Joe Paterno's Most Despicable Act

While it remains to be seen if Penn State coach Joe Paterno's role in the recent child molestation scandal was criminally liable; he at the very least allowed a man he knew to be a child predator to have a role in the program for nearly a decade. This was someone who had access to the facilities, the players, had an office across the street, and even played a role in recruiting teenage athletes to come to Penn State after the alleged molestation took place. When his former assistant Jerry Sandusky was caught molesting a 10 year boy in the team shower in 2002 (which was reported to Paterno), regardless of who he was obliged to tell, he should have permanently banished Sandusky from the program and especially campus. Instead he told the Athletic Director and the incident was covered up (allegedly).

Paterno himself went into the living rooms of high school players and asked families to send him their children knowing his team was harbouring an alleged pedophile predator across the street. We can let the courts decide if he was obligated to report the information to the police when the witness informed him of the incident, I just can't understand how Sandusky continues to play a role in the program after this happens. He had a long history of bringing young boys to the stadium while he was an assistant, and I'm wondering when people started to notice something was awry. There had to be suspicion prior to the 2002 incident, possibly even another exposed incident. He "retired" unexpectedly in 1999.

What I don't get is the adult who discovered Sandusky molesting a child in the team shower, and instead of stopping it or calling police, he went home and called his dad. His dad told him to talk to Paterno. This was eventually brought to campus police and the punishment was that Sandusky could not bring young boys to the campus with him anymore. Seriously??? How do you witness a young kid being raped and not do something to stop it? Choosing to flee should be a criminal act of depraved indifference. Talk about your bad samaritan.

This whole story is sickening. It sounds like the cover up (possibly multiple cover ups), was about protecting the program. They did not want to hurt recruiting. So instead of calling the real police they called campus police.