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FC: ESPN takes on Penn State once again

Tell me SPECIFICALLY what you will accept as proof, or STFU. I've offered. You've provided ZERO evidence that I am lying other than "you think I am."
I have told you what you need to do. I can't prove a negative.
It makes me look like someone who stands up for themselves.
Against an anonymous internet poster? LOL But yeah I guess a guy who lives in his mommies basement would think that. SMFH
I've never called myself a hero, but I have absolutely risked my life doing science for my country (not just in Antarctica BTW).
Liar you've never risked your life for anything. Stolen Valor
PROVE IT OR STFU.
I will not STFU and you are a liar
 
I have told you what you need to do. I can't prove a negative.

Against an anonymous internet poster? LOL But yeah I guess a guy who lives in his mommies basement would think that. SMFH

Liar you've never risked your life for anything. Stolen Valor

I will not STFU and you are a liar
They’re mentally ill. Every one of their rationalizations, their gotchas, their “facts” are easily debunked if you want to spend the time proving something that’s already proven.
It comes down to some incompetents blew it. Ot they knowingly covered it up. I think it’s in the middle , they were sure jerry did it so the slow played it after they rigged 1998.
So it’s a combination of both , they were idiots that didn’t care about the repercussions. And look where we’re at?
Well I’m ok, most have moved on , but a few loons need to to fan the flames of their fantasy , just knowing any day now it’ll break their way.🙄
 
Read the article, So Joe told the rapists roommate (a PSU player as well) that he had to talk to the police. Before a few of the players were set to testify for the rapist, Joe told them to tell the truth. Supposedly one guy stayed behind to talk to Joe, and Joe told him that rapist was guilty and he better not defend him (It sounds like Joe suspected that the dude was going to lie for the rapist).

Joe was also quoted by someone in student affairs that Joe kept his hands off of stuff like Sexual Assaults and believed in the criminal justice system for that.

Jay gave a thoughtful statement that Joe didn't consider rape as a crime of violence, but as a sexual crime, which is probably true of about 90% of the population at that time.

One of the probable victims of this guy made some references to Paterno. They were shaky at best and full of speculation. If I were a betting man, the reporter gave some very vague and suggestive questions that led to "interpretations."

Finally, writer of article called out Joe for not bringing up the rape charges dung national interviews (while competing for National Championship) and barely mentioning it in any of his books (one brief reference), shocking, who in the hell would do that.

Basically, this was just a way to tie Joe into a problem that was certainly present in society at that point regarding the criminal justice system and rape.


And so-

A confidential internal review of the Louis Freeh Report on the Penn State sex abuse scandal, conducted by the university's own trustees, found factual mistakes, "deeply flawed" methodology, and faulty opinions that Freeh's own staffers took issue with, in writing.

The trustees also accused Freeh of having a conflict of interest in his dealings with the NCAA.

It was the Freeh Report that the NCAA relied upon in 2012 to impose draconian sanctions on Penn State, including a $60 million fine, a bowl game ban that lasted two years, the loss of 170 athletic scholarships and the elimination of 111 of Joe Paterno's wins, although the wins were subsequently restored.

On Friday, a group of 11 trustees called on the full 38-member board to release the full 200-page critique of the 267-page Freeh Report, formally renounce Freeh's findings, and try to recoup some of the $8.3 million that the university paid Freeh.

"I want to put the document in your hands so you can read it yourself, but I can't do that today," said Alice Pope, a trustee and St. John's University professor about the internal review of the source materials for the Freeh report.

But the materials that Pope and six other trustees had to sue the university to obtain are still under seal according to a 2015 court order. And the university's lawyers have recently advised the 11 minority trustees that the report they worked on for more than two years remains privileged and confidential, and out of reach of the public.

So yesterday, Pope called on the full board to release the 200-page report as early as their next meeting, on July 20th. But chances are slim and none that the board's chairman, Mark Dambly, and other majority board members will ever willingly open Pandora's box. They don't want to reveal to the public the facts that the university has spent millions of dollars in legal fees to keep buried for the past six years. Facts that will present further evidence of just how badly the trustees, Louie Freeh, and the attorney general's office thoroughly botched the Penn State investigation in a rush to judgment. Not to mention the media.

The full board of trustees, Pope noted yesterday, never voted to formally adopt the findings of the Freeh Report, which found that Penn State officials had covered up the sex crimes of Jerry Sandusky.

"Rather, the board adopted a don't act, don't look and don't tell policy" Pope said that amounted to a "tacit acceptance of the Freeh Report." A report that Pope said has resulted in "profound reputational harm to our university along with $300 million in costs so far."

In addition to the $60 million in fines, the university's board of trustees has -- while doing little or no investigating -- paid out a minimum of $118 million to 36 alleged victims of sex abuse, in addition to spending more than $80 million in legal fees, and $50 million to institute new reforms aimed at preventing future abuse.

That internal 200-page report and the materials it draws upon may still be privileged and confidential. But Big Trial has obtained a seven-page "Executive Summary of Findings" of that internal review dated Jan. 8, 2017, plus an attached 25-page synopsis of evidence gleaned from those confidential files still under court seal.

According to the executive summary, "Louis Freeh and his team disregarded the preponderance of the evidence" in concluding there was a cover up at Penn State of Jerry Sandusky's crimes.

There's more: "Louis Freeh and his team knowingly provided a false conclusion in stating that the alleged coverup was motivated by a desire to protect the football program and a false culture that overvalued football and athletics," the executive summary states.

In the executive summary, the trustees faulted Freeh and his investigators for their "willingness . . . to be led by media narratives," as well as "an over reliance on unreliable sources," such as former Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin.

Freeh, the executive summary states, also relied on "deeply flawed" procedures for interviewing witnesses. The interviews conducted by Freeh's investigators weren't done under oath, or subpoenas, and they weren't tape-recorded, the executive summary states. Those faulty methods led to "biased reporting of interview data" and "inaccurate summaries" of witness testimony.

At yesterday's press conference, Pope said the 11 trustees wanted to know the degree of cooperation Freeh's team had with the NCAA and the state attorney general's office during their investigations. According to statecollege.com, state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman has previously stated that the coordination between Freeh and the NCAA during the Penn State investigation was at best inappropriate, and at worst "two parties working together to get a predetermined outcome."

In the executive summary, the trustees cited "interference in Louis Freeh's investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, wherein information gathered in the criminal investigations of Penn State officials was improperly (and perhaps illegally) shared with Louis Freeh and his team."

This is a subject Big Trial will explore in a subsequent blog post. But earlier this year, I wrote to Louis Freeh, and asked if he and his team was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets in Pennsylvania. He declined comment.

At yesterday's board meeting, Pope addressed this topic, saying, "additional information has emerged in the public domain indicates cooperation between the PA Office of Attorney General and Freeh. We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the Office of Attorney General."

Yesterday, Freeh issued a statement that ripped the minority trustees. "Since 2015," he wrote, "these misguided alumni have been fighting a rear-guard action to turn the clocks back and to resist the positive changes which the PSU students and faculty have fully embraced." He concluded that despite consistent criticism of his report by the minority trustees, in the last six years, they have produced "no report, no facts, news and no credible evidence" that have damaged the credibility of his investigation.

But in the executive summary, the trustees blasted Freeh for having an alleged conflict of interest with the NCAA, and they cited some credible evidence to prove it.

"Louis Freeh's conflict of interest in pursuing future investigative assignments with the NCAA during his contracted period of working for Penn State," the executive summary states, "provided motivation for forming conclusions consistent with the NCAA's goals to enhance their own reputation by being tough on Penn State."

In a criminal manner, such as the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia investigation, the NCAA lacked legal standing. But the NCAA justified its intervention in the case by finding that a lack of institutional control on the part of Penn State enabled the Jerry Sandusky sex scandal.

In their synopsis of evidence, the trustees relied on internal Freeh Group emails that showed that while Freeh was finishing up his investigation of Penn State, he was angling for his group to become the "go to investigators" for the NCAA.

On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh and a partner of Freeh's. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA," McNeill wrote. "It appears we have Emmert's attention now."

In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."

A spokesman for Freeh did not respond to a request for comment.

At yesterday's board meeting, Pope said the "NCAA knew that their own rules prevented them from punishing Penn State," but that the "NCAA decided to punish Penn State anyway in order to enhance its own reputation." She added that documents made public to date show that the "NCAA was closely involved with the Freeh investigation."

"We believed it was important to understand the degree of cooperation between the Freeh investigation and the NCAA."

At yesterday's press conference, Pope also raised the issue of a separate but concurrent federal investigation conducted on the Penn State campus in 2012 by Special Agent John Snedden. The federal investigation, made public last year, but completely ignored by the mainstream media, reached the opposite conclusion that Freeh and the attorney general did, that there was no official cover up at Penn State.

Pope stated she wanted to know more about the discrepancies between the parallel investigations that led to polar opposite conclusions.

Back in 2012, Snedden, a former NCIS special agent working as a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services [FIS], was assigned to determine whether Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed. During his investigation, Snedden placed Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours. Snedden also interviewed many other witnesses on the Penn State campus, including Cynthia Baldwin, who told him that Spanier was a "man of integrity."

About six months after Baldwin told Snedden this, she flipped, and appeared in a secret grand jury proceeding to not only testify against Spanier, but also against former Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, and former Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz.

Baldwin, who had previously represented Spanier, Curley and Schultz before the grand jury, testified last month before the disciplinary board of the state Supreme Court, where she has been brought up on misconduct charges for allegedly violating the attorney-client privilege.

After his investigation, Special Agent Snedden concluded in a 110-page report that Spanier had done nothing wrong, and that there was no coverup at Penn State.

That's because, according to Snedden, Mike McQueary, the alleged whistleblower in the case, was an unreliable witness who told many different conflicting stories about an alleged incident in the Penn State showers where McQueary saw Jerry Sandusky with a naked 10-year-old boy. "Which story do you believe?" Snedden told Big Trial last year.

In his grand jury testimony, McQueary said his observations of Sandusky were based on one or two "glances" in the shower that lasted only "one or two seconds," glances relating to an incident at least eight years previous. But in the hands of the attorney general's fiction writers, those glances of "one or two seconds" became an anal rape of a child, as conclusively witnessed by McQueary.

That, my friends, is what we call prosecutorial misconduct of the intentional kind, the kind that springs convicted murderers out of a Death Row jail cell. And it's a scandal that for six years, the attorney general's office has refused to address, a scandal that the mainstream media has failed to hold the AG accountable for.

On March 1, 2002, according to the 2011 grand jury presentment, [McQueary] walked into the locker room in the Lasch Building at State College and heard “rhythmic, slapping sounds.” Glancing into a mirror, he “looked into the shower . . . [and] saw a naked boy, Victim No. 2, whose age he estimated to be 10 years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Jerry Sandusky.”

"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."

But the alleged victim of the shower rape has never came forward, despite an avalanche of publicity, and, according to the prosecutors, his identity was known "only to God." But McQueary knew the prosecutors weren't telling the truth. Days, after the presentment, McQueary wrote in an email to the attorney general's office that they had "slightly twisted his words" and, "I cannot say 1000 percent sure that it was sodomy. I did not see insertion."

On top of that, all the witnesses that the grand jury presentment claimed that McQueary had reported to them "what he had seen," the alleged anal rape of a 10-year-old boy [plus another witness cited by McQueary, a doctor who was a longtime family friend] have all repeatedly denied in court that McQueary ever told them that he witnessed an anal rape.
"I've never had a rape case successfully prosecuted based only on sounds, and without credible victims and witnesses," Snedden told Big Trial. As for the Freeh Report, Snedden described it as "an embarrassment to law enforcement."

Snedden also told Big Trial that the real cause behind the Penn State scandal was
"a political hit job" engineered by former attorney general and Gov. Tom Corbett, who had it in for Spanier, after they feuded over drastic budget cuts proposed by the governor at Penn State. Corbett has previously denied the charges.

At the same time Snedden was investigating Penn State, former FBI Director Louis Freeh was writing his report on the Penn State scandal, a report commissioned by the university, at a staggering cost of $8.3 million.

Freeh concluded that there had been a cover up. His report found a “striking lack of empathy for child abuse victims by the most senior leaders of the university,” which included Spanier, who had repeatedly been severely beaten by his father as a child, requiring several operations as an adult. Freeh also found that Spanier, Paterno, along with Schultz, the former Penn State vice president and Curley, the school’s ex-athletic director, “repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities.”
But critics such as the minority trustees have noted that the ex-FBI director reached his sweeping conclusions without his investigators ever talking to Paterno, Schultz, Curley, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier briefly, at the end of his investigation. And confidential records viewed by the trustees show that Freeh’s own people disagreed with his conclusions.

According to those records, Freeh's own staff reviewed a May 21, 2012 draft of the Freeh Report, which was subsequently turned over to Penn State officials. The lead paragraph of the draft said, “At the time of the alleged sexual assaults by Jerry Sandusky, there was a culture and environment in the Penn State Athletic Department that led staff members to fail to identify or act on observed inappropriate conduct by Sandusky.”
The draft report talked about an environment of fear that affected even a janitor who supposedly saw Sandusky assaulting a boy in the showers in 2002: “There existed an environment within the athletic department that led an employee to determine that the perceived threat of losing his job outweighed the necessity of reporting the violent crime of a child.”
Over that paragraph in the draft report, a handwritten note said, “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” Freeh, however, in his final version of his report, included that charge about the janitor who allegedly saw Sandusky assault another boy in the showers but was so fearful he didn’t report it.

But when the state police interviewed that janitor, Jim Calhoun, he stated three times that it wasn’t Sandusky he had seen sexually abusing a boy. [The state police didn’t ask Calhoun who was the alleged assailant.] At Sandusky’s trial, however, the jury convicted the ex-coach of that crime, in part because his defense lawyer never told the jury about the janitor’s interview with the state police.

In a written statement, Freeh confirmed that the person who wrote “NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!” was one of his guys.

"Throughout the review at the Pennsylvania State University, members of the Freeh team were encouraged to speak freely and to challenge any factual assertions that they believed are not supported," Freeh wrote on Jan. 10, 2018.

"Indeed the factual assertions of the report were tested and vetted over a period of many months and, as new evidence was uncovered, some of the factual assertions and conclusions evolved," he wrote. "Our staff debated, refined and reformed our views even in the final hours before the report's release."

In another handwritten note on the draft of the report, somebody wrote that there was "no evidence" to support Freeh's contention that a flawed football culture was to blame for the Sandusky sex scandal.

"Freeh knew the evidence did not support this," the executive summary says. But in his final report, Freeh wrote about "A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus community."
While Freeh concluded there was a coverup at Penn State, his investigators weren’t so sure, according to records cited by the trustees in their executive summary.

On March 7, 2012, in a conference call, Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI agent who was one of Freeh’s senior investigators, noted that they had found “no smoking gun to indicate [a] cover-up.”
In a written statement to this reporter, Freeh claimed that shortly after McChesney made that observation, his investigators found “the critical ‘smoking gun’ evidence” in a 2001 “email trove among Schultz, Curley and Spanier.”

In that email chain, conducted over Penn State’s own computer system, the administrators discussed confronting Sandusky about his habit of showering with children at Penn State facilities, and telling him to stop, rather than report him to officials at The Second Mile, as well as the state Department of Public Welfare.

In the email chain, Curley described the strategy as a “more humane approach” that included an offer to provide Sandusky with counseling. Spanier agreed, but wrote, “The only downside for us if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon [by Sandusky] and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it.”

Curley subsequently told Sandusky to stop bringing children into Penn State facilities, and informed officials at The Second Mile about the 2002 shower incident witnessed by McQueary, an incident that the prosecutors subsequently decided really happened in 2001. But Penn State didn’t inform the state Department of Public Welfare about Sandusky, which Freeh claimed was the smoking gun.
By definition, however, a cover-up needs a crime to hide. And Penn State’s administrators have repeatedly testified that when McQueary told them about the 2001 or 2002 shower incident, he described it as horseplay.

Also, an earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy, referred to by Freeh, was also investigated by multiple authorities, who found no crime, nor any evidence of sex abuse.
Freeh, however, claimed that a trio of college administrators should have caught an alleged serial pedophile who, in that 1998 shower incident, had already been cleared by the Penn State police, the Centre County District Attorney, as well as a psychologist and an investigator from Centre County’s Department of Children and Youth Services. To buy into the conclusions of the Freeh Report, you’d also have to believe that Penn State’s top officials were dumb enough to plot a cover up on the university’s own computers.

In their executive report, the trustees refer to the allegations of a cover up as "unfounded." Freeh, however, maintained that in the six years since he issued his report, its findings have been repeatedly validated in court.

"The Freeh team's investigative interviews and fact-finding were not biased and no outcome was ever predetermined," Freeh wrote. "Their only mandate, to which they adhered, was to follow the evidenced wherever it led. The final report I issued is a reflection of this mandate."

"The accuracy and sustainability of the report is further evidenced by the criminal convictions of Spanier, Schultz, Curley," Freeh wrote. Other developments that verified the conclusions of his report, Freeh wrote, include "voluntary dismissals by the Paterno Family of their suit against the NCAA, Spanier's dismissal of his defamation suit against Freeh, the jury and court findings in the McQueary defamation and whistleblower cases, and the U.S. Department of Education's five-year investigation resulting in a record fine against Penn State."

At yesterday's board of trustees meeting, however, trustee Pope, cited public criticisms of the Freeh Report that included:

-- "On a foundation of scant evidence, the [Freeh] report adds layers of conjecture and supposition to create a portrait of fault, complicity and malfeasance that could well be at odds with the truth . . . [As] scientists and scholars, we can say with conviction that the Freeh Report fails on hits own merits as the indictment of the university that some have taken it to be. Evidence that would compel such an indictment is simply not there." -- A group of 30 past chairs of the Penn State faculty.

-- "The Freeh Report was not useful and created an 'absurd' and 'unwarranted' portrait of the University. There's no doubt in my mind, Freeh steered everything as if he were a prosecutor trying to convince a court to take the case." -- Penn State President Eric Barron.

-- "On Nov. 9th, 2011, I and my fellow Trustees, voted to fire Joe Paterno in a hastily called meeting. We had little advance notice or opportunity to discuss and consider the complex issues we faced. After 61 years of exemplary service, Coach Paterno was given no chance to respond. That was a mistake. I will always regret that my name is attached to that rush to injustice."

"Hiring Louis Freeh and the tacit acceptance of his questionable conclusions, without review, along with his broad criticism of our Penn State culture was yet another mistake. . . Those who believe we can move on without due process for all who have been damaged by unsupported accusations are not acting in Penn State's best interest . . . We have the opportunity to move forward united inner commitment to truth. I urge all who love Penn State's name to fight on." -- Resignation speech of former 18-year trustee Alvin Clemens.

-- "Louis Freeh . . . assigned motivations to people, including Paterno, which at best were unknowable, and at worst might have been irresponsible." -- reporter Bob Costas.

-- "Clearly the more we dig into this, the more troubling it gets. There clearly is a significant amount of communication between Freeh and the NCAA that goes way beyond merely providing information. I'd call int coordination . . . Cleary, Freeh was way past his mandate. He was the enforcement person for the NCAA. That's what it looks like. I don't know how you can look at it any other way. It's almost like the NCAA hired him to do their enforcement investigation on Penn State. At a minimum, it is inappropriate. At a maximum, these were two parties working together to get an outcome that was predetermined."-- State Senate majority leader Jake Corman.

In summation, Pope said, "Some have said that the university's interests are best served by putting this unfortunate chapter behind us. We think differently. We believe that the only way to move forward is from a solid foundation based on an honest appraisal of our history. How can we create effective solutions if we might be working with a fundamental misunderstanding of the problems involved?"

"Our review, which took nearly two and a half years to complete, was a serious and thorough effort," Pope said. "We look forward with sharing the results of our analysis of the Freeh Report's source material without colleagues on the board at our meeting in July."
 
Chambers Report
One could counter that with the Lauro report. Each of these were done outside the University by DPW and/or CYS. You folks really have some wild conspiracy theories to think someone/anyone covered up 1998 for anything.
 
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One could counter that with the Lauro report. Each of these were done outside the University by DPW and/or CYS. You folks really have some wild conspiracy theories to think someone/anyone covered up 1998 for anything.
Actually it was Seasock who was far less qualified than Chambers who was a PhD, licensed and knew the victim.

However, (and I know you've never been in any type of a leadership position) but even if I give you Seasock and say that they even each other out (they do not) and then ask what kind of idiot/negligent leader would still allow Jerry to keep bringing kids onto campus and showering with them when he had in his possession the Chambers report?

For CSS to have ignored Chambers is criminally negligent and worthy of firing/jail. As much as you try to get around the Chambers report as nothing, your narrative will always fail when reasonable people consider it. It's the rock in your BS narrative that won't budge. They knew what Sandusky was and Chambers was proved right wasn't she?
 
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They’re mentally ill.
It's religious I tell you. Good ole homegrown cult.
Every one of their rationalizations, their gotchas, their “facts” are easily debunked if you want to spend the time proving something that’s already proven.
As I said, they approach the scandal looking for any and every little inconsistency and then pounce on it ignoring questions they can't answer. I have proven @PSU2UNC and @AvgUser wrong multiple times and they just ignore it and continue with more Ziegler crap. They are like alligators. All mouth and no ears!
It comes down to some incompetents blew it. Ot they knowingly covered it up. I think it’s in the middle , they were sure jerry did it so the slow played it after they rigged 1998.
So it’s a combination of both , they were idiots that didn’t care about the repercussions. And look where we’re at?
Yes they just reacted like a lot of institutions have done with horrible scandals like the Boy Scouts and Roman Catholic Church. And why wouldn't they? Contrary to the crap people like @PSU2UNC and others say, CSS and JoePa were not morally superior to any other high placed political admins or coaches. They acted as others have in similar situations. But since these fools are religiously invested then CSS are holy apostles, Joe is god and so cannot be guilty.
Well I’m ok, most have moved on , but a few loons need to to fan the flames of their fantasy , just knowing any day now it’ll break their way.🙄
Just like the JFK loons and Area 51 folk. It was even in the movie Independence Day! LOL
 
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What amazes me is how the fantasy persists . If there was solid evidence to exonerate these guys or Joe it would be out there.
There isn’t any.
My take is that they are feeding their spiritual side by worshipping PSU and Joe just like people worship sports figures or entertainers. Their idol has fallen and they just can't accept it. It's really like a cult. Look at Scientology, these guys are like one of them. Their identities are tied up in the myth of the Grand Experiment (which is long dead) and nothing is going to let that go. I have posted this before but worth another look:

Why they can't let go
 
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Were you born this biased, misinformed and stupid or did you just perfect it over your lifetime? Oh I forgot you are an Iowa fan where facts don’t matter. Just for starters, McQueary reported what ever he heard in the shower the next day to Paterno who immediately reported it to the AD. Paterno then did precisely what the NCAA mandated as proper protocol; report suspected abuse and then stay out of the investigation. The responsibility to report or not report to DPW resided solely with the person in charge of the University which was Spanier not Paterno.
10 years earlier Sandusky was investigated for an eerily similar incident separately by the police who did not bring charges and DPW. DPW had Sandusky undergo an evaluation which concluded he fit the classic profile of a groomer. For reasons known only to DPW, they had a second evaluation performed (over the objection of a Centre County Assistant DA) which concluded he was harmless. Guess which one was reported back to PSU Einstein? When Sandusky retired, his retirement package which granted him Emeritus status was negotiated by others, not Paterno. Nevertheless, the administration asked Paterno for his comments and he said, in writing, he was okay with granting Sandusky access to PSU facilities, but not with him bringing Second Mile kids on campus due to liability concerns (you can find this in an exhibit to the Freeh report if you are capable of reading) Paterno’s comment related to concerns over kids possibly getting injured. Nevertheless, the recurring false narrative about Paterno was that properly following protocol wasn’t enough because Paterno allegedly “ran” the University. Too bad they didn’t listen to the old man back then.
 
Were you born this biased, misinformed and stupid or did you just perfect it over your lifetime? Oh I forgot you are an Iowa fan where facts don’t matter. Just for starters, McQueary reported what ever he heard in the shower the next day to Paterno who immediately reported it to the AD. Paterno then did precisely what the NCAA mandated as proper protocol; report suspected abuse and then stay out of the investigation. The responsibility to report or not report to DPW resided solely with the person in charge of the University which was Spanier not Paterno.
10 years earlier Sandusky was investigated for an eerily similar incident separately by the police who did not bring charges and DPW. DPW had Sandusky undergo an evaluation which concluded he fit the classic profile of a groomer. For reasons known only to DPW, they had a second evaluation performed (over the objection of a Centre County Assistant DA) which concluded he was harmless. Guess which one was reported back to PSU Einstein? When Sandusky retired, his retirement package which granted him Emeritus status was negotiated by others, not Paterno. Nevertheless, the administration asked Paterno for his comments and he said, in writing, he was okay with granting Sandusky access to PSU facilities, but not with him bringing Second Mile kids on campus due to liability concerns (you can find this in an exhibit to the Freeh report if you are capable of reading) Paterno’s comment related to concerns over kids possibly getting injured. Nevertheless, the recurring false narrative about Paterno was that properly following protocol wasn’t enough because Paterno allegedly “ran” the University. Too bad they didn’t listen to the old man back then.


Don't forget, the investigation conducted by the state attorney general's office resulted in the indictment of Sandusky for the alleged rape of the boy in the showers, as well as for allegedly abusing seven other minors.
On June 22, 2012, a Centre County jury found Sandusky guilty of 45 out of 48 counts of sex abuse, and sentenced him to 30 to 60 years in jail.
The state attorney general's office also initially charged Spanier, Curley and Schultz with failing to report allegations of child abuse to authorities, along with allegedly committing perjury during grand jury testimony.
The Freeh Report concluded that there was an official cover up of Sandusky's sex crimes at Penn State. And that during that cover up, the Freeh Report claimed, Spanier, Curley and Schultz had displayed a "total and consistent disregard" for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's alleged victims, as well as a "striking lack of empathy."


In publishing their 267-page report, the authors of the Freeh Report claimed they operated "with total independence," and that "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report."
The media has dutifully reported on the two investigations done by the state attorney general's office, and former FBI Director Freeh, as well as their findings about a rape in the showers, followed by an official cover-up on the part of Penn State's top officials.
But there has been a total news blackout in the mainstream media on the third investigation done at Penn State. It was done by the federal government in 2012, which resulted in a 110-page report that initially was stamped confidential, but was finally declassified in 2017.
The federal investigation was conducted by former NCIS Special Agent and veteran cold case investigator John Snedden, then on assignment for the U.S. Federal Investigative Services.
Against the backdrop of the Penn State sex abuse scandal, Snedden's job was to determine whether former Penn State President Spanier deserved to have a high-level national security clearance renewed amid allegations that he had orchestrated an official cover-up of Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes.
With national security at stake, Snedden conducted a five-month investigation on the Penn State campus in 2012. And what did he find?
That the rape in the showers story told by McQueary made no sense, and that McQueary, who told so many different versions of that story -- according to author Mark Pendergrast, a total of five different accounts -- wasn't a credible witness.
Snedden also concluded that there was no cover up at Penn State, because there was no sex crime in the showers to cover up. It was the exact opposite of the conclusions reached by the state attorney general's office, and the Freeh Report.
As a result, the feds cleared Spanier, and renewed his high level security clearance.
Why didn't Snedden buy the rape in the showers story?
Back in 2001, Snedden told Big Trial, Mike McQueary was a 26-year-old, 6-foot-5, 240-pound former college quarterback used to running away from 350-pound defensive linemen. If McQueary actually saw Jerry Sandusky raping a young boy in the shower, Snedden said, he probably would have done something about it.

"I think your moral compass would cause you to act and not just flee," Snedden said.

If McQueary really thought he was witnessing a sexual assault on a child, Snedden said, wouldn't he have gotten between the victim and a "wet, defenseless naked 57-year-old guy in the shower?"

Or, if McQueary decided he wasn't going to physically intervene, Snedden said, instead of going home and doing nothing about a child rape in progress, why didn't he call the cops from the Lasch Building?
As Snedden says, the story makes no sense. It was also egregious prosecutorial misconduct for the state attorney general's office to fictionalize and sensationalize such a flimsy, decade-old story, and then hang an entire grand jury presentment on it.

While the Freeh Group investigation claimed to operate with "total independence," there's a confidential record that meticulously documents ample evidence of routine collusion between the criminal investigation of Penn State conducted by the state attorney general's office, and the supposedly independent investigation conducted by the Freeh Group.
And that evidence comes from a seemingly unimpeachable source, former FBI Special Agent Kathleen McChesney, who was credited with starting the investigation that led to the capture of serial killer Ted Bundy.
In "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," McChesney revealed on camera how the federal investigation of the serial killer got started. A woman called and said, "I'm concerned about my boyfriend -- his name is Ted Bundy."
The girlfriend proceeded to detail Bundy's suspicious behavior that included following women around at night, hiding a knife in his car and keeping a bag of women's underwear in his apartment.
McChesney, who was on the task force that ultimately arrested Bundy, rose to become the only female FBI agent appointed to be the bureau's executive assistant director. Her credibility was such that in 2002, in the wake of the widespread sex abuse scandal involving the Catholic clergy, the U.S. Conference of Bishops hired McChesney to establish and lead its Office of Child and Youth Protection.
McChesney is also the author of a 2011 book, "Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way."
But in the Sandusky case, the decorated former FBI special agent is now known for another book she wrote -- an unpublished, confidential 79-page diary written in 2011 and 2012, back when McChesney was a private investigator working for her old boss, former FBI Director Freeh, while investigating Penn State.
In her diary, McChesney records multiple contemporaneous instances of then Deputy Attorney General Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, leaking grand jury secrets to the Freeh Group.
It's clear from the McChesney diary that multiple grand jury documents were also regularly leaked to the Freeh Group, as was a 1998 police report on an earlier alleged shower incident that was investigated and found to be unfounded, resulting in a report that was supposed to have been expunged in 1999.
While the Freeh Group claimed in their report that they operated with "total independence" and "no party interfered with, or attempted to influence the findings in this report," the McChesney diary tells a different story.
Namely, that in conducting their supposedly independent investigation, the Freeh Group was regularly colluding with and working seemingly under the direction of the state attorney general's office, and particularly under the direction of deputy Attorney General Frank Fina.
According to McChesney, members of the Freeh Group "don't want to interfere with their investigations," and that she and her colleagues were being "extremely cautious & running certain interviews by them."
McChesney wrote that the Freeh Group even "asked Fina to authorize some interviews." And that the A.G.'s office "asked us to stay away from some people, ex janitors, but can interview" people from the Second Mile, Sandusky's charity for disadvantaged youths.
According to McChesney, Fina was actively involved in directing the Freeh Group's investigation, to the point of saying if and when they could interview certain witnesses.
For example, McChesney recorded that the Freeh Group was going to notify Fina that they wanted to interview Ronald Schreffler, an investigator for Penn State Police who probed the earlier 1998 shower incident involving Sandusky and another boy that turned out to be unfounded; he also wrote the police report that was supposed to be expunged.
After he was notified, McChesney wrote, "Fina approved interview with Schreffler."
According to the McChesney diary, Fina also routinely kept the Freeh Group up to date on what was going on with the grand jury investigation, telling Freeh's investigators secrets that the defendants and their lawyers weren't privy to.
For example, the night before former Penn State President Spanier, Curley and Schultz were going to be arrested, Gregory Paw, another Freeh investigator, sent an email to his colleagues at the Freeh Group, advising them of the imminent arrest.

The subject of Paw's email: "CLOSE HOLD -- Important."
"PLEASE HOLD VERY CLOSE," Paw wrote his colleagues at the Freeh Group. "[Deputy Attorney General Frank] Fina called tonight to tell me that Spanier is to be arrested tomorrow, and Curley and Schultz re-arrested, on charges of obstruction of justice and related charges . . . Spanier does not know this information yet, and his lawyers will be advised about an hour before the charges are announced tomorrow."
When I asked Freeh, through a spokesperson, whether he as a private citizen during the Penn State investigation, was authorized to have access to grand jury secrets, Freeh declined comment.
Other emails contained in documents under seal show that while investigating Penn State, Freeh may have had a conflict of interest. According to the emails, Freeh, whose investigators had telephone conferences with every Friday with NCAA officials, saw the Penn State investigation as a way to land the NCAA as a permanent client.

On July 7, 2012, a week before the release of the Freeh Report on Penn State, Omar McNeill, a senior investigator for Freeh, wrote to Freeh. "This has opened up an opportunity to have the dialogue with [NCAA President Mark] Emmert about possibly being the go to internal investigator for the NCAA. It appears we have Emmert's attention now."

In response, Freeh wrote back, "Let's try to meet with him and make a deal -- a very good cost contract to be the NCAA's 'go to investigators' -- we can even craft a big discounted rate given the unique importance of such a client. Most likely he will agree to a meeting -- if he does not ask for one first."
It took seven years but Freeh's efforts finally paid off. In August, 2019, the NCAA hired five employees of the Freeh Group to staff its new Complex Case Unit.
The McChesney diary was the basis for a motion for a new trial filed with the state Superior Court in 2020 by Sandusky's appeal lawyers. In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers requested an evidentiary hearing where McChesney would have been summoned to testify under subpoena and asked to authenticate the diary.
But a year later, on May 13, 2021, the state Superior Court denied that motion, ruling that Sandusky's lawyers did not file their appeal in a timely fashion.
Instead, the state Superior Court blasted Sandusky's appeal lawyers, saying that they "dithered for one-half a year" before bringing the newly discovered evidence to the court's attention

The Freeh Group's investigation at Penn State involved interviewing hundreds of people, including a Penn State faculty member before she was chosen as a juror in the Sandusky case.
And when it came time for defense lawyers to question the juror, she misrepresented what she had told the Freeh Group.
The juror was identified by Freeh's investigators as Laura Pauley, a professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State, who did not respond to a request for comment. During jury selection on June 6, 2012, Pauley was asked by Joseph Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, what she told Freeh's investigators.

"It was focused more on how the board of trustees interacts with the president," Pauley told Amendola, as well as "how faculty are interacting with the president and the board of trustees . . ."
But an April 19, 2011 confidential summary of that interview shows that the juror had already made up her mind about the guilt of Sandusky, by reading her local newspaper. According to the report of the interview, Pauley had also already decided that Penn State's top administrators were guilty of a cover up.
In her interview with Freeh's investigators, Pauley stated that she was "an avid reader of the Centre Daily Times" and that she believed that the leadership at Penn State just "kicks the issue down the road."

"The PSU culture can best be described as people who do not want to resolve issues and want to avoid confrontation," she told Freeh's investigators.

Pauley, a tenured professor who served on the Faculty Advisory Committee for three years, told Freeh's investigators that Penn State President Graham Spanier was "very controlling," and that "she feels that [former Penn State Athletic Director Tim] Curley and [former Penn State vice president Gary] Schultz are responsible for the scandal."

"She stated that she senses Curley and Schultz treated it [the scandal] the 'Penn State' way and were just moving on and hoping it would fade away."
While Pauley was being questioned by Amendola, Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote, "at no time during this colloquy, or any other time, did the prosecution disclose that it was working in collaboration with the Freeh Group which interviewed the witness."
Had Amendola known what Pauley told Freeh's investigators, he would have sought to have her stricken from the jury. He would have also asked the judge to find out whether any other jurors had met with Freeh's investigators.

At Sandusky's trial, while Amendola was questioning Pauley about what she told Freeh's investigators, Deputy Attorney Frank Fina sat silently at the prosecution table and said nothing.
Since the McChesney's diary documents how the Freeh Group routinely kept the attorney general's office abreast of the Freeh investigation, it's possible that Fina knew all about the Freeh Group's interview with Pauley.
It's also possible that Fina may have even been given his own copy of that interview with the jury


On Feb. 19, 2020, the state Supreme Court of Pennsylvania voted to suspend for a year and a day the law license of former deputy attorney general Frank Fina, the lead prosecutor in the Penn State case, for his "reprehensible" and "inexcusable" misconduct during the grand jury investigation of three Penn State officials that he accused of orchestrating a cover up.
Fina, the disciplinary board found, was guilty of purposely "misleading" a grand jury judge into thinking that Fina wasn't going to press Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former counsel, into breaking the attorney-client privilege behind closed doors and betraying three top Penn State officials who were her former clients -- Spanier, Curley and Schultz.
Fina got Baldwin to cooperate by threatening her with an indictment for obstruction of justice. So Baldwin went into the grand jury and testified against her clients, without even notifying them of her betrayal.

After deliberately misleading the judge back in October 2012, Fina then "proceeded to question [Baldwin] extensively about the very subjects he represented to Judge [Barry] Feudale he would avoid," the disciplinary board concluded.
"These actions are reprehensible" and "inexcusable," the disciplinary board wrote.
Even worse, the disciplinary board found that Fina's alleged defense of his behavior before the board was "without substance." What Fina did, the disciplinary board said, was to tear down all the safeguards built into the criminal justice system by turning defense attorney Baldwin "into a witness for the prosecution against her clients."
"Unlike other lawyers, the prosecutor is more than a zealous advocate for a client," the state Supreme Court wrote. "The prosecutor bears as well the high and non-delegable duty of ensuring a fair process for the defendant and of comporting himself or herself always in a manner consistent with a position of public trust."
"To state it plain, instead of Baldwin serving as a shield for her former clients, her testimony was elicited and used by Fina as a sword against them, to devastating effect," the court wrote. In addition, when he was brought up on charges of misconduct, the disciplinary board concluded, Fina "failed to acknowledge he had a special responsibility to ensure justice and utterly failed to acknowledge the ramifications of his conduct."

The board found that "deflecting responsibility and displaying a lack of sincere remorse constitute aggravating factors."
Clearly, Fina was a man who would stop at nothing to accomplish his goals. Even if it meant breaking the law.
There was more fall-out from Fina's actions.
In 2013, then state Attorney General Katharine Kane ousted Judge Feudale from his duties as supervising grand jury judge in Harrisburg, citing his close relationship with Fina and lack of objectivity.
On Feb. 21, 2020, the state Supreme Court publicly censured Baldwin, a former state Supreme Court justice herself, for her "unfathomable" and "incompetent" actions in betraying her own clients.
In censuring Baldwin, the court noted her "lack of remorse for her actions," saying she "cast blame for her problems on everyone involved," but never herself.

The trial of Sandusky was presided over by the Honorable John Cleland, who oversaw a rush to judgment that resulted in Sandusky going from indictment to conviction at trial in just seven months.
How did the judge pull that off? By trampling on Sandusky's constitutional rights.

Before the trial started, Sandusky's defense lawyers tried to get the trial postponed so they could wade through 12,000 pages of grand jury transcripts he had just received only 10 days before the start of trial.

Amendola, Sanduksy's trial lawyer, begged for a continuance, telling the judge that he needed time to read the files and find out what Sandusky's accusers were saying about him; he also needed time to subpoena witnesses.

"We can't prepare . . . I felt like Custer at Little Bighorn for God's sake," Amendola testified during an appeals hearing. But Judge Cleland turned him down.
[Besides being unprepared, Joe Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, was painfully inept, as detailed on this blog by author Mark Pendergrast.]

Jerry Sandusky had a constitutional right to a fair trial. But in order to save Penn State football, which was being threatened with the death penalty by the NCAA, Sandusky had to be convicted and sitting in jail before the start of the 2012 college football season to wrap up the Penn State scandal in a nice, neat bow.
Putting Sandusky in jail for life fit right into the deal that PSU had struck with the NCAA, which was to voluntarily admit guilt and take their lumps, which included a $60 million fine. But the payoff for Penn State was that the Nittany Lions would escape the death penalty that the NCAA had threatened to impose on the football program in Happy Valley.

Jerry Sandusky also had a constitutional right to confront his accusers, but Judge Cleland took care of that as well.

The night before the preliminary hearing in the case, the only pretrial opportunity where Sandusky's lawyers would have had the right to confront his accusers -- the eight young men who claimed that Sandusky had abused them -- Judge Cleland convened an unusual off-the-record meeting of prosecutors, a magistrate, and defense lawyers at the Hilton Garden Inn at State College.
At the meeting, with prosecutors nodding in agreement, the judge talked Amendola into waiving the preliminary hearing so that Sandusky could remain out on bail for his trial. On their end of the deal, the state attorney general's office, which had previously requested bail of $1 million for Sandusky, agreed to lower that amount to $250,000.
The A.G. had also had threatened to file more charges against Sandusky, but according to the deal worked out by the judge during the off-the-record session at the Hilton Garden Inn, no more charges would be forthcoming.

So Amendola caved and took the deal. The grand result of Sandusky's lawyers waiving the preliminary hearing was that the Pennsylvania railroad that Sandusky was riding on would stay on schedule.
During the appeal process, after Judge Cleland's actions were disclosed regarding the Hilton Garden Inn conference, the judge had to turn over notes that he had taken during the off-the-record session. Cleland then voluntarily recused himself from continuing to preside over the appeals in the Sandusky case.
While the Sandusky case was headed to trial at breakneck speed, some people in the know were aware that the Honorable Judge Cleland wasn't going to budge on the scheduled trial date.
In the McChesney diary, on May 10, 2012, the former FBI agent noted in a conference call with Gregory Paw and Omar McNeil, two of Freeh's investigators, that Paw is going to talk to Fina, and that the "judge [is] holding firm on date of trial."

In an affidavit, Amendola, Sandusky's trial lawyer, stated that McChesney didn't get that information from him.

"An obvious question arises as to whether or not the trial judge was communicating with a member of the Freeh Group, attorneys for the attorney general's office, or anyone else concerning the trial date," Sandusky's appeal lawyers wrote.

In their motion for a new trial, Sandusky's lawyers sought to question Judge Cleland at an evidentiary hearing "to determine whether, and to what extent, collusion between the office of the attorney general, the Freeh investigation and the NCAA had an impact on the trial."
But the court denied that appeal.

During the appeals of Sandusky's conviction, his lawyers accused deputy attorney generals Fina and Eshbach of breaking state law by repeatedly leaking grand jury secrets.
But on Oct. 18, 2017, Jefferson County Presiding Judge John Henry Foradora issued a 59-page opinion where he cleared Fina and Eshbach of leaking, while denying Sandusky a new trial sought under the Post Conviction Relief Act.
In his opinion, Judge Foradora concluded that Fina and Eshbach weren't the leakers who were feeding reporter Sara Ganim intel about the impending grand jury presentment.
Why? Because Fina said so.

The judge bought Fina's alibi that he and Eshbach had supposedly set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers. But apparently the two prosecutors were about as successful as O.J. Simpson was in his hunt for the real killers.
Fina had asked his old buddy, Judge Barry Feudale, the supervising judge of the grand jury, to investigate the leak, Judge Foradora wrote. So, Judge Foradora decided, after hearing testimony from Fina, that it couldn't be Fina or Eshbach who were doing the leaking at the A.G.'s office.
At the PCRA hearing, "the testimony, then did not support the idea that the prosecution leaked grand jury information for any reason, let alone for the purpose of generating more victims," the judge wrote.
"If anything it supports the opposite conclusion, because while someone might be skeptical about the validity of Eshbach and Fina's internal 'trap'" to catch the real leakers, the judge wrote. "It is a fact of human nature that one engaged in or aware of misconduct he does not wish to have exposed does not ask an outside source to investigate it."
Unless the judge in question is an old pal. As in wink, wink.
One of the allegations of a leak raised by Sandusky's lawyers involved an incident related by the prosecution's official whistle blower in the Sandusky case, Mike McQueary.
At the 2017 trial of former PSU President Graham Spanier, McQueary was asked by a prosecutor how he found out that Sandusky was going to be arrested.
During the bye week of the 2011 Penn State football season, McQueary said, "I was on my way to Boston for recruiting and I was going from the F terminal over to the B terminals over in Philadelphia Airport."
That's when "the AGs called," McQueary said, referring specifically to Eshbach. According to McQueary, Eshbach told him "We're going to arrest folks and we are going to leak it out."
But rather than believe McQueary, Judge Foradora decided to trust Fina and Eshbach.
In denying Sandusky a new trial, Judge Foradora foolishly staked his entire 59-page opinion on the credibility and integrity of Frank Fina, which is now in tatters.
On Feb. 5, 2019, the state Superior Court, in a 70-page written by another gullible judge, the Honorable Judge Carolyn Nichols compounded this lunacy by denying Sandusky's appeal of Judge Foradora's opinion not to grant a new trial.
Once again, Judge Nichols and another court bought Fina and Eschbach's explanation that they had set an "internal trap" to find the real leakers, and didn't do any leak
According to Mark Pendergrast, therapists in the Sandusky case used scientifically-discredited recovered memory therapy on six of Sandusky's eight accusers at trial, and on several other alleged victims who wound up getting civil settlements.
Pendergrast focused on the work of therapist Mike Gillum, who for three years, in weekly and sometimes daily skull sessions, basically brainwashed Aaron Fisher, Victim No. 1, into recalling memories of abuse, after he had originally denied he had been abused.
In a book Gillum co-wrote with Fisher, Silent No More, the therapist, who was convinced from the get-go that Sandusky was a serial abuser, stated that he sought to “peel back the layers of the onion” of Fisher's brain to recover memories of abuse that Gillum already knew were there.
During these weekly and sometimes daily sessions, Fisher didn't have to say anything. According to Silent No More, Gillum would guess what happened and Fisher only had to nod his head or say Yes.
“I was very blunt with him when I asked questions but gave him the ability to answer with a yes or a no, that relieved him of a lot of burden,” Gillum wrote. In the same book, Aaron Fisher recalled: “Mike just kept saying that Jerry was the exact profile of a predator. When it finally sank in, I felt angry.”
The grand result of Gillum's work --- Fisher cashed in for $7.5 million.
Another alleged victim who initially denied he had been abused, Dustin Struble, Victim No. 7, dramatically changed his story after he also underwent recovered memory therapy.
Like many of the other alleged victims in this case, Struble's story kept evolving. Struble told the grand jury that Sandusky had never touched his privates or touched him in the shower, which Struble said he and Sandusky shared with other coaches and players.
But at Sandusky's trial, Struble changed his story to say that Sandusky put his hands down the boy's pants when they were riding in Sandusky's car. And this time when he told the story about showering with Sandusky, Struble claimed that Sandusky was alone with him in the shower. And that Sandusky grabbed the boy and pushed his own naked front against the boy's backside, then he touched the boy's nipples and blew on his stomach.
When asked why his account had changed, Struble testified, "That doorway that I had closed has since been reopening more. More things have been coming back and things have changed since that grand jury testimony. Through counseling and different things, I can remember a lot more detail that I had pushed aside than I did at that point."
Struble's new story won him a civil settlement of $3,250,000.
A prominent critic of recovered memory therapy is Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the world’s foremost experts on the malleability of human memory. Loftus, who testified at a hearing on behalf of Sandusky’s unsuccessful bid for a new trial, has given lectures on how memory works to the Secret Service and FBI; she also has a contract to work for the CIA
On May 11, 2017, testifying by phone, Loftus told Judge Foradora, “There is no credible scientific support for this idea of massive repression."
Nor is there any credible support, she added, for the idea that “you need psychotherapy to dig it out, and you can reliably recover these memories . . . in order to heal yourself.”
In many jurisdictions, Loftus told the judge, cases involving repressed memories have been thrown out of court.
Human memory “doesn’t work like a recording device” that can simply be played back at a later date, Loftus told the judge. Memories evolve over time and can be distorted or contaminated with suggestive and leading questioning. Her experiments have also shown that people can be talked into believing things that aren’t true.

“You can plant entirely false memories in the minds of people for events that never happened,” she explained to the judge. And once those false memories are planted, she said, people will relate those memories as if they were true, “complete with high levels of detail and emotion.”
But at the Sandusky trial, repressed memories were consistently presented as fact. Prosecutor Joseph McGettigan told the jury before calling his witnesses that he would have to “press these young men for the details of their victimization,” because “they don’t want to remember.” That’s why the investigation was slow,” McGettigan told the jury, because “the doors of people’s minds” were closed.
After a jury found Sandusky guilty, then Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly held a press conference outside the courthouse where she said of the alleged victims, “It was incredibly difficult for some of them to unearth long-buried memories of the shocking abuse they suffered at the hands of this defendant.”
During the appeal hearing over Sandusky's conviction, memory expert Loftus told Judge Foradora, “It seems pretty evident that there were drastic changes in the testimony of some of the [Sandusky] accusers.”
One reason for those changes, she testified, was the “highly suggestive” way police and psychotherapists interviewed them.
But rather than listen to Loftus, and the science, Judge Foradora chose to believe the recovered memories of the victims, which was the basis for the state attorney general's X-rated fractured fairy tale.

At Penn State, the university paid out $118 million to 36 alleged victims without investigating anything.
The average cost of the settlements was $3.3 million, more than double the average settlements paid out by the Catholic Church in abuse cases in Los Angeles and San Diego.
In 2013, the extravagant payouts prompted the university’s insurance carrier, the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association Insurance Company [PMA], to sue Penn State and the various “John Doe” claimants. The lawsuit ended three years later in a confidential settlement that lawyers in the case told Big Trial they were prohibited from discussing.
One of those lawyers is Eric Anderson of Pittsburgh, an expert witness who testified on behalf of the insurance carrier.

“It appears as though Penn State made little effort, if any, to verify the credibility of the claims of the individuals,” Anderson wrote on October 5, 2015. In his report, Anderson decried “the absence of documentation” in the claims, saying in many cases there was “no signed affidavit, statement or other means of personal verification of the information which I reviewed."
“I do not know why so many of the cases were settled for such high sums of money,” Anderson wrote.

In paying out the $118 million, the university did not undertake any of the usual methods to vet the stories of the accusers, such as having them questioned by private investigators, deposed by lawyers, personally examined by forensic psychiatrists, or subjected to polygraph tests.
Instead, the university just wrote checks

On May 1, 2009, deputy state attorney general Eshbach wrote a formal request to initiate a grand jury probe of Sandusky. Nineteen months later, the state attorney general's investigation of Sandusky the alleged serial pedophile, had produced only one alleged victim, the brainwashed Aaron Fisher.
To make matters worse, the first grand jury that heard Fisher testify didn't believe him, so they issued no indictment.
But in November 2010, the A.G. got a tip about the shower incident that Mike McQueary had supposedly witnessed a decade earlier, a breakthrough that suddenly energized the Sandusky investigation.
On March 10, 2011, the state attorney general convened a second grand jury. They were aided by reporter Sara Ganim, who on March 31, 2011, wrote the first story about the secret grand jury probe of Sandusky that revealed for the first time the allegation that Sandusky was a serial sexual abuser of children.
The Ganim story basically functioned as a want add for the A.G.'s office to recruit more sex abuse victims.
The state police and the attorney general's office promptly created a seven-member joint task force and sent them out knocking on the doors of hundreds of young men who were alums of Sandusky’s Second Mile charity for disadvantaged youths, hunting for alleged victims.
But the joint task force didn't have much success.
As one frustrated investigator emailed on June 3, 2011, as recounted by author Mark Pendergrast in his book, “We have recently been interviewing kids who don’t believe the allegations as published and believe Sandusky is a great role model for them and others to emulate.”
On Jan. 4, 2012, Anthony Sassano, a narcotics agent from the state attorney general's office who led the Sandusky investigation, testified that the special task force interviewed 250 men who were former members of the Second Mile charity, but found only one man who claimed to be a victim of abuse.
Ask yourself a simple question. If Jerry Sandusky was allegedly the most notorious pedophile in America who's been on rampage in a small town of 42,000 for nearly four decades, why does the state have to create a special joint task force to go out knocking on doors, and hunting down victims?
Shouldn't they be lined up around the block?
But then the grand jury presentment hit the media. On Nov. 10, 2011, Business Insider ran a story predicting that Penn State wound wind up paying Sandusky's accusers a total of $100 million.
Suddenly, every plaintiff’s lawyer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had been alerted about a possible jackpot at Penn State. All they had to do to hit the lottery was to round up some guys who were willing to claim they were abused.
In seeking a lottery payoff, these alleged victims wouldn't even have to give up their real names. The media, for sure, could be counted on to keep their identities secret. While they were vilifying and destroying Jerry Sandusky's name and reputation every day.
After Sandusky was convicted, the floodgates opened, and 41 men filed civil claims for damages. Thirty-six of them would eventually get paid.
And it didn't require any heavy lifting.
Penn State had hired Kenneth Feinberg, dubbed “The Master of Disaster,” to oversee the settlement process with victims. Feinberg specialized in a global approach to settlements, rather than duke it out in court with one individual claim after another.
At Penn State, Feinberg prepared a form for alleged victims that merely required their lawyers to make their allegations, as part of what was billed as a “claims resolution process."
The claims as submitted in more than 120 pages of confidential records that the press or public has never seen, are entirely devoid of evidence.
None of the initial claims were authenticated by signed affidavits, there were no reports of forensic evidence or witness testimony, or corroboration of any kind. Except when a few of the victims who were pals got each other to vouch for their stories.
The stories of the alleged victims, which were often improbable, and featured constantly changing details, remain completely unvetted to this day.
Jack Rossiter, a former FBI agent of 30 years, investigated more than 150 cases of alleged sex abuse as a private detective employed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia between 2003 and 2007.
As far as the Penn State case was concerned, Rossiter told Big Trial he was surprised to hear that apparently not one of the 36 alleged victims ever told anyone about the attacks when they allegedly occurred -- a period that spanned nearly four decades.
Got that? Over four decades, in at least 500 alleged sex crimes involving 36 innocent victims, there was not one contemporaneous report of abuse.

If a pedophile was running loose for that long in small town, Rossiter said, "You would think someone would pick it up. Either at school or the parents or a close friend."
On top of that, in a scandal involving national publicity, like the Sandusky case, Rossiter said, if you were a gate keeper at Penn State, you'd have to be on guard against criminals and drug addicts coming forward to seek a pay day.
"With national headlines and all these people lining up, you'd have to be more skeptical" of the claims," Rossiter said.
But Penn State never even ran background checks to see if any of the alleged victims had criminal records. When Big Trial checked, we found that 12 of the 36 alleged victims who got paid did indeed have criminal records, including arrests for tampering with and fabricating physical evidence, identity theft, criminal conspiracy, theft, receiving stolen property, theft by deception, robbery and terroristic threats.
The way the system is supposed to work, somebody at Penn State should have investigated the stories told by the alleged victims.
"That's what you do, you investigate," Rossiter emphasized. "The key is to find corroboration for the victim's story, to see if their stories hold up."
But Penn State didn't do any of that. Instead, they just wrote checks.
Why? Because the trustees had already decided that they would pay any price to save their beloved Nittany Lions.
As for Jerry Sandusky, and his constitutional rights, nobody gave.


In their civil claims of abuse, the 36 alleged victims portray Sandusky as a sexually insatiable predator with the virility of a male porn star in his 20s. According to the claims, Sandusky was constantly on the prowl for forced sex with boys, and never had any problems achieving an erection.
Sandusky’s medical records, however, from 2006 to 2008, depict a man in his 60s suffering from all kinds of ailments and conditions, including atrophied testicles and chronic prostatitis.

A doctor who reviewed Sandusky’s medical records, but asked to remain anonymous, told Big Trial in an email, “This guy couldn’t get an erection no matter how he tried. Even Cialis/Viagra would probably not work.”
The doctor added that because the medical issue was never raised at trial, Sandusky should have sued his lawyers for malpractice.

Doctors described Sandusky as having an “androgen deficient state,” meaning he had levels of male sex hormones so low it was unhealthy. Sandusky’s medical records state that he was undergoing “testosterone replacement therapy for significant low levels of both free and total testosterone.”
Sandusky's medical records reveal that he was being treated with antibiotics for chronic prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate commonly caused by bacterial infection that results in frequent and painful urination. Prostatitis can also cause sexual problems such as low libido, erectile dysfunction, and painful ejaculations.

Sandusky’s chronic prostatitis began in 2005 and continued through 2008, his medical records state. Doctors described Sandusky as being “light-headed” and suffering “dizziness” from using Flomax, which he began taking in 2006, because he was having trouble urinating.

In addition to his urological problems, Sandusky’s medical records list many ailments that raise the question of whether Sandusky was healthy and energetic enough to be out having rampant, promiscuous sex with all those boys.
Sandusky’s ailments include cysts on one of his kidneys, a small aneurysm in his brain, a 2006 hernia operation, bleeding hemorrhoids, chest pains, headaches, drowsiness, elevated blood pressure, and sleep apnea.
He was on thyroid medication when he went to the doctors and told them he began “falling apart” in 2005. By 2008, his doctors wrote, Sandusky reported he was falling asleep at the wheel and gotten involved in two car accidents.

The medical records also describe a distinctive feature of Sandusky’s anatomy that none of his accusers have ever mentioned.
On February 2, 2006, Dr. Frank B. Mahon at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, who was treating the 62-year-old Sandusky for chronic prostatitis, wrote that Sandusky had “small” testicles of “perhaps 2 cm” or centimeters each, which equals .787 of an inch. The average size of adult testicles are between two and three inches.

On December 18, 2008, another doctor at the Hershey Medical Center wrote that the 6-foot-1 210-pound former coach, nearly 65, had “marked testicular atrophy with very little palpable testicular tissue.”

In stark contrast to the way he is portrayed in the claims against him, a couple of law enforcement types who have observed Sandusky in close quarters describe him as an anomaly in the hyper-macho world of football coaches, saying he comes across as asexual.
There may be genetic reasons for that. Sandusky’s medical records state that as a boy, he had “delayed development of secondary sexual characteristics” that required shots, but they don’t say what kind of shots. Sandusky told his doctors he was “unable to have children” because his “sperm counts were low.”

Sandusky's medical records state that he suffered from hypothyroidism, [underactive thyroid] as well as hypogonadism, meaning his body didn’t produce enough testosterone to maintain good health.

The medical records, which date from 2006 to 2008, cover the same time period during which a couple of key trial accusers, Aaron Fisher and Sabastian Paden, claimed they were being raped hundreds of times by Sandusky.
Fisher settled his civil case against Penn State for $7.5 million. Paden, whose lawyers won in court access to all the confidential records in the Penn State case that are still under a judge's seal, got the biggest pay out of all the alleged victims, $20 million.

Totaling up the allegations made in 36 civil claims that were paid, the alleged victims stated that they had been raped or sexually abused by Sandusky at a minimum of least 520 to 620 times.

At his trial, Sandusky’s lawyers never used his medical records in his defense, probably because they didn’t have time to even read boxes of grand jury testimony, or serve subpoenas on witnesses.

In prison, Sandusky’s appeals lawyer said, he remains on a half-dozen medications, including continuing testosterone replacement therapy, and Terazosin for continuing prostate infections.

There’s another angle to the story of Sandusky’s medical records -- there are 36 alleged victims who got paid after claiming they were raped and abused hundreds of times by Sandusky, including nine alleged victims who claim that Sandusky had engaged with them in high-risk and apparently unprotected anal sex.
Yet not one of these alleged victim has ever asked to see Sandusky’s medical records, to find out whether he had HIV or any venereal disease. Nor has any victim ever sought to have Sandusky tested for any diseases.
That's the kind of evidence that would aid a criminal case. In a civil case, if Sandusky was found to have infected his victims with disease, it would have raised the damages.

But in the Penn State case, none of the alleged victims ever pursued the disclosure of any of Sandusky’s medical records.
You have to ask why.
And whether the answer is because it never really happened.

Jerry Sandusky is a relic from another time. He's an only child who was the son of Polish immigrants. His father, Art Sandusky, a trolley conductor, was the coach of a local baseball team who ran a recreation center that took in troubled kids and hired disabled people as employees.
At the recreation center, the motto hung on the wall by Sandusky's father said, "Don't give up on a bad boy, because he might turn out to be a great young man." Jerry Sandusky, a devout Methodist who grew up in that rec center, adopted his father's mission, and was out to save the world one troubled kid at a time.
At the rec center, it was a common practice for men and boys to shower together. When Sandusky first got in trouble in 1998, for taking a shower with 11 year-old Zachary Konstas, after a complaint from the boy's mother, the incident wound up being investigated by authorities that included an official from the Centre County Children and Youth Services, a detective from the Penn State police, an investigator from the state Department of Public Welfare, the boy's therapist, as well as a psychologist hired by the county.
The authorities concluded that there was no evidence of abuse or of any sexual conduct whatsoever, so the mother's alleged claim was officially deemed unfounded. As recounted in The Most Hated Man In America; Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment, by author Mark Pendergrast, the psychiatrist who questioned young Zach Konstas for an hour concluded:

"The behavior exhibited by Mr. Sandusky is directly consistent with what can be seen as an expected daily routine of being a football coach. This evaluator spoke to various coaches from high school and college football teams and asked about their locker room behavior. Through verbal reports from these coaches it is not unusual for them to shower with players. This appears to be a widespread, acceptable situation and it appears that Mr. Sandusky followed through with patterning that he has probably done without thought for many years."
The problem in the Sandusky case is that the customs of an earlier time, as in a communal shower for men and boys, are being viewed through a modern lens.
Since he couldn't have kids of his own, Jerry and his wife Dottie adopted six children, five girls and a boy. Only one of those adopted kids, Matt Sandusky, who took his adoptive dad's name, would ultimately claim to be abused.
According to author Mark Pendergrast, after Matt sat next to his adoptive mother on the first day of the Sandusky trial and heard the alleged victim spout accusations of abuse that were the result of recovered memory therapy, Matt came home and told one of his siblings, "This is ridiculous. Anyone can make accusations without evidence, and get paid. I could, you could, anyone could . . . but I actually have morals."
Three days later, Matt famously flipped. After first telling authorities he hadn't been abused, Matt gave a statement to the police that said that after he went to a psychiatrist, he had recalled memories of past abuse. His flip earned him an appearance on Oprah, and a civil settlement of $325,000.
 
My take is that they are feeding their spiritual side by worshipping PSU and Joe just like people worship sports figures or entertainers. Their idol has fallen and they just can't accept it. It's really like a cult. Look at Scientology, these guys are like one of them. Their identities are tied up in the myth of the Grand Experiment (which is long dead) and nothing is going to let that go. I have posted this before but worth another look:

Why they can't let go
The Grand Experiment died with the SMU death penalty and Joe’s successful lobbying for certain academic standards. Staying eligible was the game , they still weren’t always being educated, and tv money exploded.
Once you have certain metrics it’s easy to make them , following the letter of the law not the spirit.
 
Make no mistake about it there, Frankie. I have absolutely zero respect you. Zero point zero. I know that you’re a flippin A-hole. You've proven nothing to me so don’t get hurt trying to pat yourself on the back on my behalf.
I have even less respect for the cultists like you. The thing is i know I’m right .
 
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Actually it was Seasock who was far less qualified than Chambers who was a PhD, licensed and knew the victim.

However, (and I know you've never been in any type of a leadership position) but even if I give you Seasock and say that they even each other out (they do not) and then ask what kind of idiot/negligent leader would still allow Jerry to keep bringing kids onto campus and showering with them when he had in his possession the Chambers report?

For CSS to have ignored Chambers is criminally negligent and worthy of firing/jail. As much as you try to get around the Chambers report as nothing, your narrative will always fail when reasonable people consider it. It's the rock in your BS narrative that won't budge. They knew what Sandusky was and Chambers was proved right wasn't she?
These morons banked on a rigged, unlicensed counselor . They were morons .
 
PSU isn't a company. It's a public institution. And she didn't degrade the institution as much as she took shots at Joe Paterno and what happened years ago.

I don't agree with her point, but it's not like she's insulting current university leaders. And no -- criticizing Joe Paterno isn't a fireable offense.

"Self-loathing"? You people want to fire a professor for criticizing Joe Paterno. A man who has been dead for 10 years. And many such people are the same people whining about "cancel culture" and snowflakes and safe spaces. You see the irony here?

True that.

What if that infamous locker room incident that Mike McQueary supposedly witnessed 16 years ago -- featuring a naked Jerry Sandusky cavorting in the showers with an underage boy -- had nothing to do with sex? And what if the only two officials at PSU who ever spoke directly to former PSU President Graham Spanier about that incident really did describe it as just "horseplay" and not sex?

What if the guy advancing this contrarian story line was not some crackpot conspiracy theorist, but a decorated U.S. special agent? A guy who had already done a top-secret federal investigation five years ago into the so-called Penn State scandal but nobody knew about it until now?

There would be no pedophilia scandal at Penn State to cover up. And no trio of top PSU officials to convict of child endangerment. The whole lurid saga starring a naked Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing little boys in the shower would be fake news. A hoax foisted on the public by an unholy trio of overzealous prosecutors, lazy and gullible reporters, and greedy plaintiff's lawyers.


On the veteran TV reporter John Ziegler's podcast, John Snedden, a former NCIS agent who is a special agent for the Federal Investigative Services, talked about his six-month top secret investigation of Graham Spanier and PSU.

Back in 2012, at a time when nobody at Penn State was talking, Snedden showed up in Happy Valley and interviewed everybody that mattered.

Because Snedden was on a mission of the highest importance on behalf of the federal government. Special Agent Snedden had to decide whether Graham Spanier's high-level security clearance should be renewed amid widespread public accusations of a coverup.

And what did Snedden find?

"There was no coverup," Snedden flatly declared on Ziegler's podcast. "There was no conspiracy. There was nothing to cover up."

The whole world could have already known by now about John Snedden's top secret investigation of Spanier and PSU. That's because Snedden was scheduled to be the star witness at the trial last week of former Penn State President Graham Spanier.

But at the last minute, Spanier's legal team decided that the government's case was so lame that they didn't even have to put on a defense. Spanier's defense team didn't call one witness before resting their case.

On Ziegler's podcast, "The World According To Zig," the reporter raged about that decision, calling Spanier's lawyers "a bunch of wussies" who set their client up for a fall.

Indeed, the defenseless Spanier was convicted by a Dauphin County jury on just one misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child. But the jury also found Spanier not guilty on two felony counts. Yesterday, I asked Samuel W. Silver, the Philadelphia lawyer who was Spanier's lead defender, why they decided not to put Snedden on the stand.

"No, cannot share that," he responded in an email. "Sorry."

On Ziegler's podcast, Snedden, who was on the witness list for the Spanier trial, expressed his disappointment about not getting a chance to testify.

"I tried to contact the legal team the night before," Snedden said. "They were going to call me back. I subsequently got an email [saying] that they chose not to use my testimony that day."


When Snedden called Spanier's lawyers back, Snedden said on the podcast, the lawyers told him he
wasn't going to be called as a witness "not today or not ever. They indicated that they had chosen to go a minimalistic route," Snedden said.

What may have been behind the lawyers' decision, Snedden said, was some legal "intel" -- namely that jurors in the Mike McQueary libel case against Penn State, which resulted in a disasterous $12 million verdict against the university, supposedly "didn't like Spanier at all."

"The sad part is that if I were to have testified all the interviews I did would have gone in" as evidence, Snedden said. "And I certainly think the jury should have heard all of that."

So what happened with Spanier's high-level clearance which was above top-secret -- [SCI -- Sensitive Compartmented Information] -- Ziegler asked Snedden.

"It was renewed," Snedden said, after he put Spanier under oath and questioned him for eight hours.

In his analysis of what actually happened at Penn State, Snedden said, there was "some degree of political maneuvering there."

"The governor took an active role," Snedden said, referring to former Gov. Tom Corbett. "He had not previously done so," Snedden said, "until this occurred."

As the special agent wrote in his 110-page report:

"In March 2011 [Gov.] Corbett proposed a 52 percent cut in PSU funding," Snedden wrote. "Spanier fought back," publicly declaring the governor's proposed cutback "the largest ever proposed and that it would be devastating" to Penn State.

At his trial last week, Graham Spanier didn't take the witness stand. But under oath while talking to Snedden back in 2012, Spanier had plenty to say.

"[Spanier] feels that his departure from the position as PSU president was retribution by Gov. Corbett against [Spanier] for having spoken out about the proposed PSU budget cuts," Snedden wrote.

"[Spanier] believes that the governor pressured the PSU BOT [Board of Trustees] to have [Spanier] leave. And the governor's motivation was the governor's displeasure that [Spanier] and [former Penn State football coach Joe] Paterno were more popular with the people of Pennylvania than was the governor."

As far as Snedden was concerned, a political battle between Spanier and Gov. Corbett, and unfounded accusations of a coverup, did not warrant revoking Spanier's high-level security clearance. The special agent concluded his six-month investigation of the PSU scandal by renewing the clearance and giving Spanier a ringing endorsement.

"The circumstances surrounding subject's departure from his position as PSU president do not cast doubt on subject's current reliability, trustworthiness or good judgment and do not cast doubt on his ability to properly safeguard national security information," Snedden wrote about Spanier.


At the time Snedden interviewed the key people at Penn State, former athletic director Tim Curley and former PSU VP Gary Schultz were already under indictment.

Spanier was next in the sights of prosecutors from the attorney general's office. And former FBI Director Louie Freeh was about to release his report that said there was a coverup at Penn State masterminded by Spanier, Curley and Schultz, with an assist from Joe Paterno.

Snedden, however, wasn't buying into Freeh's conspiracy theory that reigns today in the mainstream media, the court of public opinion, and in the minds of jurors in the Spanier case.

"I did not find any indication of any coverup," Snedden told Ziegler on the podcast. He added that he did not find "any indication of any conspiracy, or anything to cover up."

Snedden also said that Cynthia Baldwin, Penn State's former general counsel, "provided information to me inconsistent to what she provided to the state." Baldwin told Snedden that "Gov. Corbett was very unhappy" with Spanier because he "took the lead in fighting the governor's proposed budget cuts to PSU."

That, of course, was before the prosecutors turned Baldwin into a cooperating witness. The attorney-client privilege went out the window. And Baldwin began testifying against Spanier, Curley and Schultz.

But as far as Snedden was concerned, "Dr. Spanier was very forthcoming, he wanted to get everything out," Snedden said.

"Isn't possible that he just duped you," Ziegler asked.

"No," Snedden deadpanned. "I can pretty well determine which way we're going on an interview." Even though he was a Penn State alumni, Snedden said, his mission was to find the truth.

"I am a Navy veteran," Snedden said. "You're talking about a potential risk to national security" if Spanier was deemed untrustworthy. Instead, "He was very forthcoming," Snedden said of Spanier. "He answered every question."

On the podcast, Ziegler asked Snedden if he turned up any evidence during his investigation that Jerry Sandusky was a pedophile.

"It was not sexual," Snedden said about what Mike McQueary allegedly heard and saw in the Penn State showers, before the prosecutors got through hyping the story, with the full cooperation of the media. "It was not sexual," Snedden insisted. "Nothing at all relative to a sexual circumstance. Nothing."

About PSU's top administrators, Snedden said, "They had no information that would make a person believe" that Sandusky was a pedophile.


"Gary Schultz was pretty clear as to what he was told and what he wasn't told," Snedden said. "What he was told was nothing was of a sexual nature."

As for Joe Paterno, Snedden said, "His involvement was very minimal in passing it [McQueary's account of the shower incident] to the people he reported to," meaning Schultz and Curley.

Spanier, 68, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. When Snedden interviewed Spanier, he couldn't recall the exact date that he was approached by Curley and Schultz with the news about the shower incident supposedly witnessed by McQueary.

It was "approximately in the early 2000 decade," Snedden wrote, when Spanier recalled being approached by Schultz and Curley in between university meetings. The two PSU administrators told Spanier they wanted to give him a "head's up" about a report they had received from Joe Paterno.

"A staff member," Snedden wrote, "had seen Jerry Sandusky in the locker room after a work out showering with one of his Second Mile kids. [Spanier] knew at the time that Jerry Sandusky was very involved with the Second Mile charity," Snedden wrote. "And, at that time, [Spanier] believed that it only involved high school kids. [Spanier] has since learned that the charity involves younger disadvantaged children."

Because it was Spanier's "understanding at that time that the charity only involved high school kids it did not send off any alarms," Snedden wrote. Then the prosecutors and their friends in the media went to work.

"Curley and Schultz said that the person who had given the report was not sure what he had seen but that they were concerned about the situation with the kid in the shower," Snedden wrote.

Curley and Schultz told Spanier that the person who had given the report "was not sure what he saw because it was around the corner and that what he has reported was described as "horse play" or "horsing around." In his report, Snedden said that Spanier "assumed the terminology of horse play or horsing around came from Joe Paterno."

"They all agreed that Curley would talk to Jerry Sandusky, tell him not to bring kids into the locker room facilities," Snedden wrote. "And Curley was to tell the Second Mile management that it was not good for any of the Second Mile kids to come to the athletic locker room facilities, and that they should suspend that practice."

Spanier, Snedden wrote, never was told "who the person was who made the report. But "nothing was described as a sexual or criminal in any way," Snedden wrote.

The initial conversation between Spanier, Curley and Schultz about the Sandusky shower incident lasted 10 minutes, Snedden wrote. A few days later, Curley told Spanier "in person that the discussion had taken place and that everything went well."

"The issue never came up again with Curley, Schultz, Paterno, Sandusky, or anyone," Snedden wrote. "It did not appear very significant to anyone at the time."


Gary Schultz corroborated Spanier's account. Schultz told Snedden that back in February 2001, Tim Curley told him "something to the effect that Jerry Sandusky had been in the shower with a kid horsing around and wrestling. And Mike McQueary or a graduate assistant walked in and observed it. And McQueary or the graduate assistant was concerned."

Schultz believed the source of Curley's information was Joe Paterno, and that the conduct involved was horseplay.

"McQueary did not say anything of a sexual nature took place," Snedden wrote after interviewing Schultz. "McQueary did not say anything indicative of an incident of a serious sexual nature."

While Snedden was investigating Spanier, Louie Freeh was writing his overpriced $8.3 million report where he came to the opposite conclusion that Snedden did, that there was a coverup at Penn State. Only Louie Freeh didn't talk to Curley, Schultz, Paterno, McQueary or Sandusky. Freeh only talked to Spanier relatively briefly, at the end of his investigation, when he had presumably already come to his conclusions.

Ironically, one of the things Spanier told Freeh was that Snedden was also investigating what happened at Penn State. But that didn't seem to effect the conclusions of the Louie Freeh report, Snedden said. He wondered why.

He also wondered why his report had no effect on the attorney general's office, which had already indicted Curley and Schultz, and was planning to indict Spanier.

"I certainly think that if the powers that be . . . knew what was in his report, Snedden said, "They would certainly have to take a hard look at what they were doing."

Freeh and the AG, Snedden said, should have wanted to know "who was interviewed [by Sneddedn] and what did they say. I mean this is kind of pertinent to what we're doing," Snedden said of the investigations conducted by Freeh and the AG.

"If your goal in any investigation is to determine the facts of the case period, the circumstance should have been hey, we'll be happy to obtain any and all facts," Snedden said.

Snedden said he understood, however, why Freeh was uninterested in his report.

"It doesn't fit the narrative that he's [Louie Freeh] going for," Snedden said.

Freeh was on a tight deadline, Ziegler reminded Snedden. Freeh had to get his report out at a highly-anticipated press conference. And the Freeh report had to come out before the start of the football season. So the NCAA could drop the hammer on Penn State.

"He [Freeh] doesn't have time to read a hundred page report," Snedden said. He agreed with Ziegler that the whole disclosure of the Freeh report was "orchestrated" to come out right before the football season started.

It may have been good timing for the news media and the NCAA, Snedden said about the release of the Louie Freeh report. But it didn't make much sense from an investigator's point of view.


"I just don't understand why," Snedden told Ziegler, "why would you ignore more evidence. Either side that it lands on, why would you ignore it?"

Good question.

Snedden was aghast about the cost of the Louie Freeh report. His six-month federal investigation, Snedden said, "probably cost the federal government and the taxpayers $50,000 at the most. And he [Freeh] spent $8.3 million," Snedden said. "Unbelievable."

In a statement released March 24th, Freeh hailed the conviction of Spanier as having confirmed and verified "all the findings and facts" of the Freeh report. On Ziegler's podcast, however, Snedden was dismissive of Freeh's statement.

"It's like a preemptive strike to divert people's attention from the actual conviction for a misdemeanor," Snedden said about Freeh. Along with the fact that he jury found "no cover up no conspiracy," Snedden said.

"In a rational world Louie Freeh is completely discredited," Ziegler said. "The Freeh report is a joke." On the podcast, Ziegler ripped the "mainstream media morons" who said that the jury verdict vindicated Freeh.

"Which is horrendous," Snedden added.

Ziegler asked Snedden if he had any doubt that an innocent man was convicted last week.

"That's what I believe, one hundred percent," Snedden said about the "insane jury verdict."

About the Penn State scandal, Snedden said, "I've got to say it needs to be examined thoroughly and it needs to be examined by a competent law enforcement authority." And that's a law enforcement authority that "doesn't have any political connections with anybody on the boards of trustees when this thing hit the fan."

As for Snedden, he left the Penn State campus thinking, "Where is the crime?"

"This case has been all about emotion," Ziegler said. "It was never about facts."

"Exactly," Snedden said.

As someone who has spent the past five years investigating the "Billy Doe" case, I can testify that when the subject is sex abuse, and the media is involved, the next stop is the Twilight Zone. Where hysteria reigns, and logic and common sense go out the window.

Earlier in the podcast, Ziegler talked about the "dog and pony show" put on by the prosecution at the Spanier trial. It's a good example of what happens once you've entered the Twilight Zone.


At the Spanier trial, the 28-year-old known as Victim No. 5 was sworn in as a witness in the judge's chambers. When the jury came out, they were surprised to see Victim No. 5 already seated on the witness stand.

As extra sheriff's deputies patrolled the courtroom, the judge announced to the jury that the next witness would be referred to as "John Doe."

I was in the courtroom that day, and I thought the hoopla over Victim No. 5's appearance was bizarre and prejudicial to the case. In several sex abuse trials that I have covered in Philadelphia, the victim's real name was always used in court, starting from the moment when he or she was sworn in in the courtroom as a witness.

The judges and the prosecutors could always count on the media to censor itself, by not printing the real names of alleged victims out of some misguided social justice policy that borders on lunacy. At the exact same time they're hanging the defendants out to dry.

Talk about rigging a contest by what's supposed to be an impartial media.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecutor proceeded to place a box of Kleenex next to the witness stand. John Doe seemed composed until the prosecutor asked if he had ever been sexually abused. Right on cue, the witness started whimpering.

"Yes," he said.

By whom, the prosecutor asked.

By Jerry Sandusky, John Doe said, continuing to whimper.

The actual details of the alleged sex abuse were never explained. The jury could have left the courtroom believing that Victim No. 5 had been sexually assaulted or raped.

But the sexual abuse Victim No. 5 was allegedly subjected to was that Sandusky allegedly soaped the boy up in the shower and may have touched his penis.

For that alleged abuse, Victim No. 5 collected $8 million.


There was also much confusion over the date of the abuse.

First, John Doe said that the abuse took place when he was 10 years old, back in 1998. Then, the victim changed his story to say he was abused the first time he met Sandusky, back when he was 12 or 13 years old, in 2000 or 2001, but definitely before 9/11, because he could never forget 9/11. Next, the victim said that he was abused after 9/11, when he would have been 14.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution used "John Doe" or Victim No. 5 for one main purpose: to prove to the jury that he had been abused after the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident of February, 2001. To show the jury that more victims were abused after Spanier, Curley and Schultz had decided to initiate their alleged coverup following the February 2001 shower incident.

But there was only one problem. To prove John Doe had a relationship with Sandusky, the prosecution introduced as an exhibit a photo taken of the victim with Sandusky.

Keep in mind it was John Doe/Victim No. 5's previous testimony that Sandusky abused him at their first meeting. The only problem, as Ziegler disclosed on his podcast, was the photo of Victim No. 5 was taken from a book, "Touched, The Jerry Sandusky Story," by Jerry Sandusky. And according to Amazon, that book was published on Nov. 17, 2000.

Three months before the alleged shower incident witnessed by Mike McQueary. Meaning that in a real world where facts matter, John Doe/Victim No. 5 was totally irrelevant to the case.

It was the kind of thing that a defense lawyer would typically jump on during cross-examination, confusion over the date of the abuse. Excuse me, Mr. Doe, we all know you have suffered terribly, but when did the abuse happen? Was it in 1998, or was it 2000, or 2001 or even 2002? And hey, what's the deal with that photo?

But the Spanier trial was conducted in the Twilight Zone. Spanier's lawyers chose not to ask a single question of John Doe. As Samuel W. Silver explained why to the jury in his closing statement: he did not want to add to the suffering of a sainted victim of sex abuse by subjecting him to cross-examination. Like you would have done with any normal human being when the freedom of your client was at stake.

That left Spanier in the Twilight Zone, where he was convicted by a jury on one count of endangering the welfare of a child.

To add to the curious nature of the conviction, the statute of limitations for endangering the welfare of a child is two years. But the incident that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were accused of covering up, the infamous Mike McQueary shower incident, happened back in 2001.

At the Spanier trial, the prosecution was only able to try the defendant on a charge that had long ago expired by throwing in a conspiracy charge. In theory, that meant that the defendant and his co-conspirators could still be prosecuted, because they'd allegedly been engaging in a pattern of illegal conduct over sixteen years -- the coverup that never happened --- which kept the original child endangerment charge on artificial respiration until the jury could decide the issue.


But the jury found Spanier not guilty on the conspiracy charge. And they also found Spanier not guilty of engaging in a continuing course of [criminal] conduct.

That means that Spanier was convicted on a single misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child, dating back to 2001. A crime that the statute of limitations had long ago expired on.

On this issue, Silver was willing to express an opinion.

"We certainly will be pursuing the statute of limitations as one of our post-trial issues," he wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, Graham Spanier remains a prisoner in the Twilight Zone. And until there's a credible investigation of what really happened, all of Penn State nation remains trapped in there with him.
 
I don’t think he’s John Jacobson. JJ wasn’t as much of an ass
Do you remember when JJ was exposed on bwi. I believe it was in the run-up to the Curley, Schultz and Spanier trial. He allegedly had privy information on the case. At the outset of the discussions he was anonymous. He was unmasked and I believe he stopped posting after his cover was blown.

JJ was a regular on pennlive, but also posted on cdt and other outlets. Has anybody heard of JJ lately?
 
Do you remember when JJ was exposed on bwi. I believe it was in the run-up to the Curley, Schultz and Spanier trial. He allegedly had privy information on the case. At the outset of the discussions he was anonymous. He was unmasked and I believe he stopped posting after his cover was blown.

JJ was a regular on pennlive, but also posted on cdt and other outlets. Has anybody heard of JJ lately?
I’ve heard of the BWI incident but it was before my time on the board. Im not sure what it was all about. I am aware of his PennLies days and the minions who followed.
 
What amazes me is how the fantasy persists . If there was solid evidence to exonerate these guys or Joe it would be out there.
There isn’t any.
Um, it IS out there. Guessing you haven't listened to any of Ziegler's interviews with Schultz or Spanier.

And since when did Joe ever need exoneration? Never charged in connection with the case. Only PRAISED by the prosecution! Keep up the conspiracy theories, though...
 
Um, it IS out there. Guessing you haven't listened to any of Ziegler's interviews with Schultz or Spanier.

And since when did Joe ever need exoneration? Never charged in connection with the case. Only PRAISED by the prosecution! Keep up the conspiracy theories, though...
Ziegler is less of a solid source than Alex Jones.
 
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1. Something happened.
2. It was a crime.
3. MM reported it.
4. They did nothing. They act like MM said nothing specific and well he wasn't clear, but either way we will wait 8 days to talk to Mike and well we might as well tell TSM something vague 5,6 weeks later.
Why not press Mike? Put words in his mouth and ask are you trying to say this? Get in the head of the police force and take some serious notes? CYA yourself?
I'm a dad and if my kids told me something that was potentially upsetting them to the degree that mike was supposedly upset, I'm pressing my kids. Like the old who wants to be a millionaire I'm calling a friend or expert. In my case it's my friend who was on this case. I'd let him talk to my kids with them there and see what he thinks.
So instead we had four idiots with no experience in any investigations flub it intentionally from the beginning in an attempt to perform some damage control.
If it's nothing there's no reason to fill in TSM. There was no reason to wait so long to talk to Mike unless you were slow playing it, waiting to see if a victim came forward. |the counter is they didn't think he reported it well enough.
That's not on Mike, that's on them for not looking into it well enough. They're not stupid men, but they either covered it up here or they're morons. the answer is the first choice.
If Mike was half the man he should have been, he would have done more than flick the lights in the locker room. That is, if he truly observed what he claimed he thought he observed in that shower. But no, he choose to walk away instead and then ponder himself for days with his dad and himself what he actually saw/observed. That’s who dropped the ball, if in fact the said lone allegation on campus took place as he claimed later, with ever changing storylines on what he actually witnessed.
 
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Sure you can. There are no templates for coverups. You know who they didn't discuss it with? The Department of Public Welfare or the Police. Whom they should have.

You can by unspoken influence and the knowledge that if he does go outside of them he will commit professional suicide.

There are no rules and I've rebutted the ones you mentioned

That is not what happened. Paterno did not ask MM that. He asked him if HE was okay and NOT if he was ok with how it was handled. Later Paterno told MM that "Old Main screwed up". You are mistaken.

Here is a good explanation of it.



You need to leave that church you are in. The church of Joe. It's making you crazy.
Pretty funnny.......at the end of the clip an ad pops up for an interview by.....not with but by......Ray Lewis.......a guy involved in a double murder in Atlanta. So they hired a guy that was an accessory to murder while pontificating about Penn State.
 
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My guy actually was on the case. 🙄
Can you or your investigator friend answer this question? Because no one who touts the cover-up conspiracy has been even close to being able to.

Dranov testified that nothing Mike told him justified going to the police. Having said that, how can one reasonably expect anyone at Penn State to do so? Do you think Mike told Joe, Gary, and Tim something different than what he told his dad and Dranov? Please explain how this fits into your conspiracy theory.

Conrad questioned Dranov about his status as a mandated reporter of suspected child abuse because he is a physician. Dranov said because of what McQueary described and because he was not a witness to it, the incident was not a mandated report.

Asked if he thought it was “bad enough” to call police or child welfare agencies that night, Dranov said no.
 
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Can you or your investigator friend answer this question? Because no one who touts the cover-up conspiracy has been even close to being able to.

Dranov testified that nothing Mike told him justified going to the police. Having said that, how can one reasonably expect anyone at Penn State to do so? Do you think Mike told Joe, Gary, and Tim something different than what he told his dad and Dranov? Please explain how this fits into your conspiracy theory.
I have no conspiracy theory, you're the guy with one. Here's how investigations work, every bit of evidence adds up to the whole case. If there was anything to that it would've been something that made the entire picture look differently.
It doesn't matter whether or not Dranov believed he should go to the police immediately. Without informing joe and the administration. Think that over with the fan boy glasses on. He goes to the police we all know what happens.
He trusted joe and other would know what to do and do the right thing. He was wrong, and three juries would agree he was wrong to assume that.
You have nothing but your sorry fantasies. If there was truth to this I'm sure plenty of people would be leading the charge to save the reputations of Joe and the other three. But no one publicly is. No one of note that is. I don't count certain freaks from here as reputable.
 
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I have no conspiracy theory, you're the guy with one. Here's how investigations work, every bit of evidence adds up to the whole case. If there was anything to that it would've been something that made the entire picture look differently.
It doesn't matter whether or not Dranov believed he should go to the police immediately. Without informing joe and the administration. Think that over with the fan boy glasses on. He goes to the police we all know what happens.
He trusted joe and other would know what to do and do the right thing. He was wrong, and three juries would agree he was wrong to assume that.
You have nothing but your sorry fantasies. If there was truth to this I'm sure plenty of people would be leading the charge to save the reputations of Joe and the other three. But no one publicly is. No one of note that is. I don't count certain freaks from here as reputable.
That was a lot of words to just say, "no, I can't explain that"
 
That was a lot of words to just say, "no, I can't explain that"
There's no need to explain that, cases don't hinge on something like that. It means nothing to the big picture. What Dranov thinks doesn't matter. What matters did Mike make a credible report and if so, why didn't they do anything? That has been proven multiple times in a court of law.
Try being less pathetic.
 
Bring me something of substance not your pathetic butthurt.
You know who the lairs were? The guys on trial. The sex offender and those who covered for him.

Was Esbach honest?
Was Fina honest?
Was Leiter honest?
Was Baldwin honest?

These are simple yes/no questions which I'm sure you can answer.

Maybe Leiter is your "friend who worked the case". He's shown to be a trustworthy individual.
 
Frank Fina. Wasn't he the guy that praised Joe's actions (or lack thereof) in the Penn State Child Sex Abuse scandal?

So, is Fina honest or not? If he isn't, as is claimed by many here, then ALL his statements are false, right? So he lied when he spoke about Joe. Can't have it both ways.
 
If Mike was half the man he should have been, he would have done more than flick the lights in the locker room.
Had it been some derelict off the street instead of the second most beloved figure in State College then he might have done that.
That is, if he truly observed what he claimed he thought he observed in that shower.
Paterno's testimony corroborates that.
But no, he choose to walk away instead and then ponder himself for days with his dad and himself what he actually saw/observed.
I suspect you would have too given his relative power position in the organization as in low man on the totem pole.
That’s who dropped the ball, if in fact the said lone allegation on campus took place as he claimed later, with ever changing storylines on what he actually witnessed.
Yeah, let's blame the low man again and ignore the iconic paragon of virtue who was told of CSA and then participated in the decision not to report Sandusky.
 
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