Here is a link to the youtube replay of yesterday's Search Warrant show with Graham Spanier, John Snedden and Dick Anderson. Graham was more candid about the whole fiasco than he has been in the past.
FC: ESPN takes on Penn State once again
- Thread starter GulfCoastLion
- Start date
When you bite the hand that feeds you, you tend to get fired. Exception would be academia - which is well-noted for lack of accountability.
Couple of things here:
1) While I'm sure some PSU fans thought that PSU was "better than everyone else", I think a more realistic take is that PSU did (or at least tried very hard to) do it "the right way." That is not to say they are the only school who endeavored to do that, but some schools clearly did not. I will point out that PSU is now the ONLY D1 school that has never had a major NCAA infraction (https://web3.ncaa.org/lsdbi/search?types=major&q). I think that speaks volumes about how PSU handles things and it IS different than many schools.
2) The Iowa wrestling comment is hysterical. While PSU has an active and rabid fan base, if PSU was "buying" players in any sport, I can assure you it would be football and I don't think there are any allegations of that anywhere.
Fair comments but this notion is fostered by universities (and pro sports) nationwide. Go to any city and wait for a 'we have the best fans in the nation" comment. You'll hear it in a minimum of one week. Living in Ohio, I hear this about tOSU and ND all the time. (tOSU had 65,000 at their spring game in iffy weather).
But to me, any organization has its major flaws. I never thought that was about "Penn State" as I've seen too much go down at tailgate parties and have been told of players doing some crappy stuff over the last several decades. But I never thought that about Joe Paterno and I never thought the university would purposely stab Joe in the back. If they can do that to Joe, who can't they do it too (or who wouldn't they do it too)? I could go root for tOSU or Michigan or Michigan State...all of whom protected their coaches and focused on the perp (the president of Sparty's case got thrown out a few weeks ago with a stern rebuke coming from the judge hammering the prosecutors). But I have a hard time believing in their football programs. Probably worse, the state of PA threw Joe under the bus and one of the worst is now running for Gov.
Shit sandwich all around, to be honest. But it isn't PSU and it isn't PA. Take care of your families because nobody else will. In fact, they will attack your families if it benefits them. That is what I've learned through all of this + the last ten years of watching politics.
If you bragged about that fact to the average college football fan, they will laugh in your face. While technically correct, citing this in the aftermath of the Sandusky stuff is not going to win you any favors.
Good comments Obliviax.
It is normal for fans of a program to express pride in that program. That is what being a fan is all about. I don't think it is very wise to express that pride by using phrases such as "the right way", which tends to imply that everyone else is "wrong". The person that wrote that post apparently realized that there is significant backlash due to this when things go wrong, and things went wrong in a big way. I know of no other program in the country with fans that put themselves and their coach on a pedestal like Penn State fans.
Fans can still spout such meaningless statements about no NCAA infractions. Big F'n whoop - who here respects the NCAA? But when it comes to bragging about "the right way", be prepared to take a big bite of that sandwich you referred to. And rightly so, it isn't up to PSU fans or coaches to dictate what is right or wrong to the rest of the CFB world.
A much wiser phrase would have been "we do things OUR way". Focus on keeping your own house in order and let others determine what is "right" for theirs.
It doesn't make it less true. The unjustified sanctions that PSU imposed upon themselves related to Sandusky were NOT NCAA infractions. PSU broke no NCAA rules in that case.
Whether or not you respect the NCAA is up to you, but the fact that there are 350 schools that participate in D1 athletics and there is only ONE that has never been found guilty of a major infraction is a noteworthy statistic.
Agree and disagree. At the time, the NCAA powers were Oklahoma and a few SEC teams that were clearly cheating and not acting in the interest of the student athletes. the NFL was replete with kids that couldn't read or write but graduated from their university. Joe was the only major coach I know that really hammered the NCAA on doing it the right way. That wasn't done by Schembechler or Woody or Switzer.
There are tons of NCAA rules that were ushered in by Paterno. I can name several. You should go back and listen to Joe's presentation to the BOT after winning a national championship.
While all programs weren't dirty, most were. But I feel like your post is from someone that didn't follow college football in the 70's and 80's. Paterno was the standard-bearer for better governance and got a lot of arrows pointed at him as a result.
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True, it wasn’t an NCAA violation. But ask almost any observer whether they’d rather be associated w/ (1) a coach paying a kid or some kids selling merch to buy tattoos, and (2) a pedophile rape scandal, I think most would opt for #1.
Of course, there are PSU fans who honestly believe no crime happened, so I guess that’s one perspective.
I think you are being quite disingenuous. Penn State football had zero to do with Jerry Sandusky's pedophilia. he was an employee who turned out to be a criminal. What you are describing is analogous to a player being arrested at age 30 and somehow their football program being at fault. Paterno did exactly as he should have done by NCAA rules then, and now (after a several-year investigation). You report it to your boss and to someone outside the sports reporting structure.
Even if a crime happened, it had nothing to do with PSU or PSU athletics and certainly wasn't an NCAA issue.
But that isn't the point; the point was to show that while I don't endorse PSU folks running around saying "We are better than other schools" there is actual DATA that shows PSU historically has and currently does do things differently than other schools with regards to NCAA rules (i.e. PSU follow the rules).
Absolutely would opt for #1.
Can't remember where I read it but there was a story about Woody Hayes buying a pair of pants for a kid that didn't have a decent pair. That is a blatant NCAA violation but I would applaud any coach that would do something like that.
Another that I read was about Bear Bryant. Seems like it was TCU they were playing and a TCU player had his neck/back broken on a play. Ended up paralyzed. Bryant set it up where the guy would never suffer financially for the rest of his life. Probably another infraction in some way or another but absolutely an admirable act.
Not all infractions are equal and some could be argued to be downright noble.
Many fans here like to boast about being right by the NCAA out of one side of their orifices while at the same time consider them to be a lame joke out of the other. So have at it, brag away. It means very little in the grand scheme of things - I don't see a lot of evidence that other programs want to emulate Penn State.
those are anecdotal events. go back and revisit Bear's racial issues and Joe's team refusing a bowl invitation because the hotel wouldn't allow black players. go back and review the notion of black QB's under Joe and those who played for the SEC back in the 70s.
I don't care if other programs want to emulate PSU. The rules (whether you agree with them or not) apply to everyone and PSU has quite obviously gone out of their way to follow them in a way that few (no?) other programs have.
Spanier told an anecdote on one of his interviews about being in his car during a horrible rain storm and seeing one Russ Rose's players walking in the rain. He actually called the compliance officer to see if it was against the rules to give her a ride home (it was) rather than just offer her a ride. While I'm not sure I would have done the same thing, but that demonstrates the mindset of "doing things by the book" at PSU.
This also is incongruent with the idea that anyone covered up any crimes for a former employee.
Bear's racial issues? Are you referring to him being restricted by the university not allowing black students to enroll? Or after they were allowed to enroll his problems in finding a black athlete that could be academically eligible? Not sure what racial issues to which you are referring.
I ran into Phil Knight after his tribute to Joe on the 1 st hole at the Masters years ago and “ thanked” him .. he just said Joe was a great man..
I read this thread and think back to 2011. Joe was exonerated during Sandusky's pre-trail hearing in December 2011. While he was still alive. Had Penn State done the right thing and delivered the mother of all defamation lawsuits to ESPN on November 13th immediately before they started running with their fictional narrative, putting them on notice that they would be subject to legal scrutiny, everything would be different.
Some highlights for those who haven't listened yet (I recommend you do):
6 min When ESPN approached Spanier for an interview they told him they thought the current media story was wrong and they wanted to set the record straight.
8 min Spanier said the BOT had distanced itself from the Freeh report.
9 min Spanier did 2 hours of interviews with ESPN and was on camera for less than a minute. They ignored all of the facts he gave them (he answered over 100 questions with factual information; they ignored all of it)
18 min Paterno always came to Spanier’s office; even though Spanier offered to come to Lasch; JVP was deferential to the University President. They occasionally met at each other’s houses on weekends (Spanier liked to go to Joe’s house because of Sue’s cookies).
22 min Some interesting context about what Spanier did for the federal government that required a security clearance (I didn’t previously realize exactly what that was)
27 min Spanier has multiple sources who said that Corbett promised that if he was elected governor he would remove Spanier as University President.
40 min Initial reports to C/S/S were very vague. They thought they were going above what was needed by talking to Sandusky and to TSM. That is the opposite of a coverup.
44 min Spanier offered to go back to the grand jury to clear up anything they had questions on. They declined. The GJ that indicted Spanier was NOT the GJ that Spanier testified before. It was solely based on Baldwin’s testimony (and we know that Baldwin was lying).
46 min They (PA OAG?) sent investigators to Chicago to interview Spanier’s family to verify that Spanier was abused as a child (he was, which obviously doesn’t match up with their story). The trauma the investigators grilling the family put Spanier’s elderly mother in the hospital and she subsequently died.
49 min Interesting comparison between being head of PSU and head of FBI (similar sized organizations) with regards to Freeh surely didn’t know everything going on at the FBI but expected Spanier to know everything going on at PSU.
52 min Dick Andersen gave some interesting insight from how the interviews with Freeh investigators went including threatening administrative assistants in Lasch (reducing several women to tears).
Also, Spanier has a memoir coming out this summer (not just about the scandal, but will be inclusive of that). Should be an interesting read.
University of Alabama's race issues are well documented...as are the bowls and govts respectively. Joe made a stand when he refused a bowl bid.
Paterno took over as the head coach in 1966 and ran into similar issues in 1969. With Penn State staring down a potential National Championship Cotton Bowl match-up, this time against the all-white University of Texas, instead of bringing his team down to Dallas again, the school opted for the Orange Bowl in Miami instead.
Paterno’s teams were long-regarded for their academic performance off the field as well as the high percentage of black players that graduated from the school. Penn State ranked number one in the New America Foundation’s Academic BCS teams in 2009 and 2011 — Paterno’s final season — graduating 80 percent of its football players in six years or less.
So paterno took a stand, when almost nobody else did, against racism. Yet, in your world, you believe he'd knowing allow a pedophile to coach the defense and, later, as a private citizen? Your theory doesn't hold water.
How Joe Paterno helped to racially integrate college football
theGRIO REPORT - One part of Joe Paterno's career that has been lost among his accomplishments, however, is that many of his early teams were at the forefront of racial integration in college football...
thegrio.com
Coach Paterno’s passion for the both the rule of law and social justice is fairly well documented. We’re just not allowed to talk about it anymore.University of Alabama's race issues are well documented...as are the bowls and govts respectively. Joe made a stand when he refused a bowl bid.
Paterno took over as the head coach in 1966 and ran into similar issues in 1969. With Penn State staring down a potential National Championship Cotton Bowl match-up, this time against the all-white University of Texas, instead of bringing his team down to Dallas again, the school opted for the Orange Bowl in Miami instead.Paterno’s teams were long-regarded for their academic performance off the field as well as the high percentage of black players that graduated from the school. Penn State ranked number one in the New America Foundation’s Academic BCS teams in 2009 and 2011 — Paterno’s final season — graduating 80 percent of its football players in six years or less.So paterno took a stand, when almost nobody else did, against racism. Yet, in your world, you believe he'd knowing allow a pedophile to coach the defense and, later, as a private citizen?
Your theory doesn't hold water.
How Joe Paterno helped to racially integrate college football
theGRIO REPORT - One part of Joe Paterno's career that has been lost among his accomplishments, however, is that many of his early teams were at the forefront of racial integration in college football...
University of Alabama's race issues are well documented...as are the bowls and govts respectively. Joe made a stand when he refused a bowl bid.
Paterno took over as the head coach in 1966 and ran into similar issues in 1969. With Penn State staring down a potential National Championship Cotton Bowl match-up, this time against the all-white University of Texas, instead of bringing his team down to Dallas again, the school opted for the Orange Bowl in Miami instead.Paterno’s teams were long-regarded for their academic performance off the field as well as the high percentage of black players that graduated from the school. Penn State ranked number one in the New America Foundation’s Academic BCS teams in 2009 and 2011 — Paterno’s final season — graduating 80 percent of its football players in six years or less.So paterno took a stand, when almost nobody else did, against racism. Yet, in your world, you believe he'd knowing allow a pedophile to coach the defense and, later, as a private citizen?
Your theory doesn't hold water.
How Joe Paterno helped to racially integrate college football
theGRIO REPORT - One part of Joe Paterno's career that has been lost among his accomplishments, however, is that many of his early teams were at the forefront of racial integration in college football...
Further evidence for why Joe was a great man who did many great and noble things that should make us proud.
But ultimately, nobody here will ever definitively know what Joe truly knew or what he didn't. Neither his supporters nor his detractors. I think it's very plausible that Joe and others knew that Sandusky was behaving inappropriately but perhaps not to the level of rape, and rather than involve the police they decided to handle it in-house. Alternatively, perhaps they knew rape was occurring and figured they could get through to Jerry without bringing in the police. It's ultimately impossible to say. But good people are very capable of having lapses in moral judgment or miscalculating based on what they know to be true. Particularly when confronted with allegations against a close friend that are so shocking that it defies belief. Addressing the issue in-house is a response that many good and decent people would select. And it's the wrong response.
Regardless, it's a stain that will forever adorn Joe's legacy. Even if his decisions were well-intentioned, clearly not enough was done.
But you didn't say UofA's racial issues, you said Bryant's racial issues. Bryant tried to integrate his teams at Kentucky and Texas A&M, finally able to have success doing so at Alabama. Specifically to your statement about Bryant, what racial issues are you talking about?University of Alabama's race issues are well documented...as are the bowls and govts respectively. Joe made a stand when he refused a bowl bid.
Paterno took over as the head coach in 1966 and ran into similar issues in 1969. With Penn State staring down a potential National Championship Cotton Bowl match-up, this time against the all-white University of Texas, instead of bringing his team down to Dallas again, the school opted for the Orange Bowl in Miami instead.Paterno’s teams were long-regarded for their academic performance off the field as well as the high percentage of black players that graduated from the school. Penn State ranked number one in the New America Foundation’s Academic BCS teams in 2009 and 2011 — Paterno’s final season — graduating 80 percent of its football players in six years or less.So paterno took a stand, when almost nobody else did, against racism. Yet, in your world, you believe he'd knowing allow a pedophile to coach the defense and, later, as a private citizen?
Your theory doesn't hold water.
How Joe Paterno helped to racially integrate college football
theGRIO REPORT - One part of Joe Paterno's career that has been lost among his accomplishments, however, is that many of his early teams were at the forefront of racial integration in college football...
Really? Now a coaches intent and character mean something to you? Didn't paterno report Sandusky, on more than one occasion, and also follow up with McQueary? Now you are saying a coach wasn't all powerful to change his university?
I caught you in a trap and you fell right in. you have an agenda.
Ugh. Such a maddeningly simplistic, retrospective take. MM gave a brief, vague, squishy account. Dr. Dranov asked him 3 times if he saw anything of a sexual nature. 3 times he said no. This explains everything that followed.
You said "go back and revisit Bear's racial issues". I simply asked for clarification on what those issues were. I haven't seen you come up with any, other than he was the coach at some schools that were not integrated at the time. If you are going to throw that card I'd think you would have something to back it up.
I think JS was reported on many occasions to many people. A lot of whom were trained and professionals in the field. People who spent a lifetime learning to identify and prosecute pedophiles. Yet, Joe Paterno, who probably did more than anyone else, is the one who gets accused. Go figure.
You should read the Jim Clemente report. A guy who was abused and spent his career advocating and defending victims. HIs talked was that JS, like priests, used his position to mask his proclivities. Worse, he used his closeness and affection for young men in this "they just need a father figure" notion to groom and abuse. He took creepy to a new level but creepy, in fact grooming, isn't illegal. Until a couple of officers put together several independent incidents, nothing happened. He wasn't arrested after three sting operations. he wasn't arrested when a janitor saw him "wrestling". He wasn't arrested when MM saw him through a mirror and failed to do anything until the opportunity to ID the child was lost. The second mile failed to keep records.
But its all Joes fault, amIright?
I am not surprised you are trying to obfuscate. You just want to blame joe. Bear's "racial issues" were the university. Why didn't he do something about it? That is what you've asked of Joe. Why not ask the same of Bryant? Switzer? etc.
We all talk about the MM incident and the fact that what he reported to Joe wasn't explicitly of a sexual nature -- aside from "sexual noises" and Sandusky emerging from the shower room, which itself should have raised concerns. I get it -- there was reasonable ambiguity as to what Jerry was actually doing.
But then there's the 1998 incident that Joe apparently conveniently forgot. Jerry hugging an 11-year-old boy while naked in the shower. Who the hell does that? No charges filed, but clearly PSU leadership was made aware. And clearly it didn't bother them enough to do anything. And when they're informed of potential issues in 2001, still not enough for them to go to the police about it.
We all have the benefit of hindsight here, but it's also clear that as early as '98 we knew that Jerry had issues and was behaving in ways that warranted closer scrutiny than what he got. It was an enormous blindspot -- it happens, even to good people. But can't ignore that it did in fact happen.
You were the one that threw the race card, not me. I asked you for specifics and you have none. And just to clarify, Bryant integrated the Alabama football team. That is pretty damn admirable.
What we knew in 98 was Jerry was cleared of any wrong doing by all the relevant authorities. Further, what we knew is the state continued to allow Jerry to adopt kids.
Joe didn't conveniently forget anything and your an idiot for implying such nonsense.
Don't pretend like you would have had all the answers because you're deluding yourself.
The only fact that matters is Joe followed the law to a T at all times and that's all he's allowed to do and required to do.
I love the arrogance of our society to sit in judgement on others regardless of circumstances or eras. Absolutely disgusting.
Remember, MM had a price on his head.
He had received several death threats. The same day, newly appointed Penn State President Rodney Erickson announced that McQueary was being placed on administrative leave “after it became clear he could not continue coaching.” Erickson pointedly continued: "Never again should anyone at Penn State feel scared to do the right thing.”
McQueary was hard to miss around town. He stood six feet five inches, topped by short bristles of bright orange-red hair, which gave him the nickname Big Red. Now people were asking one another, “Why didn’t Big Red stop it?”
On Tuesday, McQueary had called an emotional meeting with his Penn State players. He looked pale and his hands were shaking.
“I’m not sure what is going to happen to me,” he said. He cried as he talked about the Sandusky shower incident. According to one of the players, “He said he had some regret that he didn’t stop it.”
Then McQueary revealed that he himself had been molested as a child. Perhaps because he had been sexually abused, McQueary was particularly alert to possible abuse, and so he leaped to the conclusion that the slapping sounds he heard in the Lasch Building locker room were sexual.
It is clear from the testimony of Dr. Dranov and others, however, that McQueary did not witness sodomy that night in February 2001. He thought something sexual was happening, but as he emphasized later, the entire episode lasted 30 to 45 seconds, he heard the sounds for only a few seconds, and his glance in the mirror was even quicker.
Ten years after the event, his memory had shifted and amplified, after the police told him that they had other Sandusky victims. Under that influence, his memory made the episode much more sexually graphic.
As I have written previously, all memory is reconstructive and is subject to distortion. That is particularly true when many years have intervened, and when current attitudes influence recall of those distant events. It is worthwhile quoting here from psychologist Daniel Reisberg’s 2014 book, The Science of Perception and Memory: A Pragmatic Guide for the Justice System.
“Connections between a specific memory and other, more generic knowledge can allow the other knowledge to intrude into our recollection,” Reiserberg notes. “Thus, a witness might remember the robber threatening violence merely because threats are part of the witness’s cognitive ‘schema’ for how robberies typically unfold.”
That appears to be what happened to McQueary, who had a “schema” of what child sexual abuse in a shower would look like. He had thought at the time that some kind of sexual activity must have occurred in the shower. The police were telling him that they had other witnesses claiming that Sandusky had molested them. Thinking back to that long-ago night, McQueary now visualized a scene that never occurred, but the more he rehearsed it in his memory, the more real it became to him.
“As your memory for an episode becomes more and more interwoven with other thoughts you’ve had about that episode, it can become difficult to keep track of which elements are linked to the episode because they were, in truth, part of the episode itself and which are linked merely because they are associated with the episode in your thoughts,” Reisberg writes. That process “can produce intrusion errors – so that elements that were part of your thinking get misremembered as being actually part of the original experience.”
In conclusion, Reisberg writes, “It is remarkably easy to alter someone’s memory, with the result that the past as the person remembers it differs from the past as it really was.”
On Nov. 23, 2010, McQueary wrote out a statement for the police in which he said he had glanced in a mirror at a 45 degree angle over his right shoulder and saw the reflection of a boy facing a wall with Sandusky standing directly behind him.
“I am certain that sexual acts/the young boy being sodomized was occuring [sic],” McQueary wrote. “I looked away. In a hurried/hastened state, I finished at my locker. I proceeded out of the locker room. While walking I looked directly into the shower and both the boy and Jerry Sandusky looked directly in my direction.”
But it is extremely unlikely that this ten-year-later account is accurate. Dranov was adamant that McQueary did not say that he saw anything sexual. When former Penn State football player Gary Gray went to see Joe Paterno in December 2011, the month before he died, Gray told Paterno that he still had a hard time believing that Sandusky had molested those children. “You and me both,” Paterno said.
In a letter to the Penn State Board of Trustees after the trial, Gray recalled their conversation about McQueary’s telling Paterno about the shower incident. “Joe said that McQueary had told him that he had seen Jerry engaged in horseplay or horsing around with a young boy. McQueary wasn’t sure what was happening, but he said that it made him feel uncomfortable. In recounting McQueary’s conversation to me, Coach Paterno did not use any terms with sexual overtones.”
Similarly, in November 2011, when biographer Joe Posnanski asked Paterno about what McQueary told him back in 2001, Paterno told him, “I think he said he didn’t really see anything. He said he might have seen something in a mirror. But he told me he wasn’t sure he saw anything. He just said the whole thing made him uncomfortable.”
If McQueary had told Paterno, Curley or other administrators that he had seen Sandusky in such a sexual position with the boy, it is inconceivable that they would not have turned the matter over to the police.
This was not a “cover-up.” Sandusky didn’t even work for Penn State by the time of the incident, so what was there to cover up? Paterno and Sandusky had never really liked one another, and Paterno was famed for his integrity and honesty. If he thought Sandusky was molesting a child in the shower, he would undoubtedly have called the police.
It is clear that Paterno, Curley, Schultz, and Spanier took the incident for what it apparently was – McQueary hearing slapping sounds that he misinterpreted as being sexual.
McQueary gave five different versions of what he heard and saw, but all were reconstructed memories over a decade after the fact. They changed a bit over time, but none of them are reliable.
McQueary had painted himself into a difficult corner. If he had really seen something so horrendous, why hadn’t he rushed into the shower to stop it? Why hadn’t he gone to the police? Why hadn’t he followed up with Paterno or other Penn State administrators to make sure something was being done? Why had he continued to act friendly towards Sandusky, even taking part in golfing events with him?
When angry people began to ask these questions, that first week in November 2011, McQueary emailed a friend. "I did stop it not physically but made sure it was stopped when I left that locker room,” he wrote. He now said that he had in essence contacted the police about the incident by alerting Joe Paterno, which led to Gary Schultz talking to him about it, and Schultz was the administrator the campus police reported to.
“No one can imagine my thoughts or wants to be in my shoes for those 30-45 seconds," McQueary said. "Trust me…. I am getting hammered for handling this the right way ... or what I thought at the time was right … I had to make tough, impacting quick decisions.”
Subsequently, McQueary changed his story somewhat. He now recalled that he had loudly slammed his locker door, which made Sandusky stop the abuse, and that he had taken yet a third look in the shower to make sure they had remained apart.
At the trial, he said that he had “glanced” in the mirror for “one or two seconds,” then lengthened his estimate to “three or four seconds, five seconds maybe.” During that brief glance, he now said that he had time to see Sandusky standing behind a boy whose hands were against the shower wall, and that he saw “very slow, slow, subtle movement” of his midsection.
But neither the newly created sodomy scene nor the slammed locker would save McQueary’s career.
The Elusive Allan Myers [From Chapter 13]
By the time of the trial, eight accusers had been “developed,” as Assistant Attorney General Jonelle Eshbach put it. But Allan Myers, the boy in the shower in the McQueary incident, had been so public and vehement in his previous defense of Sandusky that the prosecution did not dare call him to testify.
When police inspector Joseph Leiter first interviewed him on September 20, 2011, Myers had emphatically denied that Sandusky had abused him or made him uncomfortable in any way.
After the Grand Jury Presentment was published on November 5, 2011, with its allegations that Mike McQueary had witnessed sodomy in a locker room shower, Myers realized that he was “Victim 2,” the boy in the shower that night, but that the sounds McQueary heard were just snapping towels or slap boxing. Myers then gave a detailed statement to Joseph Amendola’s investigator, Curtis Everhart, denying that Sandusky had ever abused him.
But within two weeks, Myers had become a client of Andrew Shubin. For months, Shubin refused to let the police interview Myers without Shubin being present, and he apparently hid Myers in a remote Pennsylvania hunting cabin to keep them from finding him.
After a February 10, 2012, hearing, Shubin verbally assaulted Anthony Sassano, an agent for the attorney general's office, outside the courthouse, cursing him roundly. “He was very vulgar, critical of me,” Sassano recalled. “Let’s call it unprofessional [language], for an attorney.”
Shubin was angry because the Attorney General’s Office wouldn’t interview Myers, who, he claimed, had stayed at Sandusky’s house “over 100 times” where he had been subjected to “both oral and anal sex.” But the police still refused to allow Shubin to be present during any interview.
Soon afterwards, Shubin relented, allowing a postal inspector named Michael Corricelli to talk to Allan Myers alone on February 28, 2012. But during the three-hour interview, Myers never said Sandusky had abused him. On March 8, Corricelli tried again, but Myers again failed to provide any stories of molestation. On March 16, Corricelli brought Myers to the police barracks for a third interview in which Anthony Sassano took part. Asked about three out-of-state trips, Myers denied any sexual contact and said that Sandusky had only tucked him into bed.
“He did not recall the first time he was abused by Sandusky,” Sassano wrote in his notes, nor did Myers recall how many times he was abused. “He indicated it is hard to talk about the Sandusky sexual abuse because Sandusky was like a father to him.” Finally, Myers said that on a trip to Erie, Pennsylvania, Sandusky put his hand inside his pants and touched his penis. Sassano tried valiantly to get more out of him, asking whether Sandusky had tried to put Myers’ hand on his own penis or whether that had been oral sex. No.
Still, Myers now estimated that there had been ten sexual abuse events and that the last one was in the shower incident that McQeary overheard. “I attempted to have Myers elaborate on the sexual contact he had with Sandusky, but he refused by saying he wasn’t ready to talk about the specifics,” Sassano wrote. Myers said that he had not given anyone, including his attorneys, such details. “This is in contrast to what Shubin told me,” Sassano noted.
On April 3, 2012, Corricelli and Sassano were schedule to meet yet again with the reluctant Allan Myers, but he didn’t show up, saying that he was “too upset” by a friend’s death.
“Corricelli indicated that Attorney Shubin advised him that Myers had related to him incidents of oral, anal, and digital penetration by Sandusky,” Sassano wrote in his report. “Shubin showed Corricelli a three page document purported to be Myers’ recollection of his sexual contact with Sandusky. Corricelli examined the document and indicated to me that he suspected the document was written by Attorney Shubin. I advised that I did not want a copy of a document that was suspected to be written by Attorney Shubin.” Sassano concluded: “At this time, I don’t anticipate further investigation concerning Allan Myers.”
That is how things stood as the Sandusky trial was about to begin. Karl Rominger wanted to call Myers to testify as a defense witness, but Amendola refused. “I was told that there was a détente and an understanding that both sides would simply not identify Victim Number 2,” Rominger later recalled. The prosecution didn’t want such a weak witness who had given a strong exculpatory statement to Curtis Everhart. Amendola didn’t want a defense witness who was now claiming to be an abuse victim. “So they decided to punt, to use an analogy,” Rominger concluded.
Mike McQueary then took the stand to tell his latest version of the shower incident with “Victim 2” (i.e., the unnamed Allan Myers), where he heard “showers running and smacking sounds, very much skin-on-skin smacking sounds.” (Later in his testimony, he said he heard only two or three slapping sounds that lasted two or three seconds.) He had re-framed and re-examined his memory of the event “many, many, many times,” he said, and he was now certain that he had looked into the shower three separate times, for one or two secondseach, and that he saw “Coach Sandusky standing behind a boy who is propped up against the shower. The showers are running and, and he is right up against his back with his front. The boy’s hands are up on the wall.” He saw “very slow, slow, subtle movement.” After he slammed his locker, McQueary said, they separated and faced him. Surprisingly, he said that Sandusky did not have an erection. When Amendola failed to object, Judge Cleland inserted himself, obviously fearful of future appeal or post-conviction relief issues. “Wait, wait, wait, just a second,” he warned McGettigan. “I think you have to be very careful for you not to lead this witness.”A few minutes later, the judge asked both lawyers to approach the bench. “I don’t know why you’re not getting objections to this grossly leading [questioning],” he told McGettigan, who said, “I’m just trying to get through it fast.”McQueary recounted how he had met with Joe Paterno.“I made sure he knew it was sexual and that it was wrong, [but] I did not go into gross detail.” Later, he said, he met with Tim Curley, the Penn State athletic director, and Gary Schultz, a university vice president. In an email quoted during his testimony, McQueary had written, “I had discussions with the police and with the official at the university in charge of the police.” He now explained that by this he meant just one person, since Schultz oversaw the university police department. With only an hour’s warning, Joe Amendola asked Karl Rominger to conduct the cross-examination of McQueary and handed him the file. Rominger did the best he could, asking McQueary why in 2010 he had told the police that he’d looked into the showers twice but had now added a third viewing, and he questioned him about his misremembering that the shower incident occurred in 2002 rather than 2001. Rominger also noted that McQueary had told the grand jury, “I was nervous and flustered, so I just didn’t do anything to stop it.” Now he was saying that he slammed the locker, which allegedly ended the incident. Without meaning to, McQueary indirectly helped Sandusky’s case by explaining the demanding work schedule of a Penn State football coach, typically reporting to work Sunday through Tuesday at 7 a.m. and working until 10 p.m. or later. Then, Wednesday through Friday, it was 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. If Sandusky kept the same hours, it was difficult to see when he would have managed to molest all those boys, at least during preseason training and football season.
Finally, McQueary revealed that he had filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Penn State for having removed him from his football coaching job in the midst of the Sandusky scandal. “I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong to lose that job," he said.
In his brief appearance for the defense, physician Jonathan Dranov recalled the February night in 2001 that his friend and employee, John McQueary, had called to ask him around 9 p.m. to come over, because his son Mike was upset by something that had happened in a Penn State locker room.
When he came in, Mike was sitting on the couch, “visibly shaken and upset.” The younger McQueary said he had gone to the locker room to put away some new sneakers and “he heard what he described as sexual sounds.”
Dranov asked him what he meant. “Well, sexual sounds, you know what they are,” McQueary said. “No, Mike, you know, what do you mean?” But he didn’t explain. “He just seemed to get a little bit more upset. So I kind of left that.”
McQueary told him that he looked toward the shower “and a young boy looked around. He made eye contact with the boy.” Dranov asked him if the boy seemed upset or frightened, and McQueary said he did not. Then, as Dranov recalled, McQueary said that “an arm reached out and pulled the boy back.”
Was that all he saw? No, McQueary said “something about going back to his locker, and then he turned around and faced the shower room and a man came out, and it was Jerry Sandusky.” Dranov asked McQueary three times if he had actually witnessed a sexual act. “I kept saying, ‘What did you see?’ and each time he [Mike] would come back to the sounds. I kept saying, ‘But what did you see?’ “And it just seemed to make him more upset, so I back off that.”
You're right -- he didn't "conveniently forget anything". He lied. He was informed about the 1998 incident -- as was Graham Spanier -- and yet both when questioned about it years later claimed they never knew about it. There's even emails from that time about "updating coach" -- a reference to Paterno, per Curley himself.
I never said I had all the answers. What I did say, however, is that Joe and others allowed a man who they knew was showering naked with (and touching) kids to continue to bring kids to Lasch until February 2001. And when confronted with the February 2001 allegation that something happened, leaders made the deliberate decision to handle it in-house.
Emails make it quite clear that they knew they had a problem with Jerry. And emails make it quite clear that by NOT going to the police, they were taking a risk. That's a failing, period.
Of course, I'm the idiot, I'm arrogant, I'm disgusting........just like others who have the audacity to recognize clear as day that PSU leaders didn't do enough to stop horrific crimes.
This is exactly why opposing fans crucify Penn State. The utter denial that Joe had even the slightest responsibility in the matter. This pedestal that people have created for Joe makes it impossible to admit any failings on his part. Unfortunate, because in doing so, the debate becomes an all-or-nothing.
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You're full of shit which is understandable because you're talking out of your ass. Have a good night.
You forgot one: You are wrong. As Obli has pointed out many times: Joe’s actions were deemed correct at the time and now form the gold standard of how to handle future similar situations. It’s simple common sense - football coaches are not private investigators or law enforcement fur ex-employees (especially).
Nice buying into a narrative that is the equivalent to believing monkeys can fly.
Quite the intelligent, mature response.
It's unfortunate that so many people like you become the face of Penn State fans. In complete denial that this program had indicators for years that Sandusky was a potential issue -- but did nothing. In complete denial. And why? Because you value the reputation of your football coach more than the urgency of protecting potential victims of a man who was clearly troubled.
And thank you. I had a great night!
