JoePa

I felt sorry for Joe Paterno.  When Penn State fired him along with the AD and the official in charge of the Campus Police for covering up the Sandusky scandal, I told others that it would kill Joe.  It did.

Joe wasn't prosecuted, but the others were.  Did he deserve to be prosecuted?  Probably not.  Because it doesn't appear that he was an active participant in the efforts to sweep Sandusky under the rug like the others clearly were.

But I think he did fail to do the right thing.  His family is stressing the point that Joe did nothing illegal.  True, Pennsylvania law isn't like Indiana law, where one can be prosecuted for knowing about a case of abuse and failing to report it to Child Protective Services.

There's a question about how much Paterno knew about the original investigation of Sandusky,  around 1998.  That investigation didn't get off the ground because the prosecutors couldn't gather enough solid evidence.  So whether he knew about that case is an important factor in how culpable he was when McQueary walked in on Sandusky abusing a boy in the shower.  Was McQueary telling him something utterly new and shocking, or something Joe already had a sneaking suspicion about?

If the coach knew about '98, he would have realized McQueary's encounter was probably not a coincidence.  And he would have known the right thing to do would be to report the incident to Child Protective Services immediately - no hesitation.  Many people have trouble believing that Paterno had never heard about that previous incident, let alone the rumors that floated around campus for years about Sandusky's sordid affinity for young boys.

So I feel sorry for JoePa.  I'd like to think that at best he's guilty of letting the other guys proceed to cover up the Sandusky abuses and hoping things would work out.  But it seems somewhere between possible and likely that he knew more than he admitted, and also knew the right thing to do would have been to call Child Protective Services.  From the office at the moment McQueary showed up.

McQueary has a lesson to teach all of us.  If you see something like he saw, don't go to your boss and ask him what to do.  Call it in immediately.  Then go see the boss if you feel the need.  Poor McQueary still can't find a job, last I heard.  Maybe he can get a high school job and work his way back from there.