The only thing that changes that is if McQueary admits or he is irrefutably exposed to have misrepresented what he told to the PSU folks. In the unlikely event that it happens, it will be too late, if it's not already.
Board of Trustees and Paterno family statements
- Thread starter ouirpsu
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The only thing that changes that is if McQueary admits or he is irrefutably exposed to have misrepresented what he told to the PSU folks. In the unlikely event that it happens, it will be too late, if it's not already.
I'm not sure I agree. As weak as the BOT statement is, it opens the door to rewrite the narrative. As long as PSU was accepting all of the guilt, the press wasn't going to rock the boat. If PSU honors Joe, I think a lot of influencer types will come out in support. That'll give journalists something to write about.
Then there's the initial police report about MM working late on campus that changed to watching Rudy at home.
http://notpsu.blogspot.com/2017/03/mcqueary-truthbomb-another-version-of.html
So there are emails written by McQueary in which he states that his testimony before the grand jury and a couple of juries with regard to what he told Curley and Schultz and, to a lesser extent, Paterno were lies? I'd like to see copies of those emails. Shouldn't be a problem since they've been out there for years.
They need to put the damn statue and the plaques of all his teams back somewhere on campus anywhere, include Sue as his representative every time they honor an anniversary of one of his top teams at Beaver Stadium, rename Park Ave to Paterno Way and as a bonus rip Rod Erickson’s stupid name of the freaking creamery building.
Then there's the initial police report about MM working late on campus that changed to watching Rudy at home.
http://notpsu.blogspot.com/2017/03/mcqueary-truthbomb-another-version-of.html
Ain't cuttin' it. In the public view, McQueary told Curley and Schultz that he saw Sandusky sexually assaulting a child. For there to be any possibility of reversing that impression, McQueary would have to admit that he lied about that characterization and related something far more innocuous.
Nobody cares about the details of events surrounding.
Read the link I provided to Ray's blog. Eileen Morgan did a deep dive on this.
as a matter of fact all it would do is make the general public point their fingers at Penn State and shake their heads and tsk tsk over how we "still don't get it"
man I didn't even graduate from PSU and I get so angry about this shit that I shouldn't even read these threads
Not a problem. Google likes to keep tabs on stuff.
http://notpsu.blogspot.com/2017/10/correcting-record-part-1-mcquearys-2001.html#more
http://www.bigtrial.net/2017/10/penn-state-confidential-prosecutor-told.html
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anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
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Important to remember that after Sandusky, MM is the one most responsible for where we are now. I know Joe did what he was supposed to do, but MM didn't. If you are *that* concerned, call the cops. Done.
So McQueary, he of unparalleled communication skills, told Eshbach that the Grand Jury Presentment misrepresented his testimony as to what he saw, but then went ahead to testify that he told Curley and Schultz that he saw Sandusky sexually abusing a boy? Clowns like Cipriano can make a living parsing this shit all they want, but that's the record and it's going to stay that way.
Not logical.
In a second email sent that same day, McQueary complained to Eshbach about "being misrepresented" in the media. And then McQueary tried to straighten out a couple of misconceptions, writing that he never went to Coach Joe Paterno's house with his father, and that he had never seen Sandusky with a child at a Penn State football practice.
"I know that a lot of this stuff is incorrect and it is hard not to respond," Eshbach emailed McQueary. "But you can't."
That email exchange, divulged in a couple of posts by Penn State blogger Ray Blehar, have people in Penn State Nation talking about prosecutorial misconduct. Naturally, the A.G.'s office has nothing to say about it, as an office spokesperson declined comment today.
The 2011 grand jury report said that back when he visited the Penn State showers in 2001, Mike McQueary heard "rhythmic, slapping sounds." Then, he peered into the showers and "saw a naked boy, Victim No. 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Jerry Sandusky."
But McQueary wrote Eshbach, while copying Agent Anthony Sassano, "I feel my words are slightly twisted and not totally portrayed correctly in the presentment."
"I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion," McQueary wrote. "It was a sexual act and or way over the line in my opinion whatever it was."
McQueary also complained about the media attention he was getting.
"National media, and public opinion has totally, in every single way, ruined me," McQueary wrote. "For what?"
Later that same day, McQueary wrote a second email to Eshbach and Sassano.
"Also," McQueary wrote, "I never went to Coach Paterno's house with my father . . . It was me and only me . . . he was out of town the night before . . . never ever have I seen JS [Jerry Sandusky] with a child at one of our practices . . . "
The reference about his father not accompanying him to a meeting with Joe Paterno was probably McQueary's attempt to correct a mistake in a Nov. 5, 2011 Sara Ganim story about the grand jury presentment that ran in the Harrisburg Patriot News.
In her story, Ganim wrote that according to the indictment, "On March 1, 2002, the night before Spring Break, a Penn State graduate assistant walked into the Penn State football locker room around 9:30 p.m. and witnessed Sandusky having sex with about 10 years old . . . The next morning, the witness and his father told head football coach Joe Paterno, who immediately told athletic director Tim Curley."
Then, McQueary returned to the subject of the bad publicity he was getting over the grand jury report.
"I am being misrepresented in the media," McQueary wrote. "It just is not right."
That's what prompted Eshback to write, "I know that a lot of this stuff is incorrect and it is hard to to respond. But you can't."
Former NCIS and FIS Special Agent John Snedden, a Penn State alum, was blown away by Eshbach's email response to McQueary.
"It's incredible, it's evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, trying to steer a witness's testimony," Snedden said. "It shows that the prosecution's manipulating the information, throwing out what they don't want and padding what they do want . . . It very strongly suggests a fictitious presentment."
During the defamation suit McQueary filed against Penn State, Eshbach was sworn in as a witness and asked to explain what she meant by telling McQueary not to talk.
"My advice to Mr. McQueary not to make a statement was based on the strengthening of my -- and saving of my case," Eshbach testified. "I did not want him [McQueary] making statements to the press at that time that could at some time be used against him in cross-examination. He [McQueary] was perfectly free to make a statement, but I asked him not to."
There's another angle to the prosecutorial misconduct story line -- this email exchange between McQueary and Eshbach that was reported on by Blehar was not turned over by the prosecution to defense lawyers during the Sandusky trial and the trial of former Penn State president Graham Spanier.
While we're on the subject of prosecutorial misconduct, at the Spanier trial, it was McQueary who testified that during the bye week of the 2011 Penn State football season, he got a call on his cell phone from the attorney general's office, tipping him off that "We're going to arrest folks and we are going to leak it out."
The fact that Mike McQueary didn't see a naked Jerry Sandusky having anal intercourse in the showers with a 10-year-old boy isn't the only erroneous assumption that came out of that shoddy 2011 grand jury report, Blehar wrote.
"The Sandusky grand jury presentment of Nov. 4, 2011 provided a misleading account of what eyewitness Michael McQueary reported to Joe Paterno about the 2001 incident," Blehar wrote. "Rather than stating what McQueary reported, it stated he reported 'what he had seen' which led the media and the public to erroneously conclude the specific details were reported to Paterno."
Keep in mind what the grand jury report said McQueary had seen -- a naked Sandusky having anal intercourse in the showers with a 10-year-old boy -- never actually happened, according to McQueary.
The grand jury report said:
"The graduate assistant went to his office and called his father, reporting to him what he had seen . . . The graduate assistant and his father decided that the graduate assistant had to promptly report what he had seen to Coach Joe Paterno . . . The next morning, a Saturday, the graduate assistant telephoned Paterno and went to Paterno's home, where he reported what he had seen."
Blehar cited the words of Joe Paterno, who issued a statement on Nov. 6, 2011, saying that McQueary had "at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the grand jury report."
McQueary agreed.
Litigation has been settled. The bigger issue is leadership. Some who actively or passively endorsed certain decisions set the tone, and will be influencing important decisions for years to come. I believe alumni actions can make an impact. Stay engaged.
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I'm trying to find some mention of McQueary's testimony regarding what he told Curley and Schultz. Oh, there isn't any.
People forget the multiple skeletons in Mike's closet. He's not exactly credible, given the leverage the OAG had on him. More importantly, consider that the OAG initially charged C/S/S with 15 felonies between them. After years of litigation and $ millions spent on the taxpayer's dime, they were unable to get even one of those charges to stick. Without those convictions, the narrative falls apart!
The time of caring what outsiders think should be over. If people can universally honor Kobe the rapist. JoePa deserves celebration. Let the national media call us insensitive for a day or two and then they’ll move on to some more bullshit and forget all about it. The time is now.
Because grand jury testimony is supposed to be secret, there is no available public transcript to show exactly what Mike McQueary said there, but it is clear from everything else he said about this incident, including his subsequent courtroom testimony, that he did not witness sodomy or any other form of sexual abuse that day in the Lasch locker room. His version of events morphed over time, but none of the narratives included witnessing overt sexual abuse.
Here’s what appears to have happened. On a Friday night, February 9, 2001, a full year earlier than the inaccurate date in the Grand Jury Presentment, Jerry Sandusky was indeed taking a shower with a Second Mile boy in the locker room of the Lasch Football Building.
Sandusky took it for granted that boys and men showered together after exercise. It was part of the way he was raised, an accepted part of the sports world. Though he had retired as a Penn State coach two years before, he could still use the facilities, and he sometimes brought the troubled Second Mile boys there for a workout, followed by a shower.
As he often did, Sandusky, whom everyone considered “a big kid” himself, was goofing around with the boy. They were snapping towels at each other, or perhaps slap boxing, according to both Sandusky and the boy in the shower. Mike McQueary, then 26, who had been a Penn State quarterback as an undergraduate, was halfway through his post-graduate education, while working as an assistant football coach. This Friday evening, he came to the Lasch building to retrieve tapes of possible recruits. On the way, he figured he might as well put his new shoes away in the locker room.
Before he opened the door to the locker room, McQueary heard slapping sounds. He thought they sounded sexual. As McQueary later put it when describing the scene, “Visualizations come to your head.” By the time he got to his locker at the near end of the wall, it had quieted down. Curious, he looked obliquely into the shower room through a mirror across the room and caught a glimpse of a boy in the shower. Then an arm reached out and pulled the boy back. Horrified, he assumed that he had just overheard the sounds of child sexual abuse. After closing his locker, he saw Jerry Sandusky walk out of the shower. Was his former coach a pedophile?
McQueary quickly left the building and called his father, John McQueary, and told him his suspicions. His father advised him to come right over to talk about it. Then John McQueary called his employer and friend, Dr. Jonathan Dranov, a nephrologist, asking him to come over and help them sort out Mike’s disturbing experience.
Dranov attempted, using the diagnostic and interviewing skills that he used with patients, to get a clear description of the scene that had so upset his friend’s son. Dranov was unable to get Mike McQueary to put into words anything sexual he had seen, in spite of asking several times, “But what did you see?” McQueary explained that he had seen a boy in the shower, and that an arm had then reached out to pull him back. Dranov asked if the boy had looked scared or upset. No. Did Mike actually see any sexual act? No. McQueary kept returning to the “sexual” sounds.
Upon the advice of his father and Dr. Dranov, Mike McQueary took his concerns to legendary head coach Joe Paterno at his home the next day. Apparently because McQueary did not actually witness anything sexual, they did not suggest he contact the police, nor did they feel called upon to do so.
This was the only initiative McQueary ever took connected with the shower incident. Paterno subsequently told his immediate supervisor, Athletic Director Tim Curley, about it, who told Vice President Gary Schultz and university President Graham Spanier. Curley and Schultz met with McQueary to hear what he had seen and heard. From that conversation, they concluded that Sandusky had been “horsing around” with a kid and that, while it was not sexual abuse, it wasn’t a good idea, particularly because they remembered that a parent had complained back in 1998 about Sandusky showering with her child (details on that incident shortly).
So Curley told Sandusky that as a result of someone (he didn’t name McQueary) complaining about the shower incident, he should stop working out with Second Mile kids on campus, and there the matter was left, case closed.
McQueary apparently calmed down and accepted that he may have overreacted and that perhaps Sandusky had just been “horsing around.” He remained at least overtly friendly with Jerry Sandusky over the following years. He signed up for the Sandusky Celebrity Golf Event in the fall of 2001, just four months after the shower incident, then took part in other Sandusky charity-related events, such as flag football fund-raisers coached by Sandusky in March 2002 and April 2004 and another golf event in 2003.
By the time the police questioned McQueary about the shower incident in late 2010, he couldn’t remember exactly when it occurred, and he said that it happened during spring break of 2002, more than a year after the actual date. At the time, McQueary was a 6’ 4”, 220-pound 26-year-old. Some critics would later question why, if he had witnessed horrifying child sexual abuse, he would not have rushed in to put a stop to the behavior.
McQueary’s story changed several times after the police told him that they knew Sandusky was a pedophile, as we will see in Chapter 12. In response to the police telling him that Sandusky was a child molester, McQueary searched his decade-old memory and now “remembered” something that he had not reported back in 2001 -- that he had seen Sandusky with his hips moving against a boy’s backside in the shower.
In short, Mike McQueary did not witness Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a 10-year-old boy in the shower, although he later came to believe that he had. At the time of the incident, he overheard slapping sounds and interpreted them as being sexual.
As far as public opinion is concerned, none of that matters. Magic Mike testified on more than one occasion that he told PSU (Curley and Schultz) that he saw Sandusky having sex with a boy. You can attempt to discredit that all you want. No one is paying attention. As far as public opinion goes, Mike saw Sandusky having sex with a kid and PSU is guilty of not doing anything/enough about it. Nothing will change that unless Mike comes out and says that he lied and told PSU a different story and that ain't hapenin.'
He testified that he saw something going on, and assumed it was sex. He never testified he saw them having sex.
Parse this all you like. PSU's reputation was trashed and that's going to stick forever.
"It is time to come together and devote our energies solely to education, research, and the advancement of one of America’s great institutions of higher learning."
Emphasis on "solely." To me that means no longer fighting about what has happened in the past, but instead focusing on anything we Penn Staters can do to make Penn State the best institution of higher learning it can be. IMO, that means not fighting the school, not withholding donations, etc.
For this to truly happen they need to listen to the majority of alumni and the community at large and honor Joe properly. If it weren’t for him PSU would maybe on the level of Bucknell academically and athletically.
Maybe, but I don't think there should be a goal greater than "devot[ing] our energies solely to education, research, and the advancement of one of America’s great institutions of higher learning." Also, we're never getting that money back. It simply isn't happening. I can't bring myself to waste time and energy on things that will never occur.
It will never be fully restored. There is not a single thing that could be done to "fully restore" his reputation. Richard Jewell was unequivocally found to have been innocent, but his reputation was never fully restored. So you're holding out for the impossible. That's not a good position to be IMO.
Kind of funny.
Myers couldn't remember when a picture of him posing with Sandusky had been taken, even though it was at Myers' own wedding.
Myers couldn't remember telling a couple of state troopers who interviewed him in 2011 that Sandusky had never abused him.
Myers couldn't remember what he told a private investigator, that Mike McQueary was a liar, and that nothing sexual ever happened in the shower. And finally, Myers couldn't remember what he told the state attorney general's office after he flipped, and was claiming that Jerry had abused him.
Myers made all these fuzzy statements during a Nov. 4, 2016 hearing where he was called as a witness as part of Sandusky's bid for a new trial. A 48-page transcript of that hearing was released for the first time earlier this week, in response to a request from a curious reporter for a major mainstream media news outlet. Myers' pathetic performance on the witness stand proves what a screwed-up case this is, featuring overreaching prosecutors and a hysterical news media.
The media blew it in part because they showed no skepticism about witnesses like Myers, who, going by the transcript, clearly wasn't credible.
Myers, who was on the witness stand for less than an hour before Centre County Senior Judge John M. Cleland, said he couldn't recall or didn't remember 34 times.
Either he was dealing with early-onset Alzheimer's, or else he was lying about everything.
Before Myers was brought in as a witness, Sandusky was sworn in and the judge explained to him that since nobody knew what Myers was going to say, his testimony "could be harmful to your case."
So is this a chance you're willing to take, the judge asked. Sandusky told the judge his mind was made up.
"It is my decision to have Allan Myers testify," Sandusky told the judge.
Myers, a former Marine, testified that he originally got to know the former Penn State assistant football coach through his Second Mile charity.
"Did you think of Mr. Sandusky as a father figure," Alexander Lindsay, Sandusky's lawyer, asked.
"Yes, I did," Myers said.
Myers was shown a picture of himself posing with Sandusky at Myers's wedding. Lindsay asked if Myers remembered when that picture was taken.
"That I do not remember," Myers said.
Lindsay showed Myers a photo of a football camp when Myers served as a coach, and posed for a picture with some boys, along with Sandusky. Lindsay asked Myers how old he was in the photo.
"I don't remember," Myers said. "I don't even know what year that was."
"Well, were you an adult," Lindsay asked. "Do you know that?"
"I wasn't an adult," Myers said.
"Can you give us any estimate of your age," the lawyer asked.
"No," Myers said.
Myers recalled that he lived in Sandusky's home "right after I graduated high school to attend Penn State."
"And I left there because he [Sandusky] was controlling and I left," Myers said. "And that was the end that I ever lived with him."
Sandusky was controlling, Myers said, but he didn't say anything about Sandusky being abusive.
Lindsay asked Myers if he remembered being interviewed on Sept. 20, 2011, by state Trooper James Ellis and Corporal Joseph A. Letter.
"I recall being interviewed," Myers said.
Lindsay gave Myers a copy of the police report and asked if it reflected what he told the state troopers.
"Yes," Myers said, before snapping at the lawyer, "Please don't raise your voice at me."
Lindsay asked if Myers remembered telling the troopers that he and Sandusky had often worked out at the Lasch Building.
"I don't remember that interview," Myer said.
That's not happening without a wholesale change in leadership. If Sue believes otherwise, she's delusional.
I just consider myself a realist. Is our current leadership worse than elsewhere? Are we going to get better if we fight? If I think those answers are no, then what am I fighting for? I don't waste time chasing dreams that will never happen. I fight for and chase goals that can actually occur. If others want to hold out from PSU unless and until some impossible goal is achieved, they can of course do that. But I love this school, and like Sue, I won't harm it indefinitely in hopes of achieving something that will never be.
The jury was never supposed to be relevant.
Judge Cleland initially set the court date for May 14, 2012.[2] Then, in response to Amendola’s increasingly anguished complaints that he had not even received the transcripts of the Grand Jury testimony, Cleland delayed the trial by a mere three weeks, until June 5.[3] Astonishingly, Pennsylvania law specified that prosecutors didn’t have to hand over testimony given during secret grand jury proceedings until each witness testified at trial.[4] The Grand Jury had essentially amounted to a kangaroo court. Not only was Amendola not allowed to cross-examine witnesses there, he was not even allowed to be present. Judge Barry Feudale, presiding judge of the 30th grand juries, ruled that the Sandusky defense team could have access to the grand jury transcripts only ten days before the first witness was scheduled to testify.
Amendola and Rominger had to speed-read through the thousands of pages of discovery material that they did get. For a while, they couldn’t even get the prosecution to give them the names and birthdates of the alleged victims, along with the exact dates on which they were supposed to have been abused by Sandusky. Amendola also wanted the names of anyone who had come forward to claim abuse but who "did not fit the commonwealth's profile and/or the report was deemed to be false,” but that was not forthcoming, either.
Neither was information on whatever the prosecution had discovered on Sandusky’s computer, probably because they had found nothing incriminating whatsoever – no child pornography, which was surprising if Sandusky was the compulsive pedophile he was supposed to be.·[5]
“We’re really being pushed to kind of decipher this stuff,” Amendola said in February 2012 about the reams of material. “We’ll be prepared to try the case whenever the judge says, but we’re playing a lot of catch-up right now.”[6]
Amendola kept complaining. He threatened to file a motion to dismiss the case, since it was very difficult to prepare a defense without exact times and dates of alleged offenses.
“All we are asking is [for prosecutors] to go back to these accusers and say, ‘You went to football games — which ones?’ Give us at least something that we could check,” Amendola begged.
Prosecuting attorney Joe McGettigan responded that “many of the alleged victims were abused several times a week, or month,” so it wasn’t possible to pin down a particular time. Besides, “They didn’t want to remember what happened and were even encouraged by Sandusky to forget,” he said.
Here was another red flag that the alleged victims may have been in therapy searching for repressed memories, but no one picked up on it. When the prosecutors said they wouldn’t provide the information, Judge Cleland commented, "I think the answer is they can't."
He thus declared that it was “futile” to demand such details. According to reporter Sara Ganim, “the state Attorney General's Office countered that Sandusky is accused of abusing boys who are now men, who were pressured into forgetting what happened and many times abused weekly for many years.”[7]
Despite Amendola’s strenuous objections and repeated requests for a continuance, Cleland denied the requests and stuck to his promised June 5 trial date, which would take place in Centre County, where State College and Penn State were located. Incredibly, Jerry Sandusky had instructed Amendola to oppose a change in venue, assuming that his local reputation would benefit him.[8] Instead, the last place on earth that he was likely to get a fair trial was in Penn State territory, where the case had received a huge amount of horrendous publicity, and Penn State fans were bitter and angry at the impact on Coach Paterno and their beloved institution.
On May 30, in a private unscheduled meeting with the judge and prosecutors, Amendola pled for a delay of the trial to allow him time to prepare for it properly. He wanted to call a psychologist as an expert witness, but the psychologist had been unable to prepare his reports because he hasn't been given access to the grand jury testimony. His jury consultant was in Puerto Rico on vacation. One of Amendola’s investigators was having surgery. Amendola and Rominger didn’t have enough time to review all the evidence. They couldn’t call Gary Schultz or Tim Curley because they had exercised their fifth-amendment rights. Cleland again denied the requested continuance, saying "No trial date is ever perfect, but some days are better than others."[9]
Later that same day, in an official pre-trial hearing, Amendola asked Cleland to throw out three of the ten alleged victims before the trial. Victim 2, the unnamed Allan Myers, should be thrown out because Mike McQueary’s version of the shower incident kept changing, including the date on which it was supposed to have occurred.
Victim 8, the phantom victim supposedly witnessed by the janitor who now had dementia, should be thrown out because it was pure hearsay. And Victim 6, Zachary Konstas, should be thrown out because the district attorney had decided in 1998 that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute, so to try it again amounted to a kind of double jeopardy. Cleland denied all of Amendola’s requests. All ten alleged victims would be presented to the jury.[10]
On June 5, just before the process of picking a jury commenced, Amendola tried one more tactic. He filed a motion to withdraw as Sandusky’s lawyer, “based on the lack of preparation of all the things that are going on, most notably the absence of our experts and jury consultant.” A “key witness” was unavailable. “My office is still copying materials which we cannot send out to anybody because they’re all confidential. They’re all grand jury materials. My staff is ready to quit.”
He said that “some day when people talk to my staff and get a real flavor for what was going on in my office for the past 30, 60 days, they’ll have a better understanding that this is not lawyering.” The reality was that “we have been so far behind, just keeping up with the discovery materials and trying to do due diligence… but we’re at a loss.” They hadn’t even had time to serve subpoenas to potential witnesses. He concluded that “we’re not prepared to go to trial at this time.”
Co-counsel Karl Rominger added that he had called the Pennsylvania Bar Ethics Hotline the day before, and they had called his attention to Rule 17.1, a lawyer’s “duty of competency,” and that Rule 1.16 called upon a judge to ask lawyers to withdraw if the judge could tell that they were completely unprepared. The lawyer who answered the hotline said that they would normally render a formal opinion in such cases, but since they knew it was the Sandusky case, they didn’t want to get involved.
I don't take your comments personally, I completely understand and appreciate your reasoning and position. I'm just of the opinion there isn't a realistic option whereby that $100M goes any further. I wish it were so, but I think we have the best we can hope for, sad as that may be.
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