Paterno's door on a Saturday morning to discuss Sandusky and a little boy in the shower the night before, the ballgame really is over. I don't see how it can reasonably argued at that point that nobody dreamed anything sexual could have occurred. Paterno needed to be sure at that moment that this was going to the authorities in short order. He did not do that.

And it's PATERNO'S STORY that a visibly upset McQueary reported to him fondling or conduct of a sexual nature.

And where was the evidence that he even pressed Schultz and Curley to investigate? Nobody bothered to try to look for the boy.

For one thing, these are all supposed to be tough-guy football people, the men's men of the sports world, and yet none of them had the stomach to have a frank discussion, let alone to confront Sandusky face-to-face and demand answers?

I think you have a profound misunderstanding of tough-guy football people. Tough-guy football people don't even want to know about coaches having sex with young boys in the football locker room, much less talk about it, or confront anyone about it.

I'm sure it went against every inclination in McQueary's being to talk about it. In fact, I think most people like McQueary wouldn't have said a word to anyone. We'll never know who didn't.

joe k

paterno had a GREAT deal to fear - the loss of his God-like status. why he might even be blamed for not dealing a LOT more strongly with sandusky years ago.

what is some 10 year old butt compared to God-like status?

the LAST place paterno wanted anything to go was to any sort of authority - i mean REAL authority.

and it wasn't HIS kid, and so it wasn't real too tough - the kid had to be sacrificed on the alter of Joe Paterno Football

thing is, joe, that you are not worshipped by a stateful of people and a generation of football people. you're JoePa, the REAL head of penn state where men are men and boys are boofed
uh
i mean, you are A Real Leader, you turn boys intoward men
uh
i mean, you stand for something. what you stand for is your famous assistant caring about the welfare of "at risk" young boys by handpicking them for his personal goody bag

you go from The Man to that man who let his assistant - heck - helped his assistant satisfy his pedophilia. it happend under YOUR watch. YOUR legacy is crap, your God-hood collapsed.

nope. paterno was the LAST person to want anything REALLY done. which is why nothing WAS done except for curley/schultz (i know nooootheeeeeenk) making sure nothing was done. no questioning from the mariska hargitay/mark harmon NCIS/the closer type folks, no sirree. not even the local flatfoot - because youneverknow, what if it was HIS butt that had been boofed by sandusky back when it was plum, ripe and unresisting?

interesting that the kid has never turned up. wonder if he ran into some kind of accident like that DA who died so fortuitously.

I think you have a profound misunderstanding of tough-guy football people. Tough-guy football people don't even want to know about coaches having sex with young boys in the football locker room, much less talk about it, or confront anyone about it.

Then they're all a bunch of pathetic frauds.

paterno had a GREAT deal to fear - the loss of his God-like status. why he might even be blamed for not dealing a LOT more strongly with sandusky years ago.

But I don't understand this at all. I see it as just the opposite. Put aside right and wrong; this seemed like a situation that was tailor-made for a "leader" like Paterno to prove he's a leader. ("The program and I were betrayed by a close associate, but we took immediate, aggressive action ...") Instead, he and everyone else apparently ducked under their desks.

GtwMA, these are all fair points, and I do admit that I probably don't have the proper perspective. The hardest thing for me to reconcile is Paterno's response, but then again this is based on a superficial knowledge of his work and position in the school. He works directly with young men, he's supposedly this great leader, he's the leader of the football program which is the major moneymaker and central focus in Happy Valley, and yet his response seems so weak. I understand that all of this is complicated by the taboo nature of the crime (heck, the DA even allowed Paterno not to get into graphic detail during his testimony, seemingly out of respect for the elder), but if he's a leader, if he's fundamentally decent as Poz states, how does he not use his power to protect young people?

Not to pick on you, but let me use your quote to barge in for a moment. The idea that a football coach helps build moral character is thoroughgoing, absolute ########. A football team is a hierarchy almost as rigid as that of the armed forces. It's essentially a dictatorship. Football teaches absolute obedience, and allows for only extremely limited person responsibility (one is limited to carrying out orders--that's the extent of a player's responsibilities). Individual initiative is discouraged if not destroyed.

I totally agree with Ray here. But let's step back for a second. Even if McQueary was unclear about what exactly was happening between the Sandusky and the kid, isn't it alarming enough that they were showering together by themselves when basically no one else was in the building?

No, no, no. I'm not defending Sandusky for a minute, but upthread I pointed out how easy it was to be a grown man in a public shower by a swimming pool, in a gym, and find oneself sharing the shower room with all kinds of folks, in groups, one at a time, and so on. Mere proximity by itself is no sign whatsoever that something improper was going on.

and something other,
i understand what you are saying about males and a community shower, but you were not "horsing around" or "wrestling" naked with other children who just happened to be showering off at the same time. and how many under 12 kids were just dropped off at those pools with no responsible adult nearby?

Didn't see this earlier, bbc. No--no horsing around whatsoever. Keep in mind this was the midwest. The high school pool, for instance, was open to the public, was a very highly used facility, with numerous lifeguards on duty and an admirable safety record. I'm guessing a little here, inferring based on what I saw, but I don't think it was at all unusual for a parent or parents to drop off a pack of kids at the pool on a summer evening and return a couple of hours later to pick them up. I remember one noxious little boy coming into the shower room while I was there and hurling one of those eight inch diameter plastic balls off the shower walls. I told him to stop. He didn't, so I took it away from him. That's about as strange as it got. Oh, yeah, once in the locker room I noticed this kid playing with himself. Groups of developmentally disabled kids were brought to the pool from time to time, and this kid wandered into the locker room and decided business needed to be taken care of. I glanced over and bust out laughing, and immediately went out to the larger pool area and found the guy who was looking after the kid and let him know what was going on. The guy and I went back into the locker room together and he got the kid "sorted out", I suppose is the best way to put it. All of this is to say that, occasionally, very occasionally, things happened, but I don't recall anything that could have been interpreted as something untoward going on.

and no, you can't just keep your kidz chained to you 24/7 unless you are some kind of tigermother person who doesn't want his/her kids to ever grow up or become independent or learn to think. you can't protect your kids from everything bad for the rest of their life. and one of the hardest things to deal with is when your kid doesn't want to/ is afraid to tell you about something bad because they are thinking about the situation LIKE A KID.

It's strange to me, the way things happen now, and how kids are hyperprotected. I remember at age 12 or so spending most of a week at a friend's house during a school vacation. We biked over to the local pool every morning. Hung out there all day, or snuck onto the golf course adjacent when we could and played as many holes as we could until the fat landscaping guy in his golf cart chased us off the course. We got into rock fights with enemy neighborhoods, stole candy bars, snuck peeks at Playboy and Evergreen in the local magazine shop, built forts and go-karts, and our only instructions were to be home in time for dinner, without fail. And this wasn't small town middle of nowhere. We were maybe 25 miles from New York City. Apropos your post, adults were alien creatures whom I routinely lied to. What was I going to say to, "What did you do today?" If I told them, they'd have fainted. "Oh, I was riding my bike, didn't see a car, I turned and fell on the pavement. It braked to a stop a foot from my head." Or, "Fred and I tried to make some acid in his basement to burn the eyes of those kids on Beach Avenue who've been bothering us." Or, "Oh, we played with some rocket engines and set them off in bottles to see what would happen. Then we tried to build a bomb with match heads." And, of course, if another adult behaved badly I didn't have the faintest idea how to tell someone that. We didn't talk TO adults, we worked around them, lived around them.

No, no, no. I'm not defending Sandusky for a minute, but upthread I pointed out how easy it was to be a grown man in a public shower by a swimming pool, in a gym, and find oneself sharing the shower room with all kinds of folks, in groups, one at a time, and so on. Mere proximity by itself is no sign whatsoever that something improper was going on.

But it's apples and oranges. Your example was a public place, while this was a private locker room and it was occurring at a time when few or no other people were expected to be around.

i think of paul saying that females must cover our heads in church

There's actually some dispute over whether this is Paul or not.
1 Corinthians is one of the "undisputed" letters of Paul in that it is generally considered to be his work, but verse 11 where the headcovering comes up is awkward and in some minds seems like a later addition.

I actually wrote a paper once arguing about the authenticity of one of Paul's letters. But as I can't remember which one it was at the moment this portion of the comment is kind of irrelevant.

But it's apples and oranges. Your example was a public place, while this was a private locker room and it was occurring at a time when few or no other people were expected to be around.

Exactly. Something Other, were you ever alone after hours with a 10 year old, "horsing around" naked in the shower with him? I presume the answer is no. Do you think someone might not get alarmed if that had occurred?

Something Other Posted: January 05, 2012 at 10:40 PM (#4030050)

GtwMA, these are all fair points, and I do admit that I probably don't have the proper perspective. The hardest thing for me to reconcile is Paterno's response, but then again this is based on a superficial knowledge of his work and position in the school. He works directly with young men, he's supposedly this great leader, he's the leader of the football program which is the major moneymaker and central focus in Happy Valley, and yet his response seems so weak. I understand that all of this is complicated by the taboo nature of the crime (heck, the DA even allowed Paterno not to get into graphic detail during his testimony, seemingly out of respect for the elder), but if he's a leader, if he's fundamentally decent as Poz states, how does he not use his power to protect young people?

- he's not interested in protecting young people or leading young men. he's interested in collecting and training and ordering football players so they will win football games and bring glory to himself and The Program
- he's "fundamentally decent" - not cheating at football rules and getting other people to give their money to his program and bring Glory to His Organization. he didn't beat/rape his own wife kids. or even other peoples and their kids

Not to pick on you, but let me use your quote to barge in for a moment. The idea that a football coach helps build moral character is thoroughgoing, absolute ########. A football team is a hierarchy almost as rigid as that of the armed forces. It's essentially a dictatorship. Football teaches absolute obedience, and allows for only extremely limited person responsibility (one is limited to carrying out orders--that's the extent of a player's responsibilities). Individual initiative is discouraged if not destroyed.

- absolutely perfectly said
there's good reasons they use army/war terms to describe the action on the field. and why they think of quarterbacks as generals and the linemen as grunts
- i read somewheres that during the civil war, at the first battle, that non-combatants, including women and children, went to picnic and watch the boys shooting each other up. i would guess that the stench of blood and guts and the screams of the wounded and dying - plus all the fun stray bullets - kind of ruined their fun. so they invented football - all the fun of war and broken bodies without all those icky bad smells. and stray bullets.

...upthread I pointed out how easy it was to be a grown man in a public shower by a swimming pool, in a gym, and find oneself sharing the shower room with all kinds of folks, in groups, one at a time, and so on. Mere proximity by itself is no sign whatsoever that something improper was going on.

- ah yes, but trouble is that the kid could NOT have gotten in the locked building if sandusky, the only other person in the building, hadn't let him in. alone together in a shower makes me nervous, but they were NOT just taking a shower - even sandusky is clear about that even if he is not saying exactly what they WERE doing

Joe Kehoskie Posted: January 05, 2012 at 10:39 PM (#4030049)

But I don't understand this at all. I see it as just the opposite. Put aside right and wrong; this seemed like a situation that was tailor-made for a "leader" like Paterno to prove he's a leader. ("The program and I were betrayed by a close associate, but we took immediate, aggressive action ...") Instead, he and everyone else apparently ducked under their desks.

- a REAL leader, yes. a real leader would do what is right and moral. but there would be bad publicity about The Program and joe had already oozed away back in 98. And almost assuredly before then.

he woulda gone down

so to speak...

@347: just to be clear, the way you quoted my post makes it sound like that's what I was saying. It wasn't--it was what I was quoting. So, you're commenting on my quotation of another poster.

But it's apples and oranges. Your example was a public place, while this was a private locker room and it was occurring at a time when few or no other people were expected to be around.

Exactly. Something Other, were you ever alone after hours with a 10 year old, "horsing around" naked in the shower with him? I presume the answer is no. Do you think someone might not get alarmed if that had occurred?

This is too much like 'have you stopped beating your wife' for my tastes. What does "horsing around" mean? What if a little kid whose mom I date and whom I've babysat while she's works of an evening comes into the shower room and sprays me with water. I've seen kids run into the shower room with a mouth full of water and spray it all over people they know, including adults. They think its hilarious (and see also bbc's post on kids and games, above), then seen the adults turn the shower heads on the kids. Everybody's naked. Everybody's laughing. Nobody's doing anything wrong.

So, no. "Horsing around"? You're implying it's automatically wrong, and that's foolish. It's witch hunting. I don't automatically see anything wrong with "horsing around" absent an intelligent, useful definition of the phrase. I'll add that kids often love to "roughouse" with adults. They climb all over you, giggle like lunatics, demand to be tickled, hang on your leg as you try to cook, or go from room to room, and so forth, and it's all absolutely fine.

I assume you don't have kids.

Something Other Posted: January 05, 2012 at 11:00 PM (#4030058)


It's strange to me, the way things happen now, and how kids are hyperprotected. I remember at age 12 or so spending most of a week at a friend's house during a school vacation. We biked over to the local pool every morning. Hung out there all day, or snuck onto the golf course adjacent when we could and played as many holes as we could until the fat landscaping guy in his golf cart chased us off the course. We got into rock fights with enemy neighborhoods, stole candy bars, snuck peeks at Playboy and Evergreen in the local magazine shop, built forts and go-karts, and our only instructions were to be home in time for dinner, without fail. And this wasn't small town middle of nowhere. We were maybe 25 miles from New York City. Apropos your post, adults were alien creatures whom I routinely lied to. What was I going to say to, "What did you do today?" If I told them, they'd have fainted. "Oh, I was riding my bike, didn't see a car, I turned and fell on the pavement. It braked to a stop a foot from my head." Or, "Fred and I tried to make some acid in his basement to burn the eyes of those kids on Beach Avenue who've been bothering us." Or, "Oh, we played with some rocket engines and set them off in bottles to see what would happen. Then we tried to build a bomb with match heads." And, of course, if another adult behaved badly I didn't have the faintest idea how to tell someone that. We didn't talk TO adults, we worked around them, lived around them.

- it's interesting
i've had this discussion with the older guys here before
my mama told me bout the same thing from when she was a grrrl - well, except for the bomb part
but she also spent a LOT of time studying a LOT because she wanted OUT and the only way out went through college

i think that there was a sudden attitude change in like 1980 when that 6 yo kid in NYC went missing and turned up raped and strangled by a neighborhood pedophile and right after that adam walsh made national headlines and the milk carton stuff started. people just freaked out and next thing you know kids were living with tiger moms

i'd say my oldest brother's childhood was a lot more like yours - until he started getting in trouble. and i was the Baby and the only grrrrl and i was spoilt. absolutely never EVER left alone. of course, he spent most of his childhood before the adam walsh thingy happened and mine started afterward. my other brothers were kind of inbetween.

and these days it's worse - i mean all the law n order SVU, all the publicity over rapist priests/sanduskys - AND you aren't supposed to leave your kids alone for a minnit, like EVER. everyone is terrified that kids will get raped or killed. theres kids in my kids' classes who are not allowed to EVER go to any other person's house without their mama going too - like for a kids birthday party. the kids who stay at other people's places are kids who, um, well, let's say their mama's aren't home that night and grandma/auntie are busy.

my niece's boyfriend (man that looks weird me writing that, i'm getting old) was not allowed to go out of his driveway alone until he was TWELVE - and they live in a NICE neighborhood.

and i'll tell you this - if i was to let my kids ages 8 and 9 go to the park down the street all by their lonesome, assuming the park was in a good part of town - i'd have police/CPS at my door. you can't DO something like that. but i got no idea how they suddenly supposed to have good sense/know what to do when i let them offn the leash when they turn 13. and i want them to grow up, i don't want no mama's boyz. but i don't want them runnin the streets neither, no gangs, no drugs, none of that shtt and if i don't put them in "activities" i don't know what else to do...

A: Well, I had the impression that it was inappropriate....I had the feeling that there was perhaps some kind of wrestling around activity and maybe Jerry might have grabbed the young boy's genitals or something of that sort is kind of the impression that I had.
Q: Would you consider that to be inappropriate sexual conduct.
A: Oh, absolutely. Well, I don't know the definition of sexual, but that's certainly inappropriate for somebody to do.

So, here, I think is a line that deserves attention. Schultz's immediate response is absolutely, grabbing genitals is inappropriate sexual conduct. But, he then immediately backtracks and says he doesn't know about sexual, but it's inappropriate.

I can't even tell from this what happened. Who the hell is the prosecutor, that he can't even seem to elicit plain facts about what the witness saw? "I had the feeling that there was perhaps..." What the hell is that? Where's the follow up? If Sandusky is guilty, how does this much vagueness help convict him? If Sandusky is innocent, how does the imputation let him demonstrate that? If this is all that was elicited, it's outrageous.

Where the hell is, "Did you see Sandusky touching the boy?"

This is too much like 'have you stopped beating your wife' for my tastes.

It was not my intention to accuse you of anything. I tried to make clear that I was specifically _not_ doing that.

What does "horsing around" mean? What if a little kid whose mom I date and whom I've babysat while she's works of an evening comes into the shower room and sprays me with water. I've seen kids run into the shower room with a mouth full of water and spray it all over people they know, including adults. They think its hilarious (and see also bbc's post on kids and games, above), then seen the adults turn the shower heads on the kids. Everybody's naked. Everybody's laughing. Nobody's doing anything wrong.

We've gone far afield. The facts of this case matter. Sandusky was in a private shower of an empty locker room with a little boy after hours on the night before spring break, and after happening onto the scene Mike McQueary was so disturbed by what he saw that he decided it was necessary to call himself over to Paterno's home on a Saturday morning which is something he never did to report it.

I was born in 1983, and this sounds scary to me.
A huge part of growing up was the local kids in the neighbourhood. Especially in the summer when I was 10-14 (the mid 90s) or so kids from the surrounding few blocks would play hockey in the street, or go two streets over to the park and play football or baseball. Our parents would pretty much not hear from us from 10am to around dinner time.

That actually continued into my teenage years where we could go smoke pot in the park and not have to deal with parents hassling us about where we were going.

It's frightening to think that children are restricted to the degree they apparently are, though I understand the motives of the parents eager to protect their children.

It is a bit annoying now as the baseball club I'm involved with in the UK is trying to get kids interested in the sport, but we're not allowed to even talk to kids under 16 without specific certification to deal with children. It's understandable, and a few of us are undergoing the necessary training (not me, since children drive me insane) but it's a bit frustrating when a 15 year old kid comes out to see a game and says he wants to practice with us, but legally we have to say no.

I can't even tell from this what happened. Who the hell is the prosecutor, that he can't even seem to elicit plain facts about what the witness saw? "I had the feeling that there was perhaps..." What the hell is that? Where's the follow up? If Sandusky is guilty, how does this much vagueness help convict him? If Sandusky is innocent, how does the imputation let him demonstrate that? If this is all that was elicited, it's outrageous.

Where the hell is, "Did you see Sandusky touching the boy?"

Something Other, that's Schultz's testimony, not McQueary's. And it's part of a lengthy Q&A. And of course Schultz witnessed nothing.

@349: It sounds much more difficult to be a parent now, and I know what you're talking about. It might have been Etan Patz, that poor boy who went missing literally the FIRST time his mom let him walk to school (or the school bus, I can't remember which) alone, that got the milk carton thing started, in New York, at least. I was reasonably grown by then, and I do recall the broad panic that resulted. At the same time I've heard that there are no more abductions of children now than there were 30 years ago. Any idea if that's true?

my mama told me bout the same thing from when she was a grrrl - well, except for the bomb part

Yeah, I don't exactly recommend it, but after I cut off a thousand match heads and put them in the body tube of a model rocket, and ignited it from a reasonable distance with my model rocket ignition thingy, the resulting fifteen foot plume of flame was absolutely awesome. I'm somewhat amazed I survived my childhood.

You know, this thread has got me thinking. I remember when I wasn't living with my daughter and I missed her terribly. When I'd go to study, about once a week I'd go to a local park and sit with my books and read and take notes. I'd sit at a picnic table maybe fifty feet from the kids' playground. It was comforting to see little kids playing and having fun, and helped a little to make up for missing my daughter. This thread though makes me think how easily, though, I might have been branded a pervert. At the same time, in that little midwestern town, I got to know a good Christian woman and single mom at a local coffee shop. From time to one to four of her kids would be with her and you know how kids are. Once they decide they like you--and it can take them 15 minutes to like you--they want all your attention, they climb all over you, beg you to play with them. She didn't really know me all that well and we didn't really have much of a spark, but early on she asked me to babysit her kids. I was a little startled that she trusted me to do that, and a little anxious at the prospect of keeping four children ages six to eleven fed and entertained and alive for an entire evening while she went to her night school class, but that and some other times I sat for her were some of the nicer times I had in that stage of my life.

@353: okay. I sit corrected.

It's frightening to think that children are restricted to the degree they apparently are, though I understand the motives of the parents eager to protect their children.

It is a bit annoying now as the baseball club I'm involved with in the UK is trying to get kids interested in the sport, but we're not allowed to even talk to kids under 16 without specific certification to deal with children. It's understandable, and a few of us are undergoing the necessary training (not me, since children drive me insane) but it's a bit frustrating when a 15 year old kid comes out to see a game and says he wants to practice with us, but legally we have to say no.

Wait--I assume you're serious, but what on earth could the rationale be? It seems protectiveness gone amok. It brings to mind something someone mentioned a couple of weeks ago, when the Penn State story was breaking. A woman of my acquaintance mentioned that an unaccompanied man near a playground in Massachusetts if noticed by the police will be stopped and questioned. If she's correct, I hope I'm not the only one outraged by it.

@349: I also wanted to add, that balancing act you have to do must give you some tough moments. I appreciate that you want to raise strong kids, kids that can fend for themselves and take care of themselves. At the same time, how do you know how deep the water that you're throwing them into is? And, there ARE some sick, twisted folks out there. There ARE predatory bosses, relatives, and teachers out there. It's difficult as all get out to let kids know that without turning them into fear-ridden adolescents. I tried to tell my daughter about this, that it wasn't true of most people, but there were some bad folks out there, 'and here is what you need to be aware of'. That was how I dealt with it, but her mother was horribly overprotective, and basically made her afraid of everything. It was ugly and painful to watch. More power to you if you can find that narrow road between overprotectiveness on one side, and a laxness on the other that can lead to real trouble for your kids.

- ah yes, but trouble is that the kid could NOT have gotten in the locked building if sandusky, the only other person in the building, hadn't let him in. alone together in a shower makes me nervous, but they were NOT just taking a shower - even sandusky is clear about that even if he is not saying exactly what they WERE doing

AH--okay, somehow I didn't see this in your post. I had not grasped that they were (or that Sandusky expected them to be) alone in a shower room in a locked building. That changes the picture enormously. And, what on earth? Sandusky is admitting they weren't taking a shower but won't say what was going on? If it were my child involved and for some reason she couldn't tell me I admit I'd find Sandusky and beat the truth out of him.

my niece's boyfriend (man that looks weird me writing that, i'm getting old) was not allowed to go out of his driveway alone until he was TWELVE - and they live in a NICE neighborhood.

and i'll tell you this - if i was to let my kids ages 8 and 9 go to the park down the street all by their lonesome, assuming the park was in a good part of town - i'd have police/CPS at my door. you can't DO something like that. but i got no idea how they suddenly supposed to have good sense/know what to do when i let them offn the leash when they turn 13. and i want them to grow up, i don't want no mama's boyz. but i don't want them runnin the streets neither, no gangs, no drugs, none of that shtt and if i don't put them in "activities" i don't know what else to do...

I guess I'm out of the loop, then; I had no idea it was that bad. The idea that an 8 and 9 year old can't go to your neighborhood park and chuck a ball around or just hack around the way kids do without getting scooped up by cops and brought home just seems... I don't know how to describe it. I feel for you. I really do. That's... abominable. As for the 12 year old you mentioned that couldn't even go past the driveway... how as a child do you grow up to be a sane, capable adult coming from an atmosphere like that? How are you not made sick with fear and suspicion? Some of the best parts of my adult life followed from the kind of unsupervised childhood I had. It was part of the reason in middle-age I was able to bail out of all the crap that had grown up around me, go live in the woods for a month, then throw in some travel to foreign countries, meeting a beautiful Frenchwoman and falling in love, with all the joys and heartache that inevitably follow that...

SO

best i understand, almost all abduction of children are by one of the parents/grandparents. who knows how many abdutions by molesters there used to be - i think that kind of thing was hushed up

and yeah, etan patz is the name of the kid i was thinking of.

people these days are very weird about men - like they shouldn't be around kids or having anything to do with kids. yeah i know that SOME men are violent/abusive/hateful but so are some women. but the fear about the number of pedophiles is kind of excessive. and i mean what you can be branded as a sex offender for is really, um, excessive. i would bet that team coaches aren't doing showering with kids these days, if they ever were (according to my brothers, they didn't back in the 80s/90s)

best i can tell, most people are like your daughter's mother. scared to let their kid live life. you can't put your kid in a plastic bubble and even if you could they wouldn't be normal...

we've taken in foster kids/babies. my kidz know ALL about abuse/abandonment - more than i wish they did. my niece's boyfriend - he has a nice home, 2 "perfect" parents who make it more than clear that they can't stand him without saying the words. i think the not being allowed to go out of the driveway is part of that - he's a really angry kid under the quiet expressionless face. at first i thought he was with my niece to throw her in his parents face - they don't dare to object or he'll call them racist - but no. they understand each other and for kids so young, they have an unusually strong bond. his parents enjoy thwarting him every way they can. there are all kinds of abuse out there. my niece picked it up the day she met him. she knew.

me and husband sat down with the twins then with the 8 year old and had the sandusky talk. and the - you can tell me - i won't be mad at you - talk. i told them that they had to protect their friends, too, because they need to hear that. they get that.

truth is that there is not anywhere it is ok for kids to go alone - really until they hit 12 or 13. then for most kids it's the streets, if they are allowed out - or their mama don't care no mo. or else, it's just endless planned activities with adult supervision so that the kids won't be doing drugs/gangs/parties, whatever...

truth is i'm scared too and i'm dreading what is coming up

what was your old screen name?

people these days are very weird about men - like they shouldn't be around kids or having anything to do with kids. yeah i know that SOME men are violent/abusive/hateful but so are some women. but the fear about the number of pedophiles is kind of excessive. and i mean what you can be branded as a sex offender for is really, um, excessive. i would bet that team coaches aren't doing showering with kids these days, if they ever were (according to my brothers, they didn't back in the 80s/90s)

I'm certain my high school coaches never showered with the students or teams under their direction. We would have thought it was very weird. Not necessarily at all perverse, but you know how kids would be about saggy, middle aged hairy bodies. It just would have creeped us out. When I taught swimming when I was done I'd go for a quick rinse of the chlorine, but for whatever reason I kept my suit on. Always. I don't know that I gave the matter any real thought, but I just felt much more comfortable that way. I don't know if swimming is a much different category of this kind of thing... Now that I'm thinking about it, there really isn't any reason not to keep your bathing suit on in the shower in any potentially awkward situation.

me and husband sat down with the twins then with the 8 year old and had the sandusky talk. and the - you can tell me - i won't be mad at you - talk. i told them that they had to protect their friends, too, because they need to hear that. they get that.

Yup--that has to be the way to go. That's great, both that you reassure them you won't be mad (kids just don't understand how adults think in these situations and it's essential, absolutely essential, to let them know they can't go wrong when they talk to you about this kind of thing), and that part of their "job" is to look out for their friends. I love that part, the caring and the responsibility inherent in that.

best i can tell, most people are like your daughter's mother. scared to let their kid live life. you can't put your kid in a plastic bubble and even if you could they wouldn't be normal...

I think the key (if there even is one) is to handle it the way you're handling it. One thing, though--how do you tell your kids that while they need to be alert for certain things, that not everyone is like that? As in, how do you teach alertness as opposed to suspicion? I think that's what I was looking for, "alertness and awareness, as opposed to suspicion." From what you've written you're clearly not the kind of person who wants her kids to walk around thinking there might be perverts behind every tree, so how do you cue your kids into not being victims, but not being needlessly aggressive or suspicious? That's such a tough, tough line to walk.

they understand each other and for kids so young, they have an unusually strong bond. his parents enjoy thwarting him every way they can. there are all kinds of abuse out there. my niece picked it up the day she met him. she knew.

That's beautiful, the first part, but what a shame that his parents are like that. What do you suppose they think they're accomplishing with that kind of behavior? My sister's kids have similar issues with their mom. I didn't live near them for much of their lives, but returned to NY when my nephew was 18. I took him out to dinner as part of getting reacquainted. Gave him cash to pay the check and went to the men's room. Came back to discover he didn't know how to pay the check in a restaurant. For all my parents' faults, that's the kind of thing my dad taught me to do when I was 7 or 8 years old. My nephew didn't know how to open a bank account, drive a car, talk to a girl. I almost cried when I found this out. My sister overprotected him in part because she can't deal with adults, so her children becoming adults was somehow terrifying to her, to the point where she stunted their development.

But that's the point where overprotection becomes pathological, and I'm not implying your niece's boyfriend's parents have that as their motive. Still and all, they're attitude suggests something seriously wrong. To me--no offense meant.

truth is that there is not anywhere it is ok for kids to go alone - really until they hit 12 or 13. then for most kids it's the streets, if they are allowed out - or their mama don't care no mo. or else, it's just endless planned activities with adult supervision so that the kids won't be doing drugs/gangs/parties, whatever...

truth is i'm scared too and i'm dreading what is coming up

It sounds like you're giving them a solid base, though. God--I don't know what else you can do. If you're in a section of the city where there just isn't any place it makes sense for kids under 12 to roam, then you just don't have a choice. And, yeah, I don't see much alternative to the supervised activities. The good thing (at least, we can try to think of it this way) is that no matter how much we try to fence them in, even in a healthy way, kids are rascals, explorers, subverters. They'll find ways to break the rules, take chances, sneak kisses (and more, of course). Once you give them that good foundation, and protect them and explain WHY you're protecting them the way you are, I don't know if there's much you can do other than hope they don't resent you too much for it, and that when they get into their late teens and if they're not addicted or pregnant, they'll understand. We can hope, right?

In another life I was "thinking out loud".

Gotta go, but I'll check back tomorrow. I really appreciate what you've written.

Joe and Ray (337 and 338): I'm not going to repeat the discussion we've had. We've each stated our thoughts. As more information surfaces, we may change how we view the events and the people.

I agree that it's hard to understand how Joe Paterno (or substitute any of the other names and situations) can hear what he said he heard about 10 hours after Mike witnessed it and not just grab his car keys and take the 5 minute drive to Sandusky's house and speak with him, ask to see the kid probably sleeping in his basement; or just, pick up the phone and have a police officer come hear Mike tell his story again. I agree that these and other actions would have been far better ways to act with the information given to him.

I remember a 20 years younger version of myself seeing a dad yelling at his kid. I remember thinking that when I was a father, I'd never do that. I thought I was a better man than that dad. Well, I've lost my temper. I've yelled a lot more than I ever thought I would. And that's not even close to the worst things I've done. I've failed in so many ways that I thought I'd never fail, I can't begin to count them.

At a critical juncture in his life, Joe Paterno and these other men, appear to have made some horribly bad choices. I'd like to think that I'd act differently, but I know there are plenty of situations in my life where I thought I would act more honorably than I actually did.

So, I try to understand all the different possible reasons for all of these actions. That's not to excuse or defend or to justify any action. It's an effort to put myself in their shoes and try to understand. By understanding all the different possible explanations, I guess I hope to understand how people who I've shared a table with could make those tragic choices. And don't take this next comment personally, because both of you and others here have discussed this in a reasonable and calm fashion. But, in some of the hysteria and self-righteous moralizing I've seen from others on this, I see an effort to deny by some people that they too might act in the very same way--an attempt to depict these individuals as monsters, so that they can deny that this could happen in their hometown and can deny that they too, might fail like these individuals did.

Look again at the mother's story about the principal at Victim 1's high school. That principal says both, "Oh no, not Jerry, he's got a heart of gold" AND "Do you really want to take this on? Think about what that means for your family". She denies that it's true and encourages a cover-up. We humans have an incredible capacity to have multiple fictions running through our lives. So, by trying to understand the myriad ways that Paterno or others might have come to their decisions and actions, I'm purposefully trying to make sense of the tornado that ripped through my town, my students' lives, my life, 60 days ago. You can certainly tell this story as one of power and greed and cover-up. You can also see elements in it of misjudgments and incompetence and hubris, and the insidious ability of humans to deceive themselves and fail to see the truth staring them in the face.

We may never know which elements of these and other stories are true, not just for Paterno, but for Curley, Spanier, the McQuearys, Dranov, Schultz, Probst, Turchetta, Raykovitz, Courtney, and dozens of others who played some role. But, trying to understand all the different ways any of them might have thought about their decisions and actions is important. At least it is for me.

When I was at school (UK equivalent of High School) the coaches used the same showers we did and nobody thought anything of it and I left "high school" in 1999.

When I was a kid me and my friends were pretty much just left to our own devices. The only "rule" when it wasn't a school night was (1) tell us where you are going, (2) if you're going to be out later than 9 PM call in and ask if it's OK. I can remember us cycling 9-10 miles away to go to a diner that did great chili dogs, take dingies out into the sea [which had hammerhead sharks in it], throwing jellyfish around and poking cone shells with sticks. We also did dumb things with fireworks (including making a bottle rocket bazooka and hitting a police car) and exploding deodorant cans.

At a different point we also lived in the countryside and used to just dissapear into the woods for 10 hours until we heard parents shouting that dinner was ready.

Something Other Posted: January 06, 2012 at 03:34 AM (#4030150)


I think the key (if there even is one) is to handle it the way you're handling it. One thing, though--how do you tell your kids that while they need to be alert for certain things, that not everyone is like that? As in, how do you teach alertness as opposed to suspicion? I think that's what I was looking for, "alertness and awareness, as opposed to suspicion." From what you've written you're clearly not the kind of person who wants her kids to walk around thinking there might be perverts behind every tree, so how do you cue your kids into not being victims, but not being needlessly aggressive or suspicious? That's such a tough, tough line to walk.

- there's 3 words - "uncomfortable" and "secret" and "scared"
if he/she is making you uncomfortable with the way they touch or hug you
- if they want anything to be "our secret" or "don't tell anyone else" or "it's just us" - they want power over you. it's the same kind of way that older guys get young teenage grrls - first they make em feel important, then they cut them off from the rest of people.
- if they threaten to cut you out of a group you want to be in if you make noise, talk to yo mama, friends, etcetc
- if they tell you that you get "special" time or privileges and your parents and friends "won't" understand

they understand each other and for kids so young, they have an unusually strong bond. his parents enjoy thwarting him every way they can. there are all kinds of abuse out there. my niece picked it up the day she met him. she knew.That's beautiful, the first part, but what a shame that his parents are like that. What do you suppose they think they're accomplishing with that kind of behavior?

- sigh

they are not trying to accomplish anything besides - i don't know, bullying.
best i understand, they tried and tried to have a kid for 5 years and finally she gets pregnant and they are so happy. they wanted a handsome star quarterback with a great Personality. they got the pillsbury dough boy who likes to read and is an artist and is athletic as a lump of stone. they forced him to play soccer - and you'd think ANY kid could kick a stupid ball, but no, and he only got out of it by faking an injury. he also had the colics when he was a baby - i heard ALL about that from his mama when we met at one of the parent/teacher days. they just don't like him. it's personal. they are stuck with a kid they can't stand and they haven't handed him over to another relative because they can't find one who will take him. either that or they like him around to show as an example of how great they are putting up with a kid like that.

- but he's a LOT smarter than they know he is and if he can manage to deal with God handing him parents who don't like/want him, he's gonna be something.
- i've talked to him a little - tough to get him apart from the parents - he reminds me of some of the very smart guys on this here board. he says his parents are plotting how to get him away from his gf and the first skool that he's liked and is comfortable at. i asked him what was he gonna do about it - at first he gives me that almost blank look he gets that i can see the anger behind it. so i am frightened and say something about PLEEZE no violence, no running away - and he drops the blank mask and looks at me. that's STUPID, he sez. there's only a couple of ways they can do it and i've already figured out how to block each one. he's not about to trust ME with that, though...

- that father is a real *(%&$!, he is. he's used to intimidating people, charming women, getting his way. he sez to me - wow you're young - guess you must have had her in middle skool - hahhahhah. (us niggas breed like rats as soon as we bleed). so i smiled at him with my big eyes and said - thank you for the compliment. he wasn't expecting that, so he tries again. she doesn't look anything like yall (with a glance at husby-doo who is talking to someone else, not listening) and i said, yes, isn't she BEAUTIFUL? still smiling at him with big eyes. he's getting frustrated, charm slips, he does the male intimidating thing - leans closer, justs out chin, looks down at me. just kidding, he says. of course, i say, big eyes, gentle smile. his wife sees him talking to me, runs over joins us. another piece of work who has had work done, you feelin me here - passive aggressive Mean Girl back in hs where she was a queen bee. she says a few supposed to be polite, but are actually meant to hurt things. i don't notice. but her type is dead easy to deal with - you make em feel old or fat. it's easy for me to do, but i can guess what that kid goes thru every day...

- and i've seen plenty of unwanted unloved kids. but usually the parents are real up front about it with the kid, not enjoying bullying them subtly

My sister's kids have similar issues with their mom. I didn't live near them for much of their lives, but returned to NY when my nephew was 18. I took him out to dinner as part of getting reacquainted. Gave him cash to pay the check and went to the men's room. Came back to discover he didn't know how to pay the check in a restaurant. For all my parents' faults, that's the kind of thing my dad taught me to do when I was 7 or 8 years old. My nephew didn't know how to open a bank account, drive a car, talk to a girl. I almost cried when I found this out. My sister overprotected him in part because she can't deal with adults, so her children becoming adults was somehow terrifying to her, to the point where she stunted their development.

But that's the point where overprotection becomes pathological

- it is, and i think this is why so many kids are not "ready" to start kindergarten until they are almost 7 and why so many kids have their parents doing their homework for them

If you're in a section of the city where there just isn't any place it makes sense for kids under 12 to roam, then you just don't have a choice. And, yeah, I don't see much alternative to the supervised activities. The good thing (at least, we can try to think of it this way) is that no matter how much we try to fence them in, even in a healthy way, kids are rascals, explorers, subverters. They'll find ways to break the rules, take chances, sneak kisses (and more, of course). Once you give them that good foundation, and protect them and explain WHY you're protecting them the way you are, I don't know if there's much you can do other than hope they don't resent you too much for it, and that when they get into their late teens and if they're not addicted or pregnant, they'll understand. We can hope, right?

- hope is all we've got
because i don't want them ending up like your sister's 18 year old who is 18 going on 7 - poor damm kid

At a critical juncture in his life, Joe Paterno and these other men, appear to have made some horribly bad choices. I'd like to think that I'd act differently, but I know there are plenty of situations in my life where I thought I would act more honorably than I actually did.

GoToWar, I have a lot of respect for your comments in this thread and your detailed knowledge of the facts.

I do reject the framework of your above analysis. I don't think the proper question to ask is, "Would I have made good decisions if I were in Joe Paterno's shoes and McQueary came to me?" I think the proper question to ask is, "Is Joe Paterno deserving of contempt for the way he handled the McQueary report?" And I think he is, for the reasons I've laid out.

I'm confident I would have handled it appropriately, but even if I'm wrong about that, so what? To use an analogy, we don't withhold judgment of a murderer because we're busy asking, "Well, what would I have done in that situation? Would I have not murdered the person? How can I be sure about that, since I've never been in a similar situation? You know, I've done some things in my life that I'm not proud of..."

Joe Paterno received the McQueary report and did not ensure that the report went to the authorities. I believe he deserves severe criticism for that, and I've leveled it. It doesn't matter one bit whether I would have done the right thing if I had been in his shoes. If I wouldn't have done the right thing, I'd have been just as deserving of contempt as he is.

We'll never know. So what?

GoToWar, I have a lot of respect for your comments in this thread and your detailed knowledge of the facts.

Agreed.

I do reject the framework of your above analysis.

I do, too, but for a different reason than Ray. I understand and even admire the "put yourself in his shoes" approach, but there's a big difference between an individual making a bad choice on his own and a large group of individuals collectively making bad choice after bad choice, if not actively conspiring to make bad choices.

Maybe we forgive McQueary for not calling the police on the spot or for waiting until the next day to tell Paterno, and maybe we forgive Paterno for waiting a day or two to run it up the hierarchy. But with so many alleged adults and "leaders" involved, it's hard to get past the inexplicable amount of what appears to have been casual indifference to the likely ongoing sexual assault of one or more children.

dear gotowar,

about #359

i understand what you are saying. trouble is that this is, to our knowledge, the SECOND time with sandusky

you "make the mistake" of letting a child rapist go free the first time, but the SECOND time???

no

no

paterno is the most powerful man in "happy" valley - and it was up to him to stand up. and he turned away.

AGAIN

I think the key (if there even is one) is to handle it the way you're handling it. One thing, though--how do you tell your kids that while they need to be alert for certain things, that not everyone is like that? As in, how do you teach alertness as opposed to suspicion? I think that's what I was looking for, "alertness and awareness, as opposed to suspicion." From what you've written you're clearly not the kind of person who wants her kids to walk around thinking there might be perverts behind every tree, so how do you cue your kids into not being victims, but not being needlessly aggressive or suspicious? That's such a tough, tough line to walk.

- there's 3 words - "uncomfortable" and "secret" and "scared"
if he/she is making you uncomfortable with the way they touch or hug you
- if they want anything to be "our secret" or "don't tell anyone else" or "it's just us" - they want power over you. it's the same kind of way that older guys get young teenage grrls - first they make em feel important, then they cut them off from the rest of people.
- if they threaten to cut you out of a group you want to be in if you make noise, talk to yo mama, friends, etcetc
- if they tell you that you get "special" time or privileges and your parents and friends "won't" understand

That's smart. Simple, direct. It's very tough especially with young teenage girls who often have difficult relationships with their dads. The girls want so much just to be loved, accepted, held.

- sigh

they are not trying to accomplish anything besides - i don't know, bullying.
best i understand, they tried and tried to have a kid for 5 years and finally she gets pregnant and they are so happy. they wanted a handsome star quarterback with a great Personality. they got the pillsbury dough boy who likes to read and is an artist and is athletic as a lump of stone. they forced him to play soccer - and you'd think ANY kid could kick a stupid ball, but no, and he only got out of it by faking an injury. he also had the colics when he was a baby - i heard ALL about that from his mama when we met at one of the parent/teacher days. they just don't like him. it's personal. they are stuck with a kid they can't stand and they haven't handed him over to another relative because they can't find one who will take him. either that or they like him around to show as an example of how great they are putting up with a kid like that.

Holy ____. See, that just feels to me like the deepest soul sickness. He's their child, for god's sake. It might be nice to have a star QB in the family, but so what, really? I mean, I had awkward parents who had no idea how to deal with each other, let alone their children, and I know what it's like to grow up with clueless folks who fumbled through every aspect of my and my sister's development, but even with all that I never got the sense that they actively disliked either of us. Frustrated with us, upset because they didn't know what to do, sure. But they were always proud when one of us did something well, whatever it was. I guess I still don't understand parents who treat having a child as more like adding to their doll collection, where the ones that are chipped or discolored or imperfect get tossed away.

- but he's a LOT smarter than they know he is and if he can manage to deal with God handing him parents who don't like/want him, he's gonna be something.
- i've talked to him a little - tough to get him apart from the parents - he reminds me of some of the very smart guys on this here board. he says his parents are plotting how to get him away from his gf and the first skool that he's liked and is comfortable at. i asked him what was he gonna do about it - at first he gives me that almost blank look he gets that i can see the anger behind it. so i am frightened and say something about PLEEZE no violence, no running away - and he drops the blank mask and looks at me. that's STUPID, he sez. there's only a couple of ways they can do it and i've already figured out how to block each one. he's not about to trust ME with that, though...

I don't suppose he's got an aunt or uncle, someone like that, a blood relative who has a chance at staying in his life semi-permanently? I've heard from a number of smart folks in the field that the difference for a child between having ONE person in their life and having no one in their life that they can confide in, trust, is enormous, that it can make all the difference. It's hard to imagine much that would be worse than having parents who actively undermine their own child. I hope he understands that in some sense, particularly as we get older, we get to choose our own families, that even though they scar us we're not stuck with them, at least not permanently.

- and i've seen plenty of unwanted unloved kids. but usually the parents are real up front about it with the kid, not enjoying bullying them subtly

Yeah--the latter part is grotesque. I realize it happens, but the idea that some people have children largely in order to have something to prey on... I start making fists when I hear about it. It's hard for me to stay rational when I hear of it.

- hope is all we've got
because i don't want them ending up like your sister's 18 year old who is 18 going on 7 - poor damm kid

And he's still paying for it. It's three years after that now. He's now 21 and socially awkward, of course. I used to take him shopping when we were getting along and he'd spot a young woman he was interested in, so I'd coach him about what to say, and how to give her a chance to talk and really listen to what she had to say. That helped a little, but he's so fundamentally uncomfortable in his own skin--because he doesn't know how to do anything--that it shows, and makes other people a little uncomfortable, enough so they move away. The only people he has any luck staying friends with are young men similarly stunted, the kinds of guys in their early 20s who work part-time, if they work at all, and at the most menial jobs because they don't care about anything except getting home and cracking beers.

He recently mentioned, that at 21, he's never curled up with a woman he cares about, let alone gone further than that. As for taking responsibility for things, which is the only way any of us change and grow, I asked him what he felt responsible for, what he felt was within his control, for better or worse, and he couldn't come up with anything. Anything.