It seems pretty clear after all of the discussion since this went down.
1) MM reported sexual sounds to his dad and his doctor friend. MM, his dad, and the mandatory reporter doctor never went to police. Instead MM reported horseplay to JoePa. So MM, his dad, and the doc did not believe a crime occurred.
2) JoePa took this horseplay up the chain to the head of PSU police and the University president. He demanded Sandusky be barred from his facilities based on horseplay. Joe even followed up with MM to ensure it was being handled appropriately in his view. Joe was lauded by all including the state for his cooperation throughout. The NCAA later adopted JoePa's way of handling the report as it's official process to handle such matters.
3. C, S, and S received reports of horseplay and debated the appropriate response. They reported this to TSM officials who had responsibility for oversight of both Sandusky and the children with whom he interacted including any legal matters. TSM and executive director Raykovitz despite being a licensed child psychologist and mandatory reporter did not report the incident and seemingly did not limit or monitor Sandusky's interaction with children thereafter. Later, TSM employed a massive shredding operation to destroy any evidence.
4. The Penn State Board and TSM had numerous overlaps and it was clearly decided by said board members that they did not want to bear personal liability for the eventual lawsuits. Therefore they fired and made JoePa a scapegoat and then worked with the governor to exact a vendetta against Spanier while pinning it all on Penn State knowing this would easily be the shiny object the puppets in the media would follow. This was a deal that was cut to protect BOT asses and exact political revenge. Of course we know Surma will rot in hell for using the opportunity to exact revenge on JoePa for his perceived slight to his son. The NCAA and B1G piling on for their own purposes helped to fan the flames of the media puppets and line their own corrupt pockets.
5. It is also quite possible to likely that some former TSM board members, big donors, and affiliates were also abusing children less obviously than Sandusky and wanted to use PSU for cover. In late 1997 there was a former cheerleading coach that also left town very quickly after being accused of sexually assaulting a male college student who was trying out for cheerleading. So I certainly don't think the abuse was limited to Sandusky but it is clear that TSM was the conduit for most of it.
6. The Sandusky trial was a sham and the new info on the grand jury leaks is evidence of criminal behavior on the part of the prosecutors. MM changed his story with the benefit of "hindsight" and a whole lot of prosecutor strong arming to include penis pics. MM's changed story warps the assessment of C,S, and S's actions by giving us a completely different event than what was originally reported. A decade plus of poorly remembered event details and mental reshaping doesn't help.
7. The bottom line is that JoePa, the football program lightning rod, C,S, and S, the entire PSU community, and all alumni take the fall courtesy of puppets in the media and a corrupt PA court system that were easily manipulated by PSU BOT, the governor, the NCAA (and B1G who was mostly piling on because they could). TSM shredded their evidence and the real co-conspirators there merely suffered some diminished public respect but otherwise came out unscathed and some are possibly still abusing children today.
There could not have been much TSM overlap.
Most of the notes in the released files appear to be FBI interviews conducted in 2012 with Second Mile board members in both the State College office and other regional offices. The interviews described how Second Mile board members reacted to the Sandusky revelations dating back to as early as 2010 and 2011.
"Not a single person admitted to knowing about Sandusky's crimes prior to the presentment," Snedden said. Two people claim to know about "missing donor money," but nothing else is said about that subject in the rest of the released files.
The documents released by the feds are heavily redacted, but there are many references to Second Mile board members circling the wagons. References were made in the documents to false allegations being made by a "disgruntled mother" and a "disgruntled kid."
The documents are more noticeable for what they don't say. Such as in the issue of jurisdiction involving the Sandusky investigation. If, for example, in their investigation of The Second Mile, if the feds any found any evidence of a federal crime, such as Sandusky crossing state lines with sex abuse victims, "They would have taken it [the investigation] away from the state for prosecution," Snedden said.
"But they [the feds] didn't do any of that," Snedden said after reviewing the documents. "There's no indication they did that."
Instead, the attorney general pursued the Sandusky investigation, and the feds pursued The Second File.
"Sadly, neither focused on political vindictiveness and corruption, which is exactly what happened here," Snedden said.
Snedden has his own experience with a previous secret federal investigation into the Penn State scandal. In 2012, working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, Snedden did a background investigation of former Penn State President Graham Spanier, to see if Spanier's high level security clearance should be renewed by the government.
As part of that investigation, Snedden investigated whether Spanier had orchestrated a coverup of Sandusky's crimes. Snedden's investigation
concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State, because there was no sex crime to cover up. As far as Snedden was concerned, Mike McQueary, the guy who witnessed a naked Sandusky allegedly abusing a boy in the Penn State showers, was not a credible witness.
Spanier's clearance was renewed as the result of an 110-page report that Snedden wrote back in 2012, a report that was declassified earlier this year.
In the investigation of The Second Mile, the released files include copies of FBI interviews with eight witnesses whose identities are redacted. The interviews are recorded on FBI "302s," the number of the form that interview summaries were typed on by FBI agents.
"I see a lot of interviews with a lot of different people, a wide range of positions in the Second Mile hierarchy," Snedden said. "And I don't see any people admitting to knowing anything concrete about Sandusky."
In the interviews, there are quotes from woman who "had always heard positive things about the organization. She had never heard anything bad about TSM founder Jerry Sandusky."
Another woman interviewed by the FBI described Sandusky's "nondescript entrance and presence" at a March 25, 2011 "Celebration of Excellence" event in Hershey.
"Sandusky was not acknowledged during the event formally by TSM," the woman told the FBI.
"On March 31, 2011, the Patriot News published an article about the grand jury investigation" of Sandusky," the woman told the FBI. "The article was everywhere and everyone was talking about it."
"She didn't recall seeing any evidence of financial improprieties or anything otherwise questionable," the FBI 302 stated. "She did not personally observe any misuse of donations."
"The general mood of the room was that of denial," the woman told the FBI. "Everyone appeared to be in support of Sandusky and TSM."
In another 302, an unidentified witness said, "He did not observe any inappropriate behavior." On the same form, someone, possibly Sandusky himself stated the complainant "was a disgruntled kid, not associated with TSM. He was not aware at the time that the allegation was sexual in nature"
Another 302 notes that one board member was "shocked after reading the indictment." In addition, "four or five board members in particular were upset that they were never notified. The exchange was heated."
In the 302s, there was discussion of an earlier 1998 allegation that Sandusky had abused another youth in the shower, but "the allegations were considered 'unfounded.'"
There is also discussion in the 302s about an alleged allegation involving the Clinton County Children and Youth Services[CYS].
"CYS did have a safety plan in the event a child was a victim of sexual abuse," the 302 stated. "They did not need to enact their safety plan for SANDUSKY's case because the allegation was not founded and all actions taken by CYS were 'by the book.' "
Bagwell said he has filed multiple FOI requests as part of his Penn State
Sunshine Fund. Bagwell, a former newspaper reporter who is now a web developer, said he filed his requests because he was seeking primary source documents from the Sandusky investigation.
"What frustrated me about everything since the very beginning was a complete and utter lack of transparency," Bagwell said.
In his court battle with the U.S. Attorney's office, Bagwell said, the feds indicated that there were some 300,000 pages of documents related to The Second Mile investigation. The feds only released 1,000 pages and "withheld tends of thousands more for reasons not apparent at this time," Bagwell said.
Bagwell, himself a former journalist, said the press coverage of the scandal has been "abysmal, reactionary and sensationalistic," as well as "factually incorrect." Bagwell said he hopes the newly released documents will have a calming effect on Penn State Nation.
"Penn Staters are still screaming for an investigation for years of The Second Mile," Bagwell said. "Well, it turns out there was an investigation."
"My overall view is that everything here [in the documents] seems to support the idea that The Second Mile didn't knowingly do anything wrong," Bagwell said. "The Penn Staters who are clamoring for heads at The Second Mile to roll, I don't think that's an outcome that's appropriate at this point in time."
